Digital marketing has acquired a predominant position in achievement of sales targets of companies. Absence of own digital marketing platform and dependence of third party platforms can prove very expensive to the companies. Thus, in order to boost sales and keep the marketing expenses low it has become crucial for companies to develop third own digital marketing platforms. The aim of the paper is to explore a digital marketing plan for a middle sized company to develop its own digital marketing platform. The paper delves into aspects like marketing plan and strategies to enhance customer experiences. It would also explore the areas like KPIs to measure performances of the marketing plan and take steps to improve them.
The digital marketing plan should aim to boost the sales of medium sized company and at the same time enable the firm to track customer records. The aim of the digital marketing plan should be bringing about growth in the business operations of the firm. Since, the firm is medium scale in size, it can be assumed that it would be able financial resources required to set up a robust multichannel digital marketing system. It would also be assumed as a part of the digital marketing strategy that the firm already has a marketing strategy in place and the digital marketing strategy would form a part of the marketing plan. This means that the digital marketing strategy should fit into the overall marketing strategy and be aligned to the business requirement of the firm.
The following are the steps that would form the digital marketing plan of the firm:
The first step of the digital marketing plan is defining the business objectives which the plan aims to achieve which should include the short, medium and long term objectives. As far as the medium sized firm in question is concerned, it should aim to increase its sales and boost its revenue in the short run using the digital marketing plan. The medium term aim the firm should aim to achieve through the digital plan is gaining control over its customer data and expanding the data by acquisition of more customers. The long term aim which the firm should aim to achieve in the long run should expansion of the business.
The middle firm should KPIs to measure the actual outcome of the digital marketing plan by setting certain key performance indicators or KPIs which should once again be based on the marketing objectives. The KPIs can be divided into financial and non-financial in nature. For example, the financial KPIs can consist of parameters like increase in sales and market share achieved. The non-financial KPI can consist of measurement of number of breakdowns due to internet problems. Both the financial KPIs as well the non-financial KPIs would enable the middle scale firm judge the strength of the digital marketing plan. The firm based on the outcomes of the KPIs can form further strategies in the area of digital marketing.
The marketing manager along with the apex management should analyse the past records to locate issues which the form had faced due to absence of digital marketing. They can also point out that past customer issues which the firm had faced and can use digital marketing to tackle the issues in future.
The marketing manager should develop customer personas using the existing customer data. The marketing team should communicate with the customers either on the existing social media platforms or in person to gain deeper knowledge about their needs and expectations. The marketing managers should use this data to make customer persona. The firm while designing its digital marketing platform should incorporate the needs and expectations of the customers. For example, the search panel of the official website of the firm can show a list of all the segments of products the customers of the company purchase for it. The customers by clicking initial product segments can get the list of all the products the company offers under the particular segment. The customers can then click on the individual products to gain more information on them. The individual product screens would also provide the customers to order them online, thus leading the customers to the purchase details panels. The customers can also give their reviews on individual products by clicking individual product options. This incorporation of individual customer personas would enhance the product purchase experiences of the customers, thus boosting the sale of the firm.
The marketing manager should identify the resources which the implementation of the digital marketing would require. The marketing manager in association with the accounts department should prepare a digital marketing budget. This would show the amount which can be allocated to the digital plan. The marketing manager based on the budget should judge the present financial resources and the additional funding, if at all has to acquire. This would also lead to identifying the sources of acquiring the additional funding requirements like borrow business loan from banks.
The marketing manager should then consider the human resource requirement for the digital marketing plan. He in collaborating with the technological experts and HR department should identify the human resources required for the plan in terms of numbers, qualifications and experience. This step would also enable the manager to determine requirements to outsource portions of the digital marketing plan.
The marketing manager in collaboration of with the technological department would analyses the hardware and software requirements which the digital marketing plan implementation would require. This would also lead to identification of IT resources which the firm would have to acquire to order to give shape to the plan.
The marketing manager should submit the findings of the above steps of the digital marketing plan in form of a report before the apex management for approval. The apex management after perusing the plan and may suggest changes or approve it and sanction funds for execution of the plan. This would in turn pave way for the formation of digital marketing strategies.
The management of the firm must form a powerful digital marketing strategy based on the aforementioned marketing plan:
The middle scale firm should adopt a multichannel approach for its digital marketing platform. It can be assumed form the case study that the firm in question is a middle scale firm which means it is able to generate steady revenue by operating in the market using an omnichannel approach. It can also be pointed out that the firm sells its products both through own brick and mortar stores and through retail stores. It can also be assumed that the firm sold its products using third party ecommerce portals which attributed it with a digital presence dependent on third party ecommerce companies, an evolution which escalated its marketing expenses. However, the firm as evident from the case study lacked its own digital marketing platform. Hence, the first strategy should be adopting of a multichannel approach of marketing the products. The firm should market its products using its own branded outlets as well as third retail chains and distributers. Similarly, the firm should market its products using its own digital marketing platform as well as third ecommerce portals. This multichannel approach would boost the sales and profit generation. The firm would also able to acquire immense customer base on which it can base its medium term and long term marketing plans.
The firm should expand its digital marketing presence to the social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This means that the firm should also promote its products on social media platforms like Instagram. This would allow it to attract existing as well as new customers towards the products. The social media platforms should also have a link leading to the ordering and payment screen. The customers would also be able to avail certain discounts on ordering through social media. The outcome of this strategy would be acquisition of new customers and generation high revenue.
The digital marketing strategy should constitute of round the clock and aftersales services. The firm should have a strong group of customer care executives who would provide customers solution and/or guidances over email and telephone. The customer care executives can also inform customers about latest offers which they can avail, thus contributing to increase of sales.
The middle scale firm should ensure strong knowledge management system as a part of its digital marketing strategy. The firm should ensure that its customer database and digital marketing portals are secured from hackers. The firm should ensure that it uses payment gateways of reputed banks to ensure security of financial transactions. The marketing department should manage the customer data efficiently and use it to recognize future needs of customers. However considering the prevailing chances of data theft, the lower level employees should only be allowed access to the KMS under supervision of a senior manager. The employees should only be allowed access using their official email id.
The medium size firm should integrate the digital marketing operations with its internal operational software. For example, whenever, an order would be placed on the digital marketing, it should show on the system of the inventory department. Similarly, when a payment is made, it should show on the systems of the accounts departments. This strategy would enable the firm to integrate the digital marketing strategy with its entire system. This would streamline the entire recording of financial transactions and increase the efficiency of the firm internally.
The management as pointed out in the digital marketing plan step 2, should determine and evaluate the platform of digital marketing plan based on certain KPIs. The following table shows the determination of the KPIs and evaluation of the marketing plan based on them.
|
KPIs |
Measurement |
Performance metrics |
Further actions |
|||
|
Financial(GBP) |
Target |
Actual |
Accepted variance (%) |
Actual variance(%)(10-20)-a(20-40)-b(40 and above)-c |
Action taken to rectify variance |
Comment(Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory/Average |
|
Profit generated from the digital marketing platform |
10 |
|||||
|
Profit generated from own platform |
10 |
|||||
|
Profit generated from third party platform |
10 |
|||||
|
Ratio of own platform and third party platform profit |
10 |
|||||
|
Non-financial |
||||||
|
No of breakdowns |
10 |
|||||
|
No of data thefts |
10 |
|||||
|
No of orders canselled due to technical errors |
10 |
|||||
|
No of payments failed due to technical errors |
10 |
|||||
|
No customer complaints due to technical errors |
10 |
The management of the company should take the following actions to improve performance of the digital marketing for the organization:
The management of the firm should advance and upgrade the digital marketing platform on regular basis. The advancement of the system should consist of changing of security as well. This would make it difficult for the cyber theft groups to intrude into the digital marketing platform and steal data. The system should also be upgraded by adding new features which would enhance customer purchase experience. The upgraded features of the system would encourage the customers to place orders, thus boosting sales.
The firm should outsource maintenance of the system to third party firms in order to save costs. The digital marketing systems require continuous maintenance which is very expensive. Thus, outsourcing maintenance would save the firm from the high expenditure of acquiring hardware and software associated with the maintenance. However, it can also be pointed out that the firm should be very cautious while sharing data with the third party IT firms. It must only share the data which is required to upgrade the system. This would prevent its crucial data from being mishandled.
Conclusion:
The firm should adopt an advanced marketing plan to boost its sale. It would also strengthen its position in the market. However, the firm should maintain its digital marketing platform very stringently and take steps to upgrade it. It should also ensure that its digital platform is free from virus attacks and hackers. It can also be recommended that the management of the company should hire technological consultant post submission of the digital marketing plan to discuss the salient features of the plan. This would lead to formation of a stronger marketing strategy. The firm should in addition to adopting the marketing strategy, train its employees. Adoption of the digital marketing platform in the middle sized company may require immense change in the operation methods and would require the management and the middle level managers exercise more supervision upon the work of the subordinate employees. Similarly, it may require the middle level managers to work under closer supervision of the apex management. Both the classes of employees may feel intimidated in these cases and this may give rise to conflict. Hence, the management of the firm besides implementation of the digital marketing should implement change management strategy as well.
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