In the world of business, companies have adopted the concept of applying digital marketing to advertise their products and services in the available platforms. By definition, digital marketing is a concept or a strategy that encourages the use of internet tools and electronic devices to market business brands or increase the customer base of a particular organization (Chatman & Eunyoung, 2013, pg. 13). To meet the objectives of this activity, this paper intends to use Dick Smith, an Australian retail company as the case study herein. Dick Smith is one of the many retail companies in Australia that are faced with challenges pertaining to sales management, particularly marketing. In the financial year 2015/2016, the company registered significant losses due to their poor sales and marketing strategies. Since Dick Smith had cash generation problems, it was unable to receive loans from the bank thus, reaching a point of collapse (Calasanti & Slevin, 2017).
By comparing and contrasting the objectives of this report against the case of Dick Smith, it is clear that marketing is an area of sales management that is technical and requires expertise to realize the intended profits. This report, therefore, proposes the integration of digital marketing in sales management to help organizations like Dick Smith solve marketing related issues and increase sales. Apart from that, the paper intends to prove literature sources that uphold the employment of digital marketing technics to improve sales management along with the general objectives of the paper (Dawson, 2017).
As mentioned before, the organization that will help in achieving the objectives of this report is Dick Smith. Smith is a retail company based in Australia and sells electronics. However, to expand its operations, the company decided to operate in New Zealand as well. Dick Smith was initiated in 1968 and as at 2018; the company already has 3.300 workers (Essays, 2015).
Digital Marketing and the Importance in Sales Management
As mentioned before in this paper, digital marketing is a concept that encourages the use of online tools such as social platforms and electronic devices like smartphones and computers to manage sales and increase profitability. Many business organizations are currently adopting this new technology to improve their sales. Some of the techniques under this concept include the “ad per click”, the SEO (Search Engine Optimization), use of social media platforms, and the use of emails for marketing (GWA, 2017).
Since sales management is all about adopting techniques and strategies that would increase profitability, digital marketing would ensure that businesses increase their net sales via the use of modern techniques that would result in profit drive for an organization. Businesses that have not adopted this concept are trying every means to match the pace of leading corporations. Such business organizations are either amplifying the current marketing strategies that they are using or altering their action plans. At that time when lagging businesses are doing all it takes to employ digital marketing techniques, they ask themselves why the use of modern marketing tools is important for their businesses (Hofstede, 2016, pg. 18).
Some of the facts about integrating digital marketing techniques are as follows:
About 50% of business organizations had employed digital strategies of marketing as early as 2016.
About 80% of business marketers believe that the use of traditional methods of marketing is no longer sufficient and that the incorporation of digital techniques would increase the amount of generated income.
About 85% of corporations will increase their spending on digital marketing strategies and related spending beyond their current IT budgets.
Back to the case of Dick, the company needs to incorporate a strategy of digital marketing that will help the organization build an active platform that is also lucrative and exceptionally pervasive to compete in the online market. The organization also needs to understand that digital marketing is not just a sales management powerhouse in today’s business world but also the fate of modern marketing and has already surpassed the traditional marketing maneuvers. In the global village that we currently live in, individuals prefer going for digital content, which makes it unperceivable why some business organizations do not see the essence and opportunity in digital marketing. The fact is that the digital modes of marketing and communication that are currently available are quicker, adaptable, result-driven, and quantifiable (Knapp, 2016).
With the use of digital techniques of marketing, equal opportunities are created for every kind of business. With digital marketing, the playing field is leveled thus, offering opportunities for every kind of venture. Such means that large, medium, small, or even startups have whatever it takes to perform marketing and sales processes that were only accessible to already established companies earlier on (Louis, 2017). In relationship to sales management, the importance of digital marketing also includes the ability to have several customers engaged without opting for call center services. To make it even better, conversations associated with digital marketing are ranked higher compared to other communication and marketing modes (Kroeber, Kluckhohn & Untereiner, 2015).
B2C and B2B companies are equally able to employ mediums of digital marketing. However, such businesses need to pay attention to the available digital marketing trends that will eventually lead them to success. Some of the marketing practices that are currently employed such as SEO, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), e-Commerce SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Automation Marketing among others are recognized as the best digital marketing techniques that B2B and B2C companies can employ (Louis, 2017). In whatever case, the main advantage associated with conducting online or digital advertisements is the strictness with which the entire process is tracked using marketing tools. Unlike the use of traditional marketing methods like conducting customer research that is costly, digital marketing eases the manner in which customer reactions can be tracked and sales as well as marketing goals measured. However, this system is still under development and thus, businesses are required to keep up with the latest technological advancements to ensure that they maintain their success trails (Management, 2017a).
Before applying digital sales and marketing strategies, any business organization should ensure that it manages its sales team because team management is one if not the most important position in an organization (Management, 2017b). The greatest sales managers of all time are attributed to their extensive impact on their sales teams’ productivity to ensure better sales outcomes. On the contrary, the management of a sales team is also challenging since it requires unique management skills. Unfortunately, the reason why most businesses cannot make profits or carry out successful sales projects is that the managers that supervise sales teams in such companies are ill-equipped when it comes to managing such teams (Management, 2017b).
In most sales organizations, the word “Star-Athlete Syndrome” is frequent. This is a case where an individual that is considered a star in sales promotion growing tired of his sales promotion job position and then starts to aspire for a higher title like being a manager. It happens then that at the same time, the president or vice president of sales is under pressure to have the vacant position of a sales manager filled as soon as possible. This president or vice president, by assuming that the leading sales representative will produce great sales management results, appoints the representative (Management, 2017b). In such a case, the promoted representative is unable to track his or her transition from individual contribution to team play. Before, he or she used to achieve results via personal determination and effort as well as individual expertise. However, when he or she becomes a sales manager, he or she cannot swiftly handle the achievement of results via team performance. Such a problem is not associated with sales alone but also other departments (Management, 2017a).
In as much as sales managers are required to obtain sales experience to credible and effectively manage sales teams, an organization’s longtime success under sales management encompasses the mastery of particular skills of sales management (Schein, 2015). To coax teams to produce results that are exceptional, sales managers are required to excel or possess abilities in:
Managing the performance of sales by ensuring that they focus on behaviors that lead to improved sales results
Coaching of sales teams to improve the skills of sales agents as well as their potentials.
Building teams that are made up of sales professionals with competencies to succeed.
Motivating and leading sales teams
Providing returns on investment
To improve an organization’s sales team, focused training programs on sales management is required to ensure the development of critical abilities of sales-management. Always, the return on investment associated with the training of sales managers is enormous. After such sales management training, a sales manager is likely to leverage improved skills of sales management on the entire sales teams. Such means that if a sales manager that is properly trained manages 10 sales representatives, improved effectiveness of the manager stands at an investment return opportunity of 1:10 (Reynold, 2014, pg. 45).
This project’s main objective is to help businesses struggling with sales management issues such as Dick Smith, to incorporate digital marketing strategy into their management system to improve revenue generation and cash flow.
Why do businesses struggling with sales management issues need to adopt digital marketing strategies or tools?
Which digital marketing strategies will help sales managers improve team play?
Processes of data collection involve the gathering of relevant information from sources that are credible and relate to the subject matter. These sources would help in obtaining the relevant answers to the presented problem. The same data may be used to evaluate outcomes and test hypotheses (Pettigrew, 2015, pg. 577). Our methods of secondary data collection are:
Collection of important information from magazines, newspapers, online portals, and journals.
These sources contain data or information regarding my area of study thus; there is the need to use an appropriate criterion to select such secondary sources of data. Any used criterion is important because it would increase research reliability and validity levels. This research uses data collection criteria such as checking publication dates, the credentials of the author, discussion quality, reliability of the source, analysis depth, and the contribution extent towards the development of my area of research (Rai & Panna, 2015).
According to Research Methods (2018), some of the outcomes registered in relation to digital marketing and sales management are:
About 50% of business organizations had employed digital strategies of marketing as early as 2016.
About 80% of business marketers believe that the use of traditional methods of marketing is no longer sufficient and that the incorporation of digital techniques would increase the amount of generated income.
About 85% of corporations will increase their spending on digital marketing strategies and related spending beyond their current IT budgets.
This report has identified digital marketing as the solution to relevant sales management issues that companies like Dick face in the current business world (Shah, 2017). On the contrary, in as much as digital marketing is an important area of sales management that organizations tend to adapt to clear off their sales shortcomings, organizations are still likely to face digital marketing challenges. Such challenges may arise because the landscape of digital marketing is still evolving thereby, displaying new threats that companies do not know how to deal with. Some of these challenges include:
About 50% of businesses do not understand if their strategies for digital marketing are functional or not. This figure shows that a good number of corporations spend money on marketing strategies that they are not sure whether they would work or not. There are two ways of solving such a challenge: an organization to take its time to determine its digital marketing goals and determining the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that lead to the established goals (McKenna, 2013). For instance, when an organization sets its goals to obtain more leads in a particular year – say 2018, the organization should set its goals, and then establish a means of measurement of things such as new potential leads, inbound traffic, conversion rates, and qualified leads among others. In our case, Dick Smith (and the likes) need to take their time doing the bulk work of setting KPIs and goals before embarking onto day-to-day sales management and digital marketing campaigns (Lombardo, 2017).
Most businesses invest more in other areas compared to that of sales and marketing. Such a case is because these organizations are not sure if digital marketing strategies would work or not and thus, investing heavily on sales and marketing would be a risk not to bear (Learning, 2017). However, there are those organizations who work with limited budgets thus face problems associated with such (McKenna, 2013). However, there are many ways that organizations can overcome obstacles associated with working with limited budgets. Digital marketing will bear fruits if an organization focuses on value addition to customers. The reason why buyers opt for one’s business is to have their consumption problems solved. In such a manner customer learn to trust the businesses if they are provided with what they need and in an appropriate manner. For most B2B businesses, the process of selling begins with searching. Strategic content should be created properly to ensure that the problems of the organization are solved (Lombardo, 2017).
Most sales and marketing managers claim that the biggest challenges associated with marketing are finding resources and time for marketing. However, when they find such time and resources and focus them on marketing, the resources spread thin in other areas. Solving time-related problems might be difficult since managers still do not know the number of working hours to add to the working hours (Learning, 2017). For such a reason, business organizations are required to have the right agency partners. Such partners should be able to understand the business and then focus on marketing. In such a manner, the business will be able to focus on things it could do such as leading the business and selling products. According to the current business trends, many challenges will hinder businesses from achieving success (Hofstede, 2017).
Figure 1 below portrays a comparison of foods sales revenue (due to digital marketing) between Dick Smith and Aldi Ltd. Company. As seen, the sales revenue of Aldi Ltd. (Aldi) has been growing steadily with time while that of Dick Smith (DSF) is declining over time. In addition, another comparison of generated sales revenue between Dick Smith and JB Hi-Fi (an electronics company that uses digital marketing strategy) shows the same trend as in Table 1 below.
Figure 1: Sales revenue comparison between Dick Smith and Aldi Ltd.
Table 1: Comparison of financials between JB Hi-Fi and Dick Smith
On the contrary, another company, Amazon Inc. is enjoying a steady sales revenue growth because the company has been employing digital marketing strategies to boost its product sales. Figure 2 below shows the rate of growth of Amazon’s sales revenue.
Figure 2: Sales Revenue of Amazon Inc.
The digital marketing field in Australia has, in the recent time, outspent and outperformed other countries. Australia boasts of being one of the countries with the highest per-user digital ad rates globally (Learning, 2017). Apart from that, marketers in Australia are likely to spend more than 60% of their marketing budgets on online and mobile advertising. Some of the reasons why Australia leads in digital marketing which include:
Australia is digitally dominant currently and possibly in the future as well.
Good government policies, which makes Australia a leader in e-commerce and mobile advertising.
According to related reports, about 60% of spending on advertisement in Australia falls under digital marketing. This figure is far much ahead of the global average for nations that are advanced. Marketing analysists expects Australia to be able to maintain this leading status for a long time (Hofstede, 2013).
Graph showing e-commerce sales growth in Australia because of digital marketing from 2013 to 2017
According to the discussion put forward in this paper, the use of digital marketing tools is one way that companies that are facing sales management problems can adopt. However, the adoption of any digital marketing strategy depends on several sales management factors such as team management. In addition, because the field of digital marketing is new, it is prone to lots of technological changes, which require businesses to be flexible and keep up with the pace of such technological changes (Hopkins, Raymond & Carlson, 2016, pg. 337). For instance, traditional digital marketing is slowly becoming obsolete because of the prominence of ad-blocking software. Advertisers are thus, required to invest in other channels with high-performance like the webinars, eBooks, and video content. Such new channels are considered more engaging and trustworthy to customers thus, they are likely to deliver solid marketing outcomes (Hager, 2014).
Organizations that use digital marketing tools and are successful (a number that is about 70% of all Australian firms) believe that instead of being targeted for ads via search history and web-browsers, organizations go for served ads. This is one piece of information that perceptive marketers need to consider or research on in case their efforts on advertising do not meet their companies’ sales expectations (Cox∗, Daoud & Rudd, 2013, pg. 51).
Consequently, because the rate of growth of Australian call and phone tracking as well as e-commerce sales is on the rise, marketers need to come up with ideas and strategies that would make their companies stand out and make an impact on the local and international market. However, such would only happen if the sales management team takes a full-spectrum approach on the available marketing strategies in the country. Afterward, the organization is likely to be well positioned to succeed in sales and marketing now as well as in the future (Businesstopia, 2017).
Conclusion
This research proposal has established that sales management is all about adopting techniques and strategies that would increase profitability; digital marketing would ensure that businesses increase their net sales via the use of modern techniques that would result in profit drive for an organization (Hopkins, Raymond & Carlson, 2016, pg. 339). As mentioned before, some of the facts that have been established about Australian companies integrating digital marketing techniques in sales management over the recent years include:
About 50% of business organizations had employed digital strategies of marketing as early as 2016.
About 80% of business marketers believe that the use of traditional methods of marketing is no longer sufficient and that the incorporation of digital techniques would increase the amount of generated income.
About 85% of corporations will increase their spending on digital marketing strategies and related spending beyond their current IT budgets (Bruce, 2016).
However, companies that are still lagging behind in the corporate digital marketing atmosphere such as Dick Smith need to incorporate a strategy of digital marketing that will help the organization build an active platform that is also lucrative and exceptionally pervasive to compete in the online market. As mentioned before, such organizations also need to understand that digital marketing is not just a sales management powerhouse in today’s business world but also the fate of modern marketing and has already surpassed the traditional marketing maneuvers. The fact is that the digital modes of marketing and communication that are currently available are quicker, adaptable, result-driven, and quantifiable compared to traditional forms of marketing (Alvesson, 2015).
Finally, yet importantly, the use of digital techniques of marketing ensure that businesses have equal opportunities to compete in the current local and global market. Such means that large, medium, small, or even startups have whatever it takes to perform marketing and sales processes that were only accessible to already established companies earlier on (Bernard, 2016). As mentioned before, digital marketing relates to sales management in the sense that proper strategies of digital marketing enhance the ability to have several customers engaged without opting for call center services. To make it even better, conversations associated with digital marketing are ranked higher compared to other communication and marketing modes thus improving sales management and organization profitability (Alder, 2016).
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