A business marketing strategy is an overall plan implemented in the business with a main aim of researching for people and then turning them into customers. There are many types of marketing strategies. The most efficient ones include direct marketing, digital marketing, inbound marketing, diversity marketing, and relationship marketing. Marketing strategies are very important in any organization or company. They help in streamlining the product development (Srivastava et al. 2013). This is achieved through considering the optimal target customers, what the competitors are doing and what trend they have adopted. Marketing strategies also help in determining the correct price of the product. Through research it is easy to evaluate the perception of the customers about the product and their willingness to buy the product hence determines the right price (Srivastava et al. 2013).
Social media is one of the current platforms which can make a significant growth to any company. By the year 2017, there were more than 220 million active social media users (Vodanovich et al. 2017). Over those active users, 60% claimed that they were active on social media to market their products (Vodanovich et al. 2017). Facebook is the most widely used social media platform for marketing. 53% of the marketers said that they were using Facebook to market their products with 27% who only used Twitter for marketing (Vodanovich et al. 2017). 20% said that they used both Twitter and Facebook for marketing. Majority of the marketers said they adopted the social media marketing since it is easy and cheap. They also claimed that it is easy to analyze social media sites and know the best clients to target. Despite the marketing 40% of the participants also said they use the social media for a news update and to analyze their competitors’ strategies.
The social media marketers use the platforms to achieve specific goals. Some use them to generate traffic for their websites. Out of the interviewed marketers, 58% said that they use social media to generate traffic to their websites (Vodanovich et al. 2017). 34% said that they use the social media platforms to share videos of their products and services which in turn attract many customers (Vodanovich et al. 2017). The reset said that they use the platforms for general advertising.
Many of the marketers who use social media said that there was a significant increase in sales in the year 2017. 67% of the interviewed marketers said that they had more than 50% increase in sales in the year 2017 as compared to 2016 (Vodanovich et al. 2017). The reaming percentage claimed that there was an increase in the sales though not significant.
Since these marketing strategies are becoming popular and best to use, there is a need to research the challenges which face the marketing strategies and how different companies design and implement those strategies. Also, the advantages of using those strategies and especially the digital strategies are important to be understood. This research will focus on that specific area.
Objectives of the study
The main objective of this research is to evaluate the advantages of digital marketing strategies. The following are the other objectives of the study.
Research questions
Primary question
What are the advantages of digital marketing strategies?
Secondary questions
The Scope of the study
Many companies have gone digital in the recent years. Doing business online is more efficient and cheap. This study will not be limited to any geographical area since it will be done online. This will be achieved by use of a survey for data collection. All participants will be allowed to take part despite the geographical location but under specified rules which will be explained in the methodology section. The researcher will design questionnaires and upload them online as a survey but targeting companies and other business people globally. This will ensure that the researcher gets different opinions from different parts of the world which will be used for decision making. The collected data will be downloaded and a sample size selected using the set rules.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Digital marketing field is relatively wide and new to most businesses. Businesses do not know where to start or when to stop their digital marketing strategies. Social media presents various channels like Twitter, Facebook, and Google all which impact the perception and attitudes of customers, therefore, proper utilization of the channels improve business marketing potentials to great heights. Social media provides a platform where customers regularly visit, and voluminous data obtained can let the companies collect as much information about customer experiences. The market research feedback allows a firm determine the most suitable digital marketing mix that facilitates the highest profit potential outcome. The report dwells on various digital marketing strategies which impact the way businesses engage in their activities. The literature review highlights the benefits of different methods and the marketing strategy challenges incurred.
Project objectives:
Project scope
The project’s scope addresses the motivation behind the marketing strategy choices and the range of marketing strategies which a firm can make use. The report also identifies the new marketing strategy trends that improve a firm’s profit potential.
Digital marketing is one of the marketing strategies which a business can utilize, as it is proven to have generated increased sales to agricultural sector in the United States. According to Ashley, and Tuten, (2015), the agricultural sector digital marketing allows farmers to sell their commodities directly to customers. An assessment into the role of digital marketing strategy allows farmers maximize their profits and most importantly, acts a risk management tool. Marketing strategies are capital and resource intensive. Not all marketing strategies applicable to a given sector work well in other distinct sectors.
Firms attain competitive advantages when they implement their marketing strategies in a resource-based view. Resource-based marketing illustrates the relationship between marketing and Proactive Market Orientation, and Responsive Market Orientation. The report identified that an understanding of the market orientation becomes essential towards the choice of marketing strategies to attain competitive strategies in given firms. The benefit of studying market orientation is that it offers an understanding of the market before any marketing strategies are chosen, Ashley, and Tuten, (2015). Where else, the limitation associated with the study is that it focuses on few elements within a typical market.
A study into the consumption patterns and customer purchase habits are essential before marketing strategies are implemented. Various marketing strategies become applicable to in-store marketing activities. Proper marketing strategies assist customers make decisions regarding the choice of products they purchase. Marketing strategies also emancipate customers to refrain from rogue products in the market. Healthy marketing habits is beneficial to customer as it allows them make proactive and informed purchase decisions. The main disadvantage associated with the method is that it relies entirely on secondary data, which means primary research must be performed to obtain an accurate information.
Place-based marketing strategies have been used in marketing environments to market a given product to specified consumers. Chen, Lin, and Kuo, (2013) argued that distinct marketing can be performed that meets consumer dynamics and preferences. Different social factors apply when engaging in marketing activities, like age, gender and wealth status. Online surveys are helpful in determining the marketing strategies that a given region deserves. Concerns associated with online surveys is that it necessitates follow up studies to help validate the initial result outcome from the study. Such studies require broad consumer sampling to attain as much information about the consumer demographics.
Effective marketing strategies are essential towards boosting the sale of commodities. According to Bruwer, and Johnson, (2010), recommendations exist regarding appropriate measures that suit social media marketing that improve sales. Secondary sources and literature reviews are helpful towards improving social media marketing strategies. Streamlining the digital marketing channels become essential towards improving customer information and knowledge on products that a firm sells. Various social media avenues could be helpful towards attracting customers.
Digital marketing faces challenges whose solutions improve marketing success. Social media marketing create and sustain competitive advantage for companies. Social media is essential not only for firms that intend to market their commodities but also for individual customers to contact the firm. Social media marketing is an essential marketing tool within urban setting where consumers are informed and have internet and smartphones at their disposal.
Social media marketing strategies has the potential to reach consumers of diverse backgrounds. Social media is believed to unit most people in the digital era. Creativity options used within social media create long-lasting impact on the mind of consumers. Social media marketing elicits customer brand loyalty. When a product manifests itself within most social media platforms, thus consumers can easily identify with those brands, (Bruwer, & Johnson, 2010).
Firms must instill a high level of creativity when working with social media marketing tools. Certain social media elements are still under experimentation, while others are proven to facilitate exclusive messages to customers. The drawback with the innovation associated with social media branding methodologies.
Digital marketing could adopt strategies that promote local culture of the potential customers. According to Glanz, Bader, and Iyer, (2012), social media marketing strategies that augur with ecological conservation and environmental friendliness facilitate success within the company’s marketing. The disadvantage of the method is that data must be collected about the locality, which invokes uniqueness in social media marketing strategies in each region. Such methods do not include information about foreigners that enter a given locality.
Smartphones and internet connectivity facilitate digital marketing activities. Consumers incur voluminous marketing activities in their daily endeavors. Marketers focus on attracting customers to become loyal to their products. Viral marketing and seeding marketing help in such scenarios. Both seeding and viral options depict gaps that require the attention of companies, regarding their long-term impact on consumers.
In summary, social marketing is essential as it emancipates consumers to acquire products from companies. Businesses must be careful towards the choice of digital marketing strategies they make use, for instance, it is no use seeking marketing strategies whose long-term impact on the firm are not proven. Regional marketing activities focus on a given population and thus meets their specific needs, however, a business that cannot apply the same marketing strategies elsewhere. The main aim of marketing is to facilitate the promotion of commodities to various consumers. Marketing trends vary depending on the industry, demographic factors and the budget that a firm intends to make use. A firm which has a big budget and targets people of all ages could make use of social media marketing channels like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Making customers informed creates an impression that a product is better than others, where else failure to market a commodity keeps customers uninformed.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
Research methodology is an outline of how the study will be carried out. It gives out the description and justification of the design of the research, the target population, the sample size and sampling method to be used, the data collection procedure, time frame for the research, limitations of the study, type of the research, and the data analysis procedure.
Research type
This research will be quantitative. Quantitative research is a structural way of collecting and analyzing data scientifically to get insights about a given topic or research question (Muijs 2010). It has twelve steps. The first step is coming up with the research topic. The researcher comes up with a topic or a question which the study seeks to answer. This topic should be empirical and researchable (Scott and Garner 2013). The second step is developing the objectives of the study. In this step the researcher comes up with objectives which should be met after the research. The next step is the research questions where the researcher formulates the questions which the study seeks to answer. It follows the step of hypothesis development where the researcher comes up with the claims which will be proofed as either false or true. The next step is the reviewing of the existing literature under the given topic where the researcher reads the already existing literature under the given topic. This helps in making the researcher have a solid background about the topic and be able to know the research gaps under the topic and also the already done researches (Nardi 2018). Then it follows the section of methodology. In this section the researcher explains the type of research and gives a justification of why it should be of that type. Then it follows the step of sampling and sample size. In this step the researcher explains sampling method which will be used in the study and the sample size. Then it follows the step of data collection tools where the researcher explains the tools which will be used for data collection. It follows the step of data collection procedures where an explanation of how the data will be collected is given. The next step is for data analysis where the researcher analyzes the collected data to get information. Then it follows the limitations, and recommendations of the study.
Sampling and sample size
This research will use purposive sampling. This is non-probability sampling method which allows one to choose a sample based on set rules (Etikan et al. 2016). This method has been chosen since it is the best to be used in selecting a sample from an online survey. This is because it allows the researcher to choose the data from the participants who meet the set rules. The sample size of this research will be fifty participants. Those participants will be chosen among the many that will participate but based on the set rules. This large sample has been chosen so that the assumption of normality can be made. This is based on the central limit theorem which states that as the sample size gets large, the data tend to approach normal distribution (Shcherbina 2011).
Instrumentation
A questionnaire will be the main tool for data collection. This questionnaire will be designed and uploaded online to allow people participate in the survey. A questionnaire has been chosen because it is time efficient since many participants can respond to the questions at once (Phellas et al. 2011).
Data analysis
After the data collection, the questionnaires will be downloaded for data collection. There will be a selection of fifty participants who meet the specified rules. After the selection, the data will be entered into an excel file for cleaning and then exported to the SPSS software for analysis.
Research limitations
This research has only one limitation. Some of the participants may not meet the selection criteria, but since they have knowledge in the topic under study, they may decide to participate in the survey, and hence they may give false information. This may compromise the data and hence make it less reliable. However, given that they have knowledge in the topic, there will be an assumption that they have a clue in marketing strategies hence most of their responses are true.
Time Schedule
|
Time |
Activity |
|
27/5/2018 to 1/6/2018 |
Planning of the research and understanding of the theoretical parts of the research |
|
2/6/2018 to 5/6/2018 |
Designing of the online survey and permission seeking from the relevant bodies for data collection |
|
6/6/2018 to 10/6/2018 |
Data collection |
|
11/6/2018 to 15/6/2018 |
Data cleaning, analysis, and interpretation |
|
16/6/2016 to 20/6/2018 |
Recommendations of the research |
In conclusion, this research will be conducted to evaluate the challenges and benefits of marketing strategies. It will be based online by the use of a survey. The participants will be drawn from anywhere given that they attain the selection criteria. The obtained data will be analyzed to give insights about the marketing strategies.
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