Lesson 2. E-Marketing Strategies and Planning
- E-MARKETING STRATEGIES AND PLANNING
Strategies for e-marketing include the use of social media sites, search engine optimisation, email marketing, the company website, content marketing, online brochures, and blogs, for example. A carefully constructed plan is essential for the effective application of these strategies.
Social media sites: Key to digital marketing. LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are examples of social media sites a company can use for e-marketing purposes, to gain awareness and target audience response. They offer exciting opportunities, such as two-way conversations and authentic engagement. An effective social media campaign helps to build a connection and trust with potential customers, linking the company e-commerce website to social media sites can help drive traffic to the site, and thus increase sales.
SEO: Search engine optimisation means increasing a company’s visibility–ensuring the company ranks high in a Google, or another search engine provider search. It is one of the main channels used to attract website visitors and is also known as Organic search. There are 6 factors involved in this process:
- Content – valuable information must be provided.
- Architecture – the website must be fast-loading and malware free.
- HTML – to enhance a website’s ranking, it is important to include formatting elements such as headings and titles, as well as specialised fields like structured data mark-ups and meta descriptions, as search engines look for these features to determine a website’s content.
- Trust (Shown by user signals) – Search engines look at the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of a site as well as how visitors engage with the site (the length of time they spend on it).
- Links – how well a website ranks in a search is related to the quality and relevancy of the links it provides to other websites.
- User- The experience and way users engage with a website is very important. A bad user experience will impact on a website ranking. For example, if a search engine notes that users tend to return immediately to the search page after entering a website because it didn’t have what they were searching for.
Email marketing: Despite the increase in popularity of social media, email marketing is still popular and relevant, particularly for engaging social media users. Effective types of email marketing include: 1/ Welcome messages when users first become active on a website; 2/ Newsletters; 3/ Promotional campaigns; 4/ Reengagement or reactivation; 4/ Seasonal/special events; 5/ Abandoned cart. The success of email marketing will depend on several factors such as a consideration of how clicking on the email will benefit the recipient, the timing of the email, and the relevance of the email.
Company website: A company website displays information about the company and depending on the purpose of the company, may feature an e-commerce function (the ability to purchase products or services from the website). The website pages should load quickly, be easy to navigate and should convey its message while engaging the visitor. Good website design is important: consistency, colours, typography, imagery, simplicity, and functionality.
Content marketing: Content should engage and persuade potential customers and can be shared through social media and the company website for example. Key to content marketing is: 1/ Defining the content marketing KPIs; 2/ Targeting consumer personas by mapping content types; 3/ Management of a content marketing hub; 4/ Allocating budget for content distribution; 5/ Planning types of content to share via different mediums (social media and the hub); 6/ Ensuring content consistency by establishing the brand tone-of-voice.
Blogs: The main aim of a company blog is to reach business goals for brand awareness, lead generation, sales, and brand preference. Usually, the blog is featured on the company website and features articles or posts on specific topics. Social media sites can be used to share links to blog content, and blog content can incorporate links to product pages.
- HOW TO CREATE A STRONG E-MARKETING PLAN
The e-marketing approach a company will take should be planned out carefully. The use of a model is recommended, for example: PR Smith’s SOSTAC model.
SOSTAC Planning in 3 minutes by PR Smith: Watch the video clip to learn about how to apply the SOSTAC model. SOSTAC Planning in 3 minutes by PR Smith – YouTube
- Situation analysis includes competitor analysis, trend analysis, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, past performance, and results. It is the biggest part of the model, making up about 50% of the work.
- Objectives should be clear, and include mission, vision and KPIs. Where are you now? Where do you want to go?
- Strategy: How do you get there? Shortest, but most important part of the plan, gives direction for the tactics: which are the details of the strategy, and the marketing and communications mix.
- Tactics moves into Actions: Internal marketing – How do you ensure the staff deliver the plan you have written, with excellence? – Training, motivation, communications: keep some budget aside for this part to ensure that staff can be trained, motivated, and the plan and reason for any changes are well-communicated to them.
- Control: Metrics – What are you going to measure to be sure you are getting there? The answer is, you need to measure the objectives, the KPIs.