DMKT5008 Digital Marketing Spring 2018

The whole study is focussed on the importance of digital marketing in nowadays. The importance is being felt by one of the renowned names in the entertainment industry. It is about HMV which is headquartered in the UK. The company had remained a popular name in the entertainment industry until the time; the position was actually being hampered by Amazon in around 2012. Amazon had enabled people getting their favourite music online; however, at one time, they were required to visit the physical stores. Online purchasing is now becoming a popular choice for purchase significantly. Various factors may have played its role in changing the buying perception of modern-day customers. Notably, an incrementing addiction to smart electronic gadgets like Smartphones and tablets is one of such factors. Modern day customers are now on electronic gadgets for various purposes like accessing to online education related tutorial, music libraries, social networking and many others.

Marketing is essential to business which is being conducted to communicate with the target customers and the media. The concept of marketing is still the same today; however, the perception is getting changed. There are some factors which are driving the perceptions and shifting it more towards the digital marketing. Cost-effectiveness is one of the factors that make it an ultimate choice for firms across the globe. It is cost-effective as communication can now be established through social media networks and the search engine. This means the areas of concentration is now limited; however, effectiveness has enhanced. Effectiveness has enhanced because it enables reaching to a much larger audience which may not have been possible through traditional marketing (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2016).

 Time-effectiveness is another benefit that digital marketing provides. In a very less span of time, a message can reach to a million of customers (Ryan 2016). The following list has some more reasons for why modern companies now prefer going with digital marketing (Ryan 2016):

• Opportunities are equally distributed to any kind of organisation; however, SMEs may select being limited just to a few of online tools
• It actually facilitates a conversion. Firms and customers can be in real-time conversation through social sites like Twitter
• Digital marketing ensures a much better revenue
• Digital marketing helps reach to the younger population as social sites are also accessible through smart gadgets like Smartphones and Tablets. Nevertheless, number of mobile phone users is incrementing with the passage of days (Kingsnorth 2016)
• It also helps to enhance customer loyalty on their brands as they do also get information from a particular brand
• Innovative technologies of digital marketing like calls to Action (CTA) helps visitors know what they can do by being on the website. Moreover, visiting users are also guided through the particular steps

Website visibility is more important to edge past the competitors and appearing attractive to the target audience (Järvinen and Taiminen 2016). Following ways can help HMV in this regard:

PPC-

For PPC, advertisers who have well proven track records with the same expertise are required to be approached. However, companies like HMV which wish to advertise through PPC need to understand the related terms prior to going with the option. It is important to know that advertisers pay the company for each click. Some of the examples of PPC advertisements are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram (Mandal and Joshi 2017). It is important to decide the rate per click. It is generally being done through mutual agreement of companies and advertisers. In case of HMV, they need to have a budget for PPC advertisement. The budget will be divided by the number of add clicks. The moment the add clicks reaches the budget limit, add will not be allowed to float. A further communication between the company and the selected advertiser will only decide that add will continue floating on different online platforms (Mandal and Joshi 2017).   

Some important identities needed to be acquainted with prior to PPC advertisement are as follows (Royle and Laing 2014):

1. Product Seller
2. PPC Marketer
3. Landing Page
4. Landing Page Provider
5. Visitor or the Viewer

SEO-

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be designed in following ways (Paul et al. 2018):

• Selecting an SEO friendly Website Domain
• Getting to know the SEO methods & tactics
• Using SEO friendly layout & design
• Optimisation of keywords like Title, Meta Tags and Anchor
• Link Mobile SEO and Building
• Off-Page and On-Page SEO
• SEO Copywriting

Online Display-

Following steps can be helpful in launching, managing and measuring the results of the display campaign (De Pelsmacker, van Tilburg and Holthof 2018):

• Selecting goals and KPIs is necessary to know what is the final destination
• Defining the target audience
• Buying media such as Publishers, Demand-Side Platform (DSP), Ad Networks and Advertising Agencies
• Collating factors that help the advertisement look attractive to target audience. Such factors include the Text, Video, Image and the Rich Media Ads. Moreover, creativity is important while collating these factors.
• Tracking and optimising the campaign in regards to different factors like targeting, creative, inventory and landing page.

Video Advertising Campaign-

Following ways can help to create an effective video advertising campaign (Taiminen and Karjaluoto 2015):

• The story should be attractive and all concerns need to be centred around the story, not the sale
• The first 10 seconds of the video should be really engaging. Some customers do not even spend 10 seconds on watching the ads. They click away with it in even less than 10 seconds
• The contents need to be smartly selected, so that, it creates some emotions like feeling enlightened, feeling engaged and also laugh
• It is necessary to ensure that video ads are easily found in the search engine platforms. This can be done in numerous ways like adding a searchable description to it, so that, Google or other search engine platforms could easily identify it
• Educating customers on something is another important way to attract them. This is how companies can prove its worth through video campaigns.

There is ample list of companies available to the different types of search engines. It means that the advertisement through search engine needs to be effective, so that, customers get traced by the company not by its competitors. Following ways can help to make an effective advertisement through Search Engine Marketing (Baker 2014):

- Defining an effective strategy will be the first key in this regard. First of all, all concerns should be on the contents which means the company needs to have a good idea of what it wishes to make viewable to the audience. Afterward, it is important to show how the product or the service could be a worth buy for customers. Finally, measuring the performance to know whether there is any need for content related change. Measurement can be done against the identified specific goals and specific benchmarks like search rankings, sales lead volume, website traffic & other measures of ROI metrics.

- Selecting the best search keywords is another thing which is important. Companies like HMV need to have focused on their business related keywords. In addition, keywords should also match the normally searched phrases like the one that viewers search on most occasions. It is really helpful and increases the chances of being viewed by customers. They may visit the page; however, they might not have intended for the same.  

- Website content is also important to enable viewers being engaged with the page. The design 7 the layout, the contents, the tabs and the headings are all important. Use of page title tags, file names, heading tags, Meta tags and alt tags. ‘Keywords’ Meta tag has been exploited in maximum occasions; however, the ‘description’ Meta tag is now very important. The description will appear below the link which is a very good way to enhance the chances of being through the website.

- It is necessary to ensure that all the pages in the website are entirely indexed by the two most common search engines Google and Bingo. Firms can easily monitor its presence in the search engines and hence, could also maintain an attractive appearance to viewers.

- Getting attractive and quality links can do wonder in terms of search ranking. Interestingly, quality links get good viewing numbers in all search engines like Google, Bingo and others. Quality link can be attained by integrating informative articles supposedly in the form of a blog on the website page. Then after, it is necessary to get listed in some trusted and popular directories like Business.com and Better Business Bureau. Quality links can also be attained from vendors, trade associations, customers and business partners. The website page needs to be occasionally updated with press releases, online public relations (PR) and online articles. By regularly applying such link structuring strategies, this will dramatically impact the Google ranking and also boost the online popularity.

- Measuring success is also important as it tells how the website has so far performed. After identifying the level of success, it would be easier to do the necessary adjustments to the existing contents and the other related terms.

Content marketing can really help reach to a wider customer base. However, it depends on various factors that are related to the online advertisements. One of such factors is the website content. It should be selected smartly, so that, customers may feel to be with it for a span of time required to understand the message that the website conveys to them. Following are some strategies that may help to make the contents look attractive and engaging to customers (Kaufman and Horton 2014):

Informational and learning resources- Content should be made educative and informative as well. It can be done by integrating articles, infographics, blog posts, interviews and more that should be the company’s own perspective.

Books- Self-publishing the e-books will do the thing. This can be done by interviewing the experts and then compiling their responses. In this way, eBook can be created.

Viewers speaking opportunities- This can be done by finding events and smaller & local organisations that need speakers. Such events & firms can be featured on the website and become the speakers on behalf of the company.

Media interviews- In a similar way, approaching to smaller and local publications for getting the interviews published will also help to get publicised. The interviews are needed to be on the website. It should also be featured in other publications, so that, business profiling can also be done through other ways.

Guest posting- It is necessary for the company that it keeps on publishing various types of blog contents, so that, it attracts the local publications. If the blogs and the interviews are being found as useful to the publications, this will make way for an advertisement in guest resources like the local publications.

Clients using the Search Engine Marketing need to care a few points like they should have knowledge of how the SEO firms do their business. Sometimes the SEO firms use the Black hat SEO tactics without informing the clients. Such access may lead to penalties. On the other hand, SEO firms do not disclose the penalties for using the Black hat SEO tactics (Leite and Azevedo 2017).

Some CEO firms use an automated process to generate the hundreds of links to their clients. However, those links lack in quality and are worthless. Those SEO firms claim that they will provide quality links to their clients which are indeed the fake commitments. Some search engines may prohibit such links and can also impose the penalties. Google, for example, is constantly updating its algorithm and is trying to remove those links which are low in quality & are unethical due to using Black hat SEO techniques (Holliman and Rowley 2014).

Such practice may seriously hamper the reputation of the website owner. The website can be removed from the search engine which is a big loss from economic perspectives. A lot of money is being invested in facilitating the search engine marketing. All those investments will be wasted and the website owner will be a big loss. They will not only lose their audience but, will find difficulties also to regenerate such platform again (Wang et al. 2014).

HMV had suffered a huge loss after the entrance of Amazon. The advent of Amazon had affected the layout of the business more than that the name of HMV. It means they now prefer more to shop on online than being in physical stores. There is an urgency that the company considers the digital marketing approach, so that, number of visitors to the website can be increased and most importantly, be retained. In this section, the focus will be on Email marketing and Social Media Marketing.

Email marketing is another good way of interacting with the existing customers, keeping them engaged and also retaining them. It can also be used for promotional activities. Email marketing does not only mean sending shotgun emails that got to the inboxes. It rather mans communicating to people in a digitalised way, so that; they remain engaged with the company. However, a strategic and a thoughtful approach are needed to actually take the benefits of Email marketing. Following are some ways using which effective marketing communication can be established (Doherty, Kearns and O’Rourke 2015):

• The focus should be on increasing the subscriber list. Emails can be sent to customers who are already with the company through various interactions like website, blog, in-store promotions or social media channels. They may not mind adding another way of contact to the list. These customers are already aware of the business and hence, a positive response will be the real possibility.
• Customer needs to be segmented into few variables, so that, all target customers receive the relevant materials. This can be done by using some external service like the VerticalResponse. They can help to categorise emails based on various variables like gender, age ranges, birthday, location or other information which they have collected through email subscriber list.
• Powerful contents are essential to Email marketing. This should be relevant to customers and should also be meaningful to them. For example, if somebody has bought a house then it would be wiser to send them mail guiding them on how to manage and run homes effectively.
• A regular communication is required; however, it should not be over exceeded. Customers need to feel it like engaging. They should not feel like that it is too much now. Such thing can also be tracked down with the help of service provider. They know how to calculate such thing. It is basically communicable through the number of customers who are purchasing it or unsubscribing from the Email service.

Social Media Marketing-

Social media platforms may help to reach a million of customers in a very less time. There will be very few people who will deny the power of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and a lot of other channels. These social media channels are indeed a very good distribution channel for content (Stone and Woodcock 2014). A strategic use of such platforms with an appropriate mix of content may do the thing. It is important to learn about the social media channels which the customer specific to the company prefer. There are varieties of options. Additionally, content selection will be different to the various types of media channel. For example, Facebook can be used to upload image, text and video. YouTube can be used to upload both the short and long clips. Twitter is a kind of chatting platform where a specific group will be able to chat with its followers. LinkedIn can be used on a very professional level like profiling a specific content (Leeflang et al. 2014).

Once the platform is being selected, the next step will be to decide the content that will be the most appropriate and feasible to the circumstances. For HMV, this will be the latest product arrivals, the latest news & releases and much more to add curiosity in customers. They can also upload a video showing an expert’s interview being conducted by the local publications. This will help their existing customers and the others to understand what new is being offered to them (Killian and McManus 2015).

HMV can also be benefitted through following ways by using the social media marketing strategies:

Preferable channel for HMV:

Social media marketing will preferably be the best choice for HMV. Email marketing is good in regards to customer loyalty as the existing customer will develop a much stronger bonding with their brand. However, HMV's future performance does not just rely on existing customers. It rather needs a bigger platform where the online audience may be able to connect again with the HMV's products. The connection will get deeper with every latest advertisement or happening on the HMV's website. However, the success of social media marketing may strictly depend on identifying the target audience for HMV.

Identifying the social media audience-

Target audience on social media sites can be identified in following ways (Chaffey and Allen 2015):

Create Personas: Most brands have a free thought of who is in their intended interest group; however, they won't have the capacity to characterize precisely who they are marketing to. An extraordinary method to recognize the ideal demographic is to make personas or target market descriptions. A persona (or statistic profile) is an anecdotal character that displays the attributes controlled by a run of the typical member from the intended interest group. A brand needs to gather some essential information on their intended interest group – age, area, sex, to give some examples – yet once they have a thought of those elements, it's anything but difficult to assemble a persona. Statistic profiles give an approach to picture the objective market with the goal that one can decide whether the substance and marketing strategy is the best method to contact them.

Take a look at the current customers to check whether they are lined up with the statistic profile. If not, it may require considering a reevaluation of the focused market or the current strategy. Contingent upon the forms of online networking one utilize, it is necessary to exploit the examination to analyze customer conduct. Checking the social records will give pieces of information to see who is cooperating with the company’s image. Considering their profiles can enable the company to recognize who are currently being approached and whether they are in accordance with the focused group.

Review the Competitors: In case if one is experiencing difficulty deciding on the intended interest group and their personas, another approach to distinguish the objective statistic is to audit the rivals. Investigate the target market and the kind of audience of the rival company. This will provide a hint on how to proceed with the target market.

Observe Content Performance: It is important to figure out which posts play out the best – accepting the most astounding number of preferences and most prominent engagement. This will assist in characterizing the marketing strategy to keep achieving customers that line up with the images esteems. This empowers to make sense of which media and promoting messages are the best and will drive engagement and changes.

Examine Audience Feedback: Audience feedback enables brands to make sense of how their item or administration fits the requirements as well as needs of their customers. Targeted marketing demonstrates the consumer why they should buy an item or administration in light of their needs.

Google, Twitter, Instagram, and more have worked in highlights that empower you to assess how customers are collaborating with your image. Survey the remarks, likes, and offers and utilize these to help characterize your intended interest group.

The IT management team at HMV needs to consider the following techniques, so that, the website performance could improve (Sharma and Singla 2017):

Profiling the web pages to find the unnecessary element-

It is advisable to profile the web page to discover segments that HMV don't need or segments that can be upgraded. Profiling a website page more often than not includes an apparatus, for example, Firebug to figure out what parts (i.e. pictures, CSS records, HTML archives, and JavaScript documents) are being asked for by the client, to what extent the part takes to load, and how enormous it is. It is about prioritizing the action.

If HMV wishes to have a lot of pictures, it's basic to find out the ideal arrangement for each picture. There are three regular web picture record designs: JPEG, GIF, and PNG. All in all, one should utilize JPEG for sensible photographs with smooth angles and shading tones. One should utilize GIF or PNG for pictures that have strong hues, (for example, diagrams and logos). GIF and PNG are comparable; however, PNG commonly delivers a lower record estimate.  

Minimizing the CSS and JavaScript documents to save a few bytes-

Minimisation is the way of expelling unneeded characters, (for example, tabs, spaces, source code remarks) from the source code to diminish its record measure.

Combining CSS and JavaScript files to trim down HTTP requests-

It is recommended that for each part that is expected to render a site page, an HTTP request is made to the server. Along these lines, on the off chance that one has five CSS documents for a page, one would require no less than five separate HTTP GET request for that specific website page. By consolidating records, one needs to decrease the HTTP request overhead required to produce a site page.

Using CSS sprites to cut down HTTP requests-

A CSS Sprite is a mix of smaller pictures into one major picture. To show the right picture, one has to change the foundation position of CSS property. Joining numerous pictures along these lines decreases HTTP requests. For instance, on Digg (appeared above), one can see singular symbols for user interaction. To lessen the server demands, Digg helps to attach a few symbols in one major picture and afterward utilizes CSS to position them appropriately. This can be done physically, yet there's an electronic instrument called CSS Sprite Generator that gives one the choice of transferring pictures to be joined into one CSS sprite, and after that yields the CSS code (the foundation position characteristics) to render the pictures.

Use server-side firmness to lessen the file sizes-

This can be dubious in case one is on a mutual web and doesn't have any server-side pressure, yet to completely optimize the serving of page segments they ought to be packed. Packing page objects are like compressing up a vast record that one sends through email: One (web server) compress up to a substantial family picture (the page segment) and email it to one companion (the program) – they thus unload the ZIP document to see the photo. Mainstream pressure techniques are Deflate and gzip.

In course of the action, outer CSS and JavaScript records are reserved by the user’s browser. At the point when a user explores far from the landing page, they will as of now have the templates and JavaScript documents, which thus spares them the need to download styles and contents once more. In the event that one utilizes a considerable measure of CSS and JavaScript in the HTML archive, it won't exploit the web program's reserving highlights.

Monitor web server performance and create benchmarks frequently-

The web server can be considered the brain of the task – it's responsible for getting/sending HTTP requests/responses to the appropriate user and serves the greater part of the page segments. In the event that the web server isn't performing great, one won't get the most extreme advantage of the optimization efforts. It's fundamental to always check the web server for execution issues. On the off chance that one has root-like access and can install stuff on the server, look for ‘ab’ – an Apache web server benchmarking instrument or Httperf from IBM. Benchmarking when rolling out real improvements will likewise give some knowledge on the impacts of the progressions. On the off chance that the web server can't deal with the traffic the site produces, it's the ideal opportunity for redesign or server relocation.

Following is the list of analytic tools to measure the success of the proposed digital strategy (Armstrong et al. 2014):

Web Analytics Tools: One free and broadly utilized analytics platform is Google Analytics. This tool is accessible in an excellent variant, however, most independent companies will find that the free form gives a lot of data on crowd attributes and practices, traffic sources, how users communicate with the site, and other information. It additionally coordinates with Google promotions, should one choose to advertise on the Google stage. The web analytics tool should be picked to ensure that it gives at any rate essential information that incorporates traffic information, user designs, referral information, change data, and access to recorded data. A portion of the more prevalent website analytics tools incorporates New Relic, Crazy Egg and Optimizely, notwithstanding Google Analytics.

Social Media Analytics Tools: Some analytics tools can gauge the online campaign effort execution. While choosing among these tools, first ensure that the tool is perfect for the web-based social media destinations to be utilized. Consider choosing a tool that alarms the website bearer when their image is specified on a site, and that gives verifiable information and reports. Some online campaign analytics tools likewise offer capacities to enable timetable and post content. Despite the fact that it does not really enable one to quantify execution, it provides added value in dealing with your web-based social media campaign. A portion of the more famous web-based social media analytics tools incorporates HootSuite, Sprout Social, and Viralheat.

Considerations prior to selecting the tools:

The selection of tool needs to be done with few considerations. If it answers a few questions then the tool is the appropriate one for the company. The tool should be easy to use. The tool should provide an easy access, so that required information can be traced. The tool should be capable of exporting the results. In case if any help is required, the tool should produce an easy access to answers and also have answers to every query. Free tools may not be a supportive way; however, analytic tools are equipped with answers to every question. The selection of tools should also include an inspection of its capability of report generation. Some tools generate once a day whereas some do it for several times in a day.  

 Therefore, HMV can really reinvent its brand awareness which is not lost yet but has been affected by online shopping platforms such as Amazon. It is about infusing attraction with content marketing in the existing website of HMV. It is recommended that HMV needs to focus on content marketing, so that; the existing website is infused with attractive features. SEO is compulsory as more people will be able to see the company’s website while they had not intended it before. PPC advertisement is another good option for HMV. Social media marketing will help HMV to connect with the social media audience. However, they need to understand their audience through various strategies like auditing the audience of rivals. These digital strategies may ensure more customers connecting to what is happening in HMV provided that, products are competent in nature.

Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P., 2014. Principles of marketing. Pearson Australia.

Baker, M.J., 2014. Marketing strategy and management. Palgrave Macmillan.

Chaffey, D. and Allen, R., 2015. Managing Digital Marketing in 2015.

Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2016. Digital marketing. Prentice Hall.

De Pelsmacker, P., van Tilburg, S. and Holthof, C., 2018. Digital marketing strategies, online reviews and hotel performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 72, pp.47-55.

Doherty, A., Kearns, J. and O’Rourke, V., 2015. Integrating mobile into marketing strategy. Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, 3(3), pp.279-287.

Holliman, G. and Rowley, J., 2014. Business to business digital content marketing: marketers’ perceptions of best practice. Journal of research in interactive marketing, 8(4), pp.269-293.

Järvinen, J. and Taiminen, H., 2016. Harnessing marketing automation for B2B content marketing. Industrial Marketing Management, 54, pp.164-175.

Karjaluoto, H., Mustonen, N. and Ulkuniemi, P., 2015. The role of digital channels in industrial marketing communications. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 30(6), pp.703-710.

Kaufman, I. and Horton, C., 2014. Digital marketing: Integrating strategy and tactics with values, a guidebook for executives, managers, and students. Routledge.

Killian, G. and McManus, K., 2015. A marketing communications approach for the digital era: Managerial guidelines for social media integration. Business Horizons, 58(5), pp.539-549.

Kingsnorth, S., 2016. Digital marketing strategy: an integrated approach to online marketing. Kogan Page Publishers.

Leeflang, P.S., Verhoef, P.C., Dahlström, P. and Freundt, T., 2014. Challenges and solutions for marketing in a digital era. European management journal, 32(1), pp.1-12.

Leite, R.A. and Azevedo, A., 2017. The Role of Digital Marketing: A perspective from Porto Hotels’ Managers. International Journal of Marketing, Communication and New Media, (2).

Mandal, P. and Joshi, N., 2017. Understanding Digital Marketing Strategy. International Journal of Scientific Research and Management, 5(6).

Paul, P., Bhuimali, A., Aithal, P.S. and Bhowmick, S., 2018. Business Information Sciences Emphasizing Digital Marketing as an Emerging Field of Business & IT: A Study of Indian Private Universities.

Rowley, J. and Keegan, B., 2017. Looking back, Going forward: the role and nature of systematic literature reviews in digital marketing: a meta-analysis.

Royle, J. and Laing, A., 2014. The digital marketing skills gap: Developing a Digital Marketer Model for the communication industries. International Journal of Information Management, 34(2), pp.65-73.

Ryan, D., 2016. Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. Kogan Page Publishers.

Sharma, M.A. and Singla, R., 2017. Impact of Digital Marketing on Public Relations in Emerging Market Scenario. Catalyst, 2(2).

Stone, M.D. and Woodcock, N.D., 2014. Interactive, direct and digital marketing: A future that depends on better use of business intelligence. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 8(1), pp.4-17.

Taiminen, H.M. and Karjaluoto, H., 2015. The usage of digital marketing channels in SMEs. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 22(4), pp.633-651.

Wang, S.C., Wang, S.S., Chang, C.M., Yan, K.Q. and Lin, Y.P., 2014. Systematic approach for digital marketing strategy through data mining technology. Department of Informa tion Management, Chaoyang University of Technology Taichung, 409, pp.4-1.