PGN508 Digital Marketing : Strategic Internet Marketing

You have got a job in a marketing agency which has recently advised many businesses on the benefits of going online. The first company which you advised was a “Hungry Kya” takeaway on how to go about marketing online via Facebook. Using examples of Hungry Kya Takeaway, you need to discuss ways in which the internet and online has provided opportunities for this business leading to increased sales and orders and better relationship building with its customers. Use the above success story to pitch to a new client and cover the below tasks

Task 1 

P1 -  Describe the role internet marketing has within a modern marketing context

Guidance to achieve P1, the learner needs to

• Describe marketing activities for three different businesses which have incorporated internet marketing to help establish and develop a relationship with customers
• Send an email to your client describing the activities of the three businesses using a tabular format
• You can attach screen shots to support your email
• Use appropriate examples from the different businesses to cover 4Ps, relationship marketing and ICT technologies

P2- describe how selected organisations use internet marketing

Guidance to achieve P1, the learner needs to produce a table showing

• Prior to this meeting with Takeaway, you were asked to describe the activities which its competitors have engaged to increase orders.

Use screenshots of competitors advertising to help explain to your new client how this business has used internet marketing.

Task 2 

Scenario

Your manager has asked you to write an article for a marketing magazine explaining the benefits of internet marketing to both customers and businesses. The article will be published on the company’s intranet site and also extracts of the same shared across different industry magazines. It was decided in the management meeting that you should create an online version of the article featuring videos and images for maximum effect. Use the above example of the 3 different businesses from previous task who have utilised internet marketing to their and their customers’ advantages and cover the tasks below

P3-  Explain the benefits to customers of a business using internet marketing

M1- Analyse the benefits of internet marketing to customers

Answer:

Introducation:

According to Gangeshwer (2013), Internet marketing is also known as digital or online marketing and involves the use of internet for promoting the business. Objective of the online marketing is spreading awareness regarding the business and its services or products through the internet. Internet marketing deals in variety of various stretegies which includes search engine optimization (SEO), reputation management, pay per click advertising and social media as well as content marketing. In this report, we have discussed various factors related to the internet marketing done by 'Hungry Kya' takeaway and other companies as well.

Task 1

P1 Role of internet marketing within modern marketing context

Internet marketing plays a significant role in modern marketing practices. It creates significant development measures for the businesses around the world. It has increased integration of marketing mix. The following marketing mix for e-marketing reflects the integration of internet into marketing practices.

• Product: All the three cited firms market its products to customers through telling them benefits and unique features of the products. For example, the companies make the customers sure that it uses hygienic ingredients in its products.
• Place: It means the place where the service or product is available. It can be offline or online, but the firms need to inform the customers where it is available. For instance, Dominos has recently opened its branches in several new cities, so it has updated the customers with the new locations (Domino's, 2012).
• Promotion: Firm need to promote the products either offline or online. Online marketing is a cheaper way of conducting promotions and helps in reaching most of the customers.
• Price: Marketing strategy should make sure that people get more perceived value as compared to the price of the product or service which they purchase from the firm. For example, McDonald's offer various combo packs and meal offers at quite reasonable price to the customers.

Relationship marketing:

The selling and promotional activities target at managing and developing long term and trusting relationships with more customers. History of contacts, buying patterns, customer profiles are recorded in sales database and an account executive, also known as service representative, is given one or more important customers for maintaining relationship with them and for ascertaining their needs (Eid, Elbeltagi and Zairi, 2006).

Information and communication technologies (ICTs):

When a firm takes strategic decision for creating internet presence and selling online, it has to set certain objectives for new channels (Coupey, 2001). Further, it also need to perform a technology enabled segmentation and targeting (psychographic, demographical, usage based, economic, etc.).

P2 Use of internet marketing by different organizations

Following are the three firms that use internet as a tool of marketing:

McDonald's: It performs huge internet marketing through the social media such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook, etc. as it saves lot of effort, money and time. It also helps in knowing desires of the customers (McDonald's, 2017).

Pizza Hut: Social Media is one of the main campaigns of pizza hut. It performs the internet marketing by various sources like social media (such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Snapchat, etc.), television, internet radio, news sites, etc. (Pizza Hut, 2017).

Hungry Kya: For the purpose of internet marketing the cited firm uses social media (like creating buzz, #Dominos3for3, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook), inbound marketing (like online profiles, closing leads), going mobile (text messeging alert, redirecting right to order), GoogleAds, SEOs (Hungry Kya, 2015).

Task 2

P3 Benefits to the customers of business using the internet marketing

Using internet as a tool of marketing is useful for the cited firm, i.e., Hungry Kya, but is very crucial for the customers as well. It has several advantages for the customers like:

• Communication: Internet marketing helps the firm in delivering updated information to the customers. It also encourages feedbacks and reviews from them for the pupose of knowing their needs and also for checking whether their desires are being fulfilled by the firm or not.
• Product development: Internet marketing helps in developing new products and modifying the existing ones as per the needs and demands of the customers. The newly developed products are then marketed through emails, blogs etc. (Schibrowsky, Peltier and Nill, 2007).
• Business efficiency: Marketing through internet is quite time saving and cheaper as compared to other tools of marketing. It requires compartively less budget and helps in reaching even more customers. Thus, it helps in raising the efficiency and effectiveness of the business of Hungry Kya.

M1 Benefits of internet marketing to customers

Following are some of the benefits of using internet marketing to the customers of 'Hungry Kya':

• Quick purchase: The customers of 'Hungry Kya' need not to go outside for buying products of the firm. They can place the order online and the firm can provide products as per the orders of the customers. This helps the customers in saving efforts and time.
• Rise in bargaining power: Customers can bargain for the expected product quality and price, and can select the expected products as the firm provides them the facility of using online delivering and oredering system (Prasad, Ramamurthy and Naidu, 2001).
• Adequate information: The firm always updates the information related to the products on its website so that the customers can get updated information of the products they need and about the changes in strategies and policies of the company. It helps the cusomers in providing much convenient products.
• Feedback and review: The firm keeps a system for feedback and review for the products on its website through which customers using its products can give their reviews about the same. It also helps other potential customers in choosing the better option and makes the firm to modify or alter the things which went wrong.

Task 3

P4 Opportunities and benefits to business using the internet marketing within marketing mix of selected business

More frequent individualized communication for building relationship: Hungry Kya communicates to its customers through internet, calls and messages. When a customers oredrs a product, a confirmation mail is being sent to him via email. This helps in developing trusting relationship among seller and buyer. As a result, customers are retained in the firm and a long term relationship is being developed which helps in attracting even more customers.

Using communication for promotion: The firm sends emails to the registered customers for sending updates related to new product launches etc. Promoting products through television also helps in targeting a wide range of customers (O'Leary, Rao and Perry, 2004).

Using purchase history for tailoring offers to the individuals: When a customer purchases anything from Hungry Kya, it goes to the purchase history. The firm uses the email id for send them related or even more products at the same price. This helps to gain attention of the customers and in promotion as well.

Cheaper and easier to alter: The cheaper advertisements usedby Hungry Kya are advertising on the website, sending emails to the customers, etc. Similarly, the expensive ones include advertising on television and on the website of other firms. Advertising through emails and on own website is quite convenient as the messege can be easily altered in these means of promotion.

P5 Role of internet marketing in making the business more effective, successful and efficient

Effectiveness: Dominos in its initial years dealt with less variety of products and services, but now it has expanded the website through adding more products and services and launching various schemes, packs and offers like Hungry Kya (Lichtenthal and Eliaz, 2003). It has also added new categories through which the customers can buy the products online. It is quite effective as the customers can purchase various products and services without visiting the firm physically. As a result, many new potential customers have been added to the firm.

Success: Dominos is now operating its business over a number of countries and has employees thousands of employees and targeted millions of customers. This has helped the firm in raising the profits, revenues and net income over the years.

Effectiveness: Easy access to the website has proved quite effective as the customers are now able capable of streaming online which in turn helps in attracting more customers from all the corners of the world (Trusov, Bucklin and Pauwels, 2009).

Marketing challenges and opportunities faced by the business using the internet marketing

• Internet marketing has helped Hungry Kya in several ways. It has provided the firm with a facility of staying in contact with the suppliers as well as customers online. It can now contact the suppliers through internet and can keep a check on the activities and materials supplied by the suppliers. Thus, it helps in managing the supply chain quite effectively.
• The cited firm uses internet for communicating with the customers and the staff at distant places (Palmer, 2005). It communicated with them using emails, blogs, messages etc. This has helped in reduction of staff costs as this means of communication is quite cheap.
• The customers of the firm are provided with regular and updated information regarding new launches and existing products as well. It helps in retaining the customers as well as attracting many new customers.
• This has also enabled the firm in keeping a close check to the activities of the competitor firms. As a result, the firm can farm its strategies accordingly.

P6 Challenges of the globalization faced by the business while using internet as a tool of marketing

• Payment system and security: Hungry Kya accepts the online payment through debit and credit cards only. So, it has a scope of increasing the mode of online payment which can make it better as compared to the competitive firms.
• Payment security: The firm keeps a recorded of the emails and contact numbers of its customers. So, only those customers can access to the information provided by the firm, which makes it quite safe and secured for the customers as well as the firm.
• Overload of the market feedback: When a customer purchases anything from the firm, it asks them for a feedback (Dann and Dann, 2004). This can be positive or negative as the customers give honest feedback depending upon their experiences. This can impact the other existing and future customers of the firm.
• Meeting expectations of the customers: The firm meets the expectations of the customers by providing them products at cheap price and of good quality. Besides this, it offers a large variety of products and services to the customers which are adequate to meet their needs and demands.
• Channel conflict and disintermediation: Buying products online always has slight negative impression in the mind of the customers as whether the product will be hygienic or not, whether it will reach the customer on time or not, etc. (Sigala, 2003).
• Cultural and linguistic sensitivity: The firm has to take care of the cultural and linguistic factors of the region where it is marketing its products and services to create a better impact on the customers and to provide them a clear information.

Task 4

D1 Effectiveness of the internet marketing in fulfilling needs of the customers

Despite of all the challenges mentioned above, Hungry Kya has entered the international market quite successfully and has got quite good response. This has been done with the help of internet marketing as it helps in targeting a wide range of customers and helps in forming marketing strategies like which areas should the firm target, how and to whom to target, etc.

However, it has not been much time that Hungry Kya has entered the market; so, it has a huge scope of growth. It can keep a close check on the activities of the competitor firm for developing its own marketing policies and strategies accordingly for the purpose of competing them and providing even better products and services to the customers than the competitor firms (Eid, 2005).

Conclusion:

In this report, the importance of modern marketing has been discussed and various other factors like how it is useful for the customers as well as the firm have been studied. Hungry Kya has been commencing the business effectively but it can make it better by the overcoming the challenges and utilising the opportunities mentioned in the report.

Reference:

Books and journals

Coupey, E., 2001. Marketing and the Internet. Prentice Hall PTR.

Dann, S. and Dann, S., 2004. Strategic internet marketing. John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Domino's, 2012. [Online]. Available through: <>. [Accessed on: 23rd May, 2017].

Eid, R., 2005. International internet marketing: A triangulation study of drivers and barriers in the business-to-business context in the United Kingdom. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 23(3), pp.266-280.

Eid, R., Elbeltagi, I. and Zairi, M., 2006. Making business-to-business international internet marketing effective: A Study of critical factors using a case-study approach. Journal of International Marketing, 14(4), pp.87-109.

Gangeshwer, D.K., 2013. E-commerce or internet marketing: A business review from Indian context. International Journal of u-and e-Service, Science and Technology, 6(6), pp.187-194.

Hungry Kya?, 2015. [Online]. Available through: <https://qz.com/988948/make-in-india-is-delaying-elon-musks-plans-to-launch-tesla-in-india/>. [Accessed on: 23rd May, 2017].

Lichtenthal, J.D. and Eliaz, S., 2003. Internet integration in business marketing tactics. Industrial Marketing Management, 32(1), pp.3-13.

McDonald's, 2017. [Online]. Available through: <https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/mcd.html>. [Accessed on 23rd May, 2017].

O'Leary, C., Rao, S. and Perry, C., 2004. Improving customer relationship management through database/Internet marketing: A theory-building action research project. European journal of marketing, 38(3/4), pp.338-354.

Palmer, D.E., 2005. Pop-ups, cookies, and spam: Toward a deeper analysis of the ethical significance of Internet marketing practices. Journal of business ethics, 58(1), pp.271-280.

Pizza Hut, 2017. [Online]. Available through: <https://www.pizzahut.de/en/about-pizza-hut/the-history-of-pizza-hut/>. [Accessed on: 23rd May, 2017].

Prasad, V.K., Ramamurthy, K. and Naidu, G.M., 2001. The influence of internet-marketing integration on marketing competencies and export performance. Journal of International Marketing, 9(4), pp.82-110.

Schibrowsky, J.A., Peltier, J.W. and Nill, A., 2007. The state of internet marketing research: A review of the literature and future research directions. European Journal of Marketing, 41(7/8), pp.722-733.

Sigala, M., 2003. Developing and benchmarking internet marketing strategies in the hotel sector in Greece. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 27(4), pp.375-401.

Simmons, G., 2008. Marketing to postmodern consumers: introducing the internet chameleon. European Journal of Marketing, 42(3/4), pp.299-310.

Trusov, M., Bucklin, R.E. and Pauwels, K., 2009. Effects of word-of-mouth versus traditional marketing: findings from an internet social networking site. Journal of marketing, 73(5), pp.90-102.