Marketing Assignment Essay Writing Analysis Topic: Marketing Communications and internet marketing for consumers
Marketing Assignment Essay Writing Analysis Review:
The present assignment looks into the evolving landscape of internet marketing. The different pattern of consumer behaviour evolving out of the growing internet penetration and the falling billing rates of broadband service .A part of the assignment also delves into the evolving trend of engaged marketing communication and the various strategies available to the marketing companies pursuing an integrated marketing communication in their approach to internet based marketing. For the given assignment the above context is analysed in terms of Marks and Spencer and the strategies adopted by it in the online sphere.
The pervasiveness of digital marketing has made sure that it is not only restricted to the field of banner advertising, search engine optimization and pay per click. It would also be encompassing fields like email, RSS, voice broadcast, video streaming, podcasting , video streaming as well as the field of text messaging. Thus to clearly look into digital or internet marketing one should clearly define what internet market is not .To keep the concept simple and easy to understand, internet marketing may be defined as that which is not related to the traditional media of T.V, Print and radio. It is based on the vehicle of internet which is also a communicating medium. The internet medium acts to form the basis of both push and pull programs to be put forward by the companies. As the marketing is completely real time in nature a reporting engine is also coupled with the campaign to get an active feedback about the response to the campaign.
There has been rapid growth of broadband and the adoption of Wi-Fi. Thus there is culture that calls for customers to spend more and more time online .This trend in consumer habit is being consistently picked up by the marketing departments. Thus marketing companies are increasingly moving their marketing spends from offline marketing campaigns to online
The online strategy adopted by Marks and Spencer has undergone a season of changes in recent times. They have completely revamped their main website and have effectively the social media to be built an effective engagement with the customers. They have done so by incorporating ratings and reviews into their website. This is in fact a trend that is being fast adopted by almost all companies specially those who need to keep a tab on the consumer dressing patterns. Facebook pages and twitter helps companies to in fact converse with companies. This enhances the ability of Marks and Spencer to better respond to customers. This helps the company to better manage its online reputation.
As explained by its Business Development Manager (Sienne Viet in the year 2009)which is in fact a position becoming more pertinent with the explosion of social media marketing, the company plans to utilise facebook and twitter to get feedbacks on product related development and promotion schemes(Econsultancy Blog 2009).Facebook is being planned to be used as a platform to build an online community which is responsive and may also turn into brand evangelists. Twitter is being planned to be used by the company for promotions, notifications and instant feedback. This strategy is in line with what most marketing campaigns follow in the social media sphere.
This is fact which suggests a trend in consumer behaviour and how companies are realising this trend and thus moving in to make the most out of it. Conversations that were mostly restricted to in-store discussions, phone-calls and emails have now moved into the social media sphere. Thus the recent trend to embrace as an integral part of social media marketing.
One of the key challenges to be present in the social media sphere presents is the need to be efficiently responsive as also employing processes to maintain a sustainable responsive plan for the social media . In order to implement the same the company has employed a core group of individuals across a range of business functions that operate using a common set of guidelines and systems. However the strategy for the same is managed by an M&S Direct Team set up at the Head Quarters. One of the key strategies evolved by the company has been with respect to dealing with negative commentaries. Negative comments as long as not directed against individuals are properly escalated and immediate action taken to address the concerns. One of the key examples of the success of the strategy has been the response taken by the company with regard to the “Busts for Justice”; the company immediately got a feeling of the backlash through its social media presence and thus quickly withdrew out of it.
The company is also trying to harp on is the concept of advertorials applied to blogosphere by paying writers to post on the blog .This is a bit of green field venture and is yet to pick up .This is yet another trend that is picking in the changing landscape of internet marketing. The only risk involved with this lies with ensuring that the customer believe that the feedback given is genuine and is not doctored.
The methods used by the company to measure the success of the campaigns involved, has also evolved. This could be in the form of traffic generated, now of comments received, number of live tweets received or in the number of online community members generated. Marks and Spencer is thinking of going a step further in using qualitative feedback to develop products to enhance the products they are launching. The qualitative feedback would be in terms of product enhancements, product changes and the customer adaptation to the product involved( Econsultancy Blog 2009).
The company also makes sure that online content not only on FB but also on prominent discussion groups to understand how the consumer is to various promotional schemes as well to that of the response to its new website (Consultancy). This is in fact a fast picking up trend across marketing companies. The trick however lies in separating the content from the noise. This helps to indentify whether the brand has added value to the life of consumers life. The company also uses twitter to get reviews about new product performance. The company recently called out a new hammock that it had launched which failed and the company got to know it from the reviews from its twitter account. The company called back the product and it was well received by the consumers. The company is also trying to bring in mobile usage to track customer satisfaction level. This it is trying to do through a service Fizz track (Marketing Week) wherein the consumers can give an instant feedback on the product features and services involved.
In addition to the above the company has also come out aggressively by posting online videos on youtube.The campaigns being launched are relatively fresh and very much in vogue. The company has come to very well realize that a well rounded integrated marketing a communication is only possible if presence on face book is also taken into consideration.
The above features clearly show a complete change in mindset in a tradition company. This is primarily because there has been a massive penetration of internet and broadband across territories. This massive penetration has resulted in individuals spending more time online. As interaction from face to face is being transformed to online to online the impetus is being laid on every progressive brand to move into the space of social media marketing. The consumer insights and trends involved are being rapidly picked up companies that have an ear an eye to detect the same. One of the other major channels that companies are extensively using to promote online presence is through radio channels. The radio channels help to spread the awareness of their presence on the specific blogs and consumer forums where the consumers would be in a better position to check out the offers and schemes .One of the other fast picked up trends is the use of online video to help pick up sales. Marks and Spencer is also foraying into this field by using strategic videos to promote online sales (Utalkmarketing 2010).
The medium of online marketing is taking a major leap forward with new services like location services which the specific areas in which the trends for the consumers are trending in. Google Wallet is a service that aims to make use of this facility. There has also been a rise in the trend of new ad formats .These are not based on forced user viewing but better whacky contents that would tap user attention. There has also been a rise in the User-Generated Duration, these are powered by content discovery apps like Pulse, Fancy, Foodspotting.In this method feeds are provided by service providers which are tweaked by consumers. These are then used to draw insights into consumer behavior patterns(Mashable 2012) .One of other such apps that is clearly showing a growth trend in Pinterest.
In order to better utilize this field of marketing what is required of marketers is to provide an comprehensive integrated marketing approach .The approach should be so balanced as to make sure that a single broad message is communicated to the entire consumer set. This would make sure that there is recall to the message being conveyed .The integrated marketing approach would also make sure that the money (Utalkmarketing) being spend on internet marketing is being duly apportioned to the different channels that are pertinent to the message being conveyed. Moreover care should also be taken to make sure that proper feedback mechanism is in fact taken from the customer. The adequate feedback mechanism ensures that the marketing spends are properly allocated to the most viable and effective source present. One of the constant reasons of discontent with marketing companies has been the selection of proper channels to allocate marketing funds. The one and only strategy that can be used to counter the problem is to develop an efficient metrics that tracks the performance of the ad spends. Some of the metrics can be as simple as that of number of likes in a facebook page to something as complex as tracking the tweets for a specific product line introduced in a very specific geographic area, in a very niche retail outlet or channel(Strauss et-all ,2005).
To sum up the entire discussion we may say that internet marketing is in vogue and is in fact the future of marketing (Chaffrey 2008) .As the web further evolves and grows it is quite certain that internet marketing will keep evolving presenting with more varied tools and processes that simplify aggregation of consumer insight. These trends would in fact be perfectly in sync with the consumer behavior patterns that has been broadly seen to be shifting towards a socio-economic era where internet is has become a part and parcel of day to day life. It has moved from being a nice to have product to become a need to have product.
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