Digital marketing can be understood as the set of tools and channels through which advertising, marketing or sales takes place. These channels include emails, social media, mobile phones, applications and more. It includes the use of digital technologies mainly internet so that the products and services of the organisation can be marketed. Digital marketing is the need of the hour because it helps in bringing growth to the business and helps in interacting with the audiences in real time. With the advent of modern technologies, the businesses of all the sizes have changed their business models and attempting to target the audiences through the online marketing strategies (Holliman and Rowley, 2014).
The assignment focuses on the case of Clinton Cards which was founded in the years 1968 by late Don Lewin. The company was a well-known brand for greeting cards and gift products. With the increased use of Internet, the business of Clinton Cards saw a deep downfall. The company had a mantra that ‘birthdays and anniversaries never go out of fashion’ but the late realisation of the adoption of Internet gave huge losses to the company. But after 2012, the market for greeting cards again gained considerable market size and growth. The company owned more than 1000 stores when it was in its peak and had more than 25% market share in the greeting card market. The company is at present in the hands of American Greetings which is his world’s greatest greeting cards firm.
The assignment will address the differences between the traditional and digital marketing and the need to invest in the digital marketing for the company. It would also discuss the use of Search Engine Optimisation and Pay per click advertising for improving the visibility for the Clintons. In the market. The use of content and email marketing will also be discussed in its digital marketing techniques. As a recently appointed Digital marketing manager, I would investigate new strategies to strengthen and reinforce the digital marketing expertise for the company.
Marketing has evolved a lot over the past many years and this has given rise to the digital media. Digital media is a lot more than social media which includes social media, digital analytics, blogging and much more. It is a paradigm shift of marketing and it can be defined as the advertising delivered through the digital channels like websites, social media, emails or mobile applications. Marketing has evolved a much from the conventional tools of marketing to the modern tools of marketing which is used nowadays primarily for promoting the new and existing products and services of the company (McGuire & Sarner, 2015).
Traditional marketing can be understood as the use of tools like newspapers and magazines to advertise the product or services of the company. It also includes the use of televisions, flyers, billboards and radios. The various differences between traditional and digital marketing can be explained below:
Traditional marketing |
Digital marketing |
Traditional media includes Print media, broadcast media, direct mails and Tele marketing. |
Digital marketing includes Websites, social networking sites, content marketing, Google advertisement and video marketing |
It has a more personal approach and personal relationship can also be formed with the public. |
There is no need to give physical presence in case of digital marketing. |
It is cost effective and provides better returns of the investments made |
This form of marketing involves high costs and the success is not defined (Leeflang, et. al., 2014). |
It is performed with an idea of focussing on the set target of people |
It is a mass communication technique where a particular set of customers is hard to target. |
It is not easy to measure the results of traditional marketing |
The results are easily measured because data is easily recorded and can be analysed. This helps in creating better content for marketing. |
The advertiser or marketer has the control over the information and audience to which message need to be advertised. Also, there is a limited time when this information can be accessed (Smith, 2011). |
No such information control is there with the marketer. This information can be accessed anytime and at any place. |
It is a top down model of advertising where most of the control is in the hands of the marketers |
It is the bottom up approach where the customers are understood and have an active role in the design of the message which is to be advertised. |
(Mercer, 2017).
Traditional media still has a very strong role in the world of marketing. The big brands have over emphasis on digital marketing nowadays but the blend of both is suggested to have a stronger platform and to have a strong impact on people (Madden, 2012).
The UK market of greeting cards has gained a strong growth in the inline market as the consumers are nowadays search for cheaper deals and also prefer to buy it online for better convenience. The annual growth of the industry is 6.2% which creates a need for Clintons to invest in digital marketing in UK. Clinton should focus on creating the digital platform of its card business because of the increase in the popularity of the digital card business by competitors. It is also because the population of UK has high digital literacy which helps increasing the brand awareness and growth in sales of greeting cards (IBIS World, 2018).
Digital marketing will create many advantages for the brand. It will help the brand in creating the customers across the world (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). It will also help in engaging the customers. As it is a digital era now, some companies are still reluctant to accept that digital marketing is important for the business. Clintons should invest in digital methods because the internet will continue to expand and it is an extraordinary platform to spread the information. It has more reach and visibility than any other media form in the present times (Narkiniemi, 2013).
Internet is present in most of the parts of the world which increases its accessibility for the brand and increase the experience of most of the users. Digital marketing will also allow Clintons to boost its productivity which was not possible with the traditional methods of marketing. The company will be able engage with its customers and will be able to provide them more customised messages and designs because internet is very interactive in nature (Tiago and Veríssimo, 2014).
Web optimisation is the process where controlled experiments are used to improve the ability of the website to perform and drive goals of the business. It enhances the chances of the website accessibility on the search engines (Schwarzl and Grabowska, 2015). A website has to be fast, performing and easy to navigate in order to be more useful for the users. There are various techniques which are used to improve the performance of the website of Clinton and can improve its digital marketing accessibility (Fierro, Arbelaez and Gavilanez, 2017). Some of them are discussed over here:
Database Optimization
Clinton Cards is advised to reduce the data which is of no use or are of least use so that the website can be free of heavier loads which hampers its speed and performance (Akram, et al., 2010).
Infrastructure
Fast and rapid web host is the backbone of the website. It is very important to have a fast web host by Clinton. Cheap shared hosting should be ignored completely.
Hotlink protection
This saves the bandwidth by blocking the sites which are displaying the data of the company’s data without any permission. It saves the data copy by other users.
Reduce the number of HTTP request
HTTP is a protocol which is used by the web browser in order to get files from the web server. To prevent the bottlenecks, the number of elements are reduced from the web page and smaller files and bundled and accumulated into a single file. It reduces the HTTP requests and lesser time is taken for loading a web page (Kumar and Kumar, 2014).
Using Cloud based monitoring of website
Website monitoring can be done by using cloud based monitoring. It brings advantages such as cost efficiency, scalability and many more and helps the business to have more focus on its growth. There are services provided which allows the organisations to monitor their work and it can be done from anywhere and anytime. Clintons can have an advantage of getting timely notifications and clearing the traffic issues created on the website. Speed is the most important factor which is required on a website. Glossy and high quality images enhance the attention of the users but it’s of no use when a site does not load even in 10 seconds (Enaceanu, 2007).
File compression
Java scripts and other code files like HTML is used for constructing web pages. Web pages are complex because of the coding and other processes. File compression can be used to reduce the code files by 80% so that the responsiveness of the site can be increased.
Cache
Caching is a mechanism in which a temporary storage is made for web pages so that the performance can be improved of the website. The visitor get to see the cache version until and unless the last cache is changed. This helps in saving the time of the server and also help in making things work faster (Al-Badi, et al, 2011).
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation can be understood as the practice of increasing the traffic on the website through search engines. This term has big meaning. This attracts the quality visitors across the world because those people are directed towards the website. It helps in getting the customers attracted to the business who are genuinely interested. This creates an organic result for the website and higher the organic results of the search, greater will be the chance of visit by the user (Miller, 2012).
To build a successful SEO campaign, one need to consider many factors. The main purpose of it is to drive traffic to the website from the number of sources. The below discussed steps are taken in order to give satisfactory results to the website of Clinton Cards by designing the effective SEO campaign.
Analysis of the current website
Through this, the basic information about the website of Clintons is extracted. The platform of the website need to be analysed and if it is outdated and requires a shift, modern platform can be adopted. The website of Clintons should be user friendly, only then the SEO campaign will deliver good effects in future (Castronovo and Huang, 2012.).
Key word search
The company need to identify some keywords which will be made highlight during the campaign. This can be done through brainstorming session. The keywords can be the type of cards and services the company is offering or the occasions for which cards are offered. Variety of tools like Moz and Google Ad word are used in order to optimise the keywords with the website.
Establish a content strategy
Once the keywords are chosen for the website, it is important to form the content strategy. The tools like Google Algorithm is used to create content strategy. Content strategy creation means that a long piece of content is created which helps in engaging the people with the content and website as a result. This helps in ranking the website higher and it attracts more traffic.
SEO Audit
An Audit of SEO is performed to know the improvements needed and to get the strengths of the website. It can be done with the help of SEMRush, Moz or ahrefs. ON site optimisation and technical evaluation is done. SEO audit will present results to Clinton Cards which will be the action plan for the campaign. It will present an idea to develop the website in a much better way than it was before (Yalç?n and Köse, 2010).
Define and Track goals
Before implementing the strategy, the goals should be defined and tracked. Tools like Google analytics can help in tacking the success of the methods used.
On site optimization
It is the implementation process where Meta titles and descriptions are made. The errors occurring in SEO are being fixed up and the site is made 100% ready for the search results.
Link building
Links are built in order to focus on the quality of links and to make it relevant when people search about the website. Links can be built by using tools like SEMRush (Killoran, 2013).
Analysis and evaluation
The company need to ensure the performance of the campaign for which SEO optimization strategy can be adopted.
It is very important for Clintons to have truly effective SEO campaign so that the best possible results can be derived.
PPC refers to Pay per Click which is a model of internet marketing and the advertiser have to pay on each click on their advertisement (Kapoor, Dwivedi and Piercy, 2016). It is the process which helps in assessing the traffic on the website. Nowadays, companies are spending a huge amount of money in PPC because it helps in increasing the brand visibility and awareness. Clinton Cards need to drive a PPC campaign to drive traffic on its website.
Identify objective of the campaign
The objective of the campaign need to be identified so that the campaign could get direction. Clinton need to drive more traffic to its website for increasing the sales and meet competition. It also have to determine its target audience which is the ultimate retail customers of all ages.
Keyword management
PPC advertising is based on the keyword which is flashed and used for driving attention of the audience. Keyword management can be done by Keyword search, keyword grouping and the campaign setting at the last (King, Abrahams and Ragsdale, 2015).
Creation of campaign or ad groups
PPC campaign needs to create ad groups which are the folders or sub folders for the ads. A single paid campaign or single ad group might be created which depends on the keywords.
Effective Ad copy
An effective ad copy can be created for a successful campaign. It must be informative and engaging and should be relevant. It involves keywords and focus on the value proposition (Hu, Shin and Tang, 2015).
Like this SEO and PPC could help Clinton Cards to increase the visibility of the business and to generate awareness for the brand among its target audience.
SEO and PPC are the game changers for the business. The modern marketers need to use the full set of social media and online marketing tools in order to reach their target audience and engage with them. This can be done with the help of Google Ad words which helps in reaching and selecting the target audience demographically. Content flashed should also be relevant to your target audience otherwise no good impact will be seen (Stokes, 2014).
The main motive of laws and guidelines on digital marketing is protecting the sentiments of the target audience. Digital advertising has to go through various laws and range of guidelines which protects the audiences form the harmful practices of advertising. Digital Marketing has to follow the codes of advertising given by Advertising Standard Authority (ASA). The main aim of regulations is to treat the customers in fair manner, to save them from misleading advertisements a practices and to ensure the benefits of the ultimate consumers (Zhu, et. al., 2017).
The company will have to follow the CAP code which is the code of practice established by Advertising Standards Authority. Some of the practices are banned in B2C advertising in order to ensure customer safety and security. These practices includes false endorsement, misleading advertisement, free offers which involves costs and more.
Online display is the form of online advertising which is shown on the targeted websites to select the visitors which are identified by a geographic location or user history. Here, the messages are conveyed through animations, Gif’s or text. Clinton Cards can use online display and video advertising for attract new customers and for retaining the existing ones by using the appearances and visuals in order to attract higher number of people towards the brand (Chaffey and Smith, 2013).
Online display and video advertising helps the company to score high on visual appearance and to get high brand visibility and awareness. Display ads help in getting targeted audience and also collects a lot of data about the consumers. It is a very effective method for remarketing and retargeting. By using this method, Clinton Cards could easily strengthen its position among the competitors.
Prime activities which supports in implementing online display and video advertising are discussed here:
Formats used for Online Display advertising
Online display advertisements can be presented in the format of Banner, Pop up or Text. Banners are in the form of graphical image which showcases the identity of the website. It can be in any size or shape as per the budget of the advertiser. Pop up is the advertisements which loads up between two pages and text sent to the mobile users are the ads which is easily downloadable by the users (Jugenheimer, Sheehan and Kelley, 2015).
Planning
This is the initial stage where one can plan, initiate and explore the online advertising approaches which suits best to the goals of the advertisement. An action plan can be made and various advertisement options can be explored among which a best suitable option is chosen depending on the goals, budget, time and suitability.
Best practices for online advertising
The best practices for online advertising will be considered by Clinton Cards. It has to integrate the online and offline marketing strategies and pay attention to the quality of content used. The company has to pay attention to the placement of ad, target audience and design of the advertisement.
Buying of media
The company has to buy a media channel for which it has to contact the network agencies and the platforms (Lans, Wedel and Pieters, 2015).
Tracking and optimization
The company can modify the content or target audience so that the goals of the campaign can be achieved.
Clinton Cards could also adopt social media marketing which is the fastest growing trend in the world history. It is one of the most powerful way of reaching the audience and to advertise the business of all sizes. It drives and lead sales for the business and also helps in reaching the final goals of the business. There are many companies belonging to different industries who are exploring the advantages of social media advertising and using the platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and more in order to achieve what is aimed by them (Hollensen and Raman, 2014). Clinton Cards has an opportunity to regain its lost share of market through social media. It will help it in meeting the competition and achieving the big share in the market.
Facebook is the most famous social media channel which is used by 1.2 billion active customers. Clinton cards can used this platform because it has mass number of population which share information with friends and family. It is used by the people of all ages and interests so it creates a good platform for the company to advertise its products. It provides a leverage to the company to do profiling of the customers on the basis of their likes and dislikes. The users of Facebook spend a lot of time on it i.e. 40 minutes per day on an average. This means the company gets more time to spend for interaction with its customers. It is also an affordable medium which does not have high costs. This is how the company could advertise its products and services by using the most affordable and popular social media channel (Scott, 2015).
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platform which is growing steadily since 2010. It has more thn 500 million active users and after Facebook, it is the most popular social media network. This platform is known for the best engagement with its users. It has a good ability to connect with its customers and it is because it is easy to use Instagram on mobile and functionality wise. Clintons can use this media channel because it is rich in content in form of images which is perfect for displaying the products of Clinton cards (Scott, 2015).
Twitter is the channel which has more than 300 million users worldwide and it is best known for latest news and trends in the market. The brand can update about its latest collection, products and can converse with the customers. It’s a 140 character microblogging platform which is hugely popular and tweets given are very catchy which attracts the customers. It can increase the engagement of the users with the company and its products. The network of business and influencers can help Clinton to create followers and increase the brand awareness (Scott, 2015).
Every channel has its own advantages and disadvantages but the company has to select a channel which is best suited to its objectives. Social media marketing is the best method for the Clinton cards looking at the nature of its products and growing popularity of social media marketing.
Email marketing is the form of marketing where the companies target a potential group of customers and send them mails with the intention of advertising the brand or product/ service. It helps company to send customised information and reach plethora of users. It helps in making customers aware about the new or existing products/services of the company and also used with the purpose of targeting a particular group of people (Kannan, 2017). Email communication can also be considered as Spam because there are very less number of genuine users. Clinton cards can also use email marketing so that it can achieve its marketing objectives and can establish a good marketing campaign. It can ensure transparency in its communication with the users and can use the content wisely so that it does not look cumbersome. It should offer true value to its customers so that people could actually get influence from the emails of the company. As already stated it also helps in delivering the customised services through emails (Ryan, 2016).
The company could create a service marketing team which focusses on emails only and can also viral the emails. It can use content marketing and can also use the social media and other sources with the integration of email marketing for achieving better results. Email marketing helps Clinton cards to capture data and hit target audience in the personalised manner. It helps in creating the loyal and repeated customers (Reimers, Chao and Gorman, 2016).
Content marketing can be understood as the creation and usage of content which is designed specifically for the target market. Content marketing can be used in social media marketing, email marketing, web optimisation and more. It is content which helps in engaging the customers with the particular brand. That is why, content should always be positive, rich and should carry high value of information (Stephen, 2014). Content marketing can be used by Clinton cards for the following reasons:
So, it can be understood that content marketing I used in all the digital marketing activities. Clinton Cards should focus on its content so that better engagement with the customers can be done.
Web analytics can be understood as the set of tools which is used to monitor the progress of the digital marketing campaigns. Clinton Cards need to use web analytics to determine the success of the social media or digital marketing campaigns. The tools like Pay per click and cost per click helps in providing insights to the company which helps in modifying or tweaking the campaigns if desired or required (Järvinen and Karjaluoto, 2015).
The company can revamp the strategies and the platforms used in order to deliver the objectives of the campaign as it was planned as desired. This helps in understanding the marketing efforts of the company, its effect on customers and any loophole if there. For e.g. Google analytics is one such tool which is widely used by the companies and it is also recommended to Clinton Cards to provide insights on its digital marketing campaign. Some other tools which are recommended are simply measured, Hoot Suite, Digimind Social, Moz, web trend and many more (Jayaram, Manrai and Manrai, 2015).
Conclusion
Clintons is in great need to invest in digital marketing so as to compete with the other players in the same industry who are doing pretty well. The company need to beat competition which can be done by using digital platforms. The assignment focusses on all those concepts which can be useful to the company in applying and adopting digital marketing campaigns. The assignment discussed Pay per Click and SEO models which helps business in optimising its websites in a better manner. It also discussed about social media marketing and the best tool which is to be used for the company. It is concluded that the business can use the integration of different online and off-line methods so that a proper campaign can be arranged and it is also very necessary to analyse its performance so that the loophole can be covered, if any.
It is recommended that the company should also use email marketing as it helps in delivering customised services to the customers which helps in engaging them more with the company. It also increases the loyalty of customer towards the company. It is evident that it is content which binds up everything and every digital media channel needs a good and firm content so that impression could be created on the customers and they can be influenced.
It is recommended to the Clinton cards that it should use web analytic tools in order to review its digital marketing strategy from time to time. It is highly advisable that the company could make efficient use of the available digital marketing channels for high growth and gaining competitive strength.
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