Discuss about the Increasing Impact of E-Marketing for Organizational Consumers.
With the increasing mass reach of internet and its impact on consumers, every organization is seeking e-marketing as a tool for their advertisement and marketing purpose. We get encountered with e-marketing of almost every product and services available in the market. Reading Boone and Kurtz, (2013), the idea has been cleared that there is a great opportunity of getting fruitful result and the higher chances of targeting the right consumers by the means of proper e-marketing.
The aim of the report is to understand the implication of e-marketing on the prospected consumers and to evaluate the impact of online marketing in the recent time. There has been increasing numbers of issues related to the e-marketing that many big and small companies are facing. As commented by Turban, Strauss and Lai, (2015), there has been a lot of misinformation that is communicated to the prospected consumers by the means of e-marketing. In order to make a clear approach of the process of e-marketing, the marketing strategy of American Express, a financial company will be used as a case study for the report.
As one of the leading and established card providers, the financial company has always created innovative marketing campaigns to drive its business. AMEX has understood the importance of e-marketing and has made considerable approaches target the specific group of customers. The company is highly active in e-marketing and carries out all kind of online marketing that includes sending personal mail or text messages, online marketing using the various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (Rollins, Nickell & Ennis, 2014). In fact, the company knows the exact way to target the prospected consumers and always flow with the current issues that remains in the limelight. One of the most relevant marketing strategies undertaken by the company is the ‘online conversation’. The company believes in the fact that far from being all talk and no game, the marketing policy of the company has always been leveraged and the company has tried to involve the consumers in the marketing activities. The company has launched an ‘Open Forum’ website where the prospected customers can share their business knowledge and skills (Rollins, Nickell & Ennis, 2014). This approach of the company has created a positive impact on the business and marketing of this International brand.
American Express has been utilizing the concept of e-marketing not only for the advertisement purpose but to get proper feedback from the clients as well. In the view point of Alshurideh, Shaltoni and Hijawi, (2014), the online marketing strategy undertaken by AMEX has helped it to gather the target group of people. With the help of online questionnaire survey, the company has been successful to get proper response from the clients. With this approach the company has been successful in gathering more consumers.
E-marketing has been gaining much importance in the recent time. The mass approach of the same marketing process has created a number of legal and ethical issues as well. Some of the issues can be discussed here:
It might seem that the data collection method by the mean of e-marketing is very simple but it is far complex than it seems. The privacy policies notify people about the sharing of their information to others (Kloss & Sallot, 2015). The other online stores can get benefitted from the information collected from the consumers. It cannot be denied that AMEX has a strict legal control over the privacy of the information that the consumers share at their website. However, the presence of internet cookies and other issues sometimes hinders the privacy of customers.
Although the companies claim that they shall protect the data and will have potential security regarding the information, there always remain potential threats regarding the issue of the customer’s information (Ng, 2013). This could be one of the major issues that many participants might find reluctant to input their information in spite of having a certain level of willingness.
Another legal issue that the companies face with respect to the information is the intellectual property like trademarks and copyright (Ng, 2013). Use of original marketing language in the website of a particular company creates a negative impact on the marketing approach made the companies to target the consumers.
The websites of the organizations also mislead people by false advertisements and other misleading marketing messages that unfairly affect the consumers’ behavior and decision making ability. It does not fall on the responsibility or look out of the company’s website to keep a watch on other companies that might pop up with their advertisements (Kloss & Sallot, 2015). However, using the internet for unfair means is not something that cannot be done. On the other hand, such instances are quiet evident at a regular basis at majority of e-marketing websites.
AMEX has always established an image of loyalty among its customers and the marketing carried on by the Company is also focused to target the consumers of the company. In order to increase its e-marketing, the company has even hired the Federated Media for bloggers. It has been found that the ‘OPEN FORUM’ concept of the company was rather to make relationship with the consumers and take useful feedback from them rather than using the platform as a marketing tool (Rollins, Nickell & Ennis, 2014). The Company has mainly targeted the businessmen as they are the main consumers of the company because they are credit the main credit card keepers.
AMEX has rightly established itself as a brand in the market and has forced the consumers to think about the brand as an important industry in the market. The Company has been successful in gaining proper feedback and contact with people in a different way rather than annoying them by visiting them in their inbox. It has to be mentioned in this respect that the marketing practice conducted by the company has never used it for any kind of illegal activities and has always kept focus towards making the service better for the consumers. It has been observed that by this epic means of marketing, AMEX has been able to communicate with the people who could be considered as a prospected consumer (Alshurideh, Shaltoni & Hijawi, 2014). Participation of a large number of audiences shows the success of the e-marketing approach made by the company.
The key to a successful marketing is to understand the precise areas where the marketing can be extremely successful. It is also important to understand the real motive of the marketing. In order to get better result of the marketing, certain recommendations can be made. These are:
The primary thing is to acknowledge the target people and set the marketing aim to target this specific group of people. It has to be understood that every internet user is not the target consumer and therefore, the e-marketing must focus to target the particular group of people that shall be beneficial for the Company.
In order to make the marketing strategies more convincing, the facts and figures of the company’s success or other financial data has to be included. This helps to increase the authenticity of the company towards the target group of people. If people are aware of the current position and the future prospects of the Company, the targeted people could be easily convinced towards their marketing objectives.
It is again recommended to be very active in the website and the committed to the timeliness of the activities that shall attract more consumers towards the company. If the marketing is not done keeping the time scale into consideration, it might not be effective upon the target group of people because up-to-date information is vital for a financial company like American Express.
Conclusion:
With the detail analysis of the e-marketing approach undertaken by the company, it can be said that the company has been successful in its approach towards gathering more customers and at the same time fulfill some of the important objective of the organization. With my personal experience, it can be said that AMEX had been utilizing the e-platform quite well and their marketing approach has resulted in the participation of many consumers. In fact, the company keeps on updating with their recent business plans and other offers that they have to make towards their customers. In addition to this, it has to be mentioned that AMEX has been successful in gaining trust and confidence of its consumers. The transparency in the OPEN FORUM discussion has increased their acceptance among the consumers. However, the issues of e-marketing cannot be neglected and it is expected that privacy and security of the e-marketing functionality shall be kept into consideration in order to improve the performance and target the prospected consumers rightly.
Reference list:
Alshurideh, M. T., Shaltoni, A. M., & Hijawi, D. A. S. (2014). Marketing Communications Role in Shaping Consumer Awareness of Cause-Related Marketing Campaigns. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 6(2), 163.
Boone, L. E., & Kurtz, D. L. (2013). Contemporary marketing. Cengage learning.
Rollins, M., Nickell, D., & Ennis, J. (2014). The impact of economic downturns on marketing. Journal of Business Research, 67(1), 2727-2731.
Kloss, M. V., & Sallot, L. M. (2015, March). Corporate Stewardship in Public Relations Here and Lá and/e Aqui e There: How Top Companies in the US and Brazil Use Their Websites to Build and Maintain Relationships. In 18th International Public Relations Research Conference (p. 262).
Ng, C. S. P. (2013, June). Factors Affecting the Business Performance of Firms Utilizing Social Media. In PACIS (p. 237).
Turban, E., Strauss, J., & Lai, L. (2015). Social Commerce: Marketing, Technology and Management. Springer.
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