E Marketing Or Digital Marketing Marketing Essay

E-marketing or digital marketing is referred as marketing principles and techniques via electronic media and more specifically the Internet. The terms e-marketing, internet marketing, digital marketing and online marketing, are frequently interchanged, and can often be considered synonymous. E-marketing is the process of advertise a brand or a product by using the internet. It combined both direct response marketing and indirect marketing elements and uses a wide range of modern technologies to help connect businesses to their potential customers.

To conclude, e-marketing includes all the activities of a company conducts via the www (worldwide web) with the purpose of attracting new business, new marketing, identifying and building customer relationship, maintaining current business and developing its brand’s popularity.

2. How is E-marketing better than traditional marketing?

When the product implemented correctly, the ROI (Return On Investment) from e-marketing can far exceed that of traditional marketing strategies.

Whether you are a “bricks and mortar” business (developed business) or a new concerned operating online, the Internet is the only key that helps you to access to the digital business world. It can be a mean to reach literally millions of people every year. It is at the forefront of a redefinition of way businesses interact with their consumers.

(Definition of e-marketing, Retrieved on 17 November, 2010 from: http://www.quirk.biz/resources/88/0/What-is-eMarketing-and-how-is-it-better-than-traditional-marketing)

II. Analyze about changes of E-marketing in

1. Segmentation/ Targeting

A companies online customers have different demographic characteristics, needs and behaviours to its offline customers (traditional marketing customer). It follows that different approaches to segmentation may be required and specific segments may need to be selectively targeted.

There are commonly 6 segmentation/ targeting options in e-marketing:

– Customer profile characteristics (demographics): this will be where most will start their online business, based on the traditional segmentation based on the type of customer recorded in the field of customer profile. For B2C (Business to customer) e-retailers, it will be included: age, gender and geography. For B2B (Business to business) companies, it will be presented size of company and the industry sector or the product they operate in.

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– Customer value – current and future: the operators are trying to understand customers so they can focus and develop loyalty group. Usually, they will divided the consumers into 3 separate groups: most- valuable customers (often purchase online), most- growable customers (potential customers can become loyalty customers) and below zero customers (customers who are not interested in purchasing online). When considering loyalty- based segmentation, it is useful to compare current against future value.

Example: The customer behavior towards e-marketing survey made by retailer group Otto presented by Chris Poad, their Ecommerce Director at an Econsultancy Masterclass

=> It is actually more sophisticated than simple value in that it looks at a range of indicators of quality.

– Customer lifecycle groups: as visitors use online services, they usually have to pass through some of the stages before purchasing a product (known as the online loyalty ladder). They have to fill some of the forms asking for their regions, gender, age group… etc. And for many retailers, encourage customers to move from first purchase to the second one is a challenge, and to the third purchase is a super challenge task. Promotions and discounts will be required to encourage further purchase.

– Customer behaviour in response and purchase (observed and predicted): customers are interacted with online purchase by advertising emails or pages visited on site are captured, the e-retailers can be able to build up a detailed response and purchase history of customer. From there, they can easily track down the frequently, recently, monetary value and category of products purchased from customers who visit their website (RFM analysis).

– Customer multi-channel behaviour (channel preference): No matter how you have offered to customers about online channels, some customers will prefer using online communications channels and some would like to choose traditional channels (Right touching- this is the holy grail of digital marketing). From this, the retailers can determine which customers prefer mail then they can up- weight more online activities and reduce the frequently and using more traditional communications for those who prefer these.

– Customer personas including psychographics: From the 5 options above, now the retailers can easily separate customers in to groups that are appropriate, help them to save a lot of time and money on surveys, advertisement and they still understand exactly what are their customer’s demand. So they can offer the right products to the right customers.

(E-marketing changes in segmentation/ targeting, retrieved on 17 November 2010 from http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/email-marketing/email-segmentation-and-targeting-options/)

2. Differentiation/ Positioning

Competitors’ online product and service offerings will often differ in the online environment. Developing an appropriate online value proposition is an important aspect of this strategy. The differentiated online offerings are based on the lower costs in acquiring and retaining online customers which are then passed onto customers.

Retailers offering lower prices online. Example: Tesco.com (price promotions on selected products), Comet (discounts relative to in-store on some products).

Airlines offering lower cost flights for online bookings. Examples: easyJet, Ryanair, BA.

Financial services companies offering higher interest rates on savings products, lower interest rates on credit products such as credit cards and loans. Examples: Nationwide, Alliance and Leicester.

Mobile phone network providers or utilities offering lower cost tariffs or discounts for customers accounts who are managed online without paper billing. Examples: O2, British Gas.

Other options for differentiation are available online for companies where their products are not appropriate for sale online such as high-value or complex products or FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) brands sold through retailers. These companies can use online to add value to the brand or product through providing added value services or different types of experience.

(E-marketing changes in differentiation/ positioning, retrieved on 17 November 2010 from http://www.davechaffey.com/Internet-Marketing/C4-Strategy/Online-marketing-strategy-option)

3. Products/ Distribution

A product marketed solely online will go through a life cycle in the same unpredictable way as a product marketed through any traditional channel (PLC). Products marketed online will have a core benefit to the consumer, be an actual tangible product, with augmentation that adds value such as insurance, warranties and so. Although tools actually specify the term ‘product,’ they can be easily adapted to include brands, services or solutions.

Example:

EBAY is a very popular website. From there, whatever you want to buy will be appeared just by a mouse click. You choose what product you like from wherever in the world with wide range of cost for the same product. You can get the latest version of the technology. You select your product and if you decide to buy anything on eBay, you will have all the description and details that given by the seller (brands, insurance, shipping cost…). To illustrate, Iphone 4G is a newest product of Apple Corporation, just by a click, you can get a wide range of found from China, The US, UK, India and they will be pleased you by their quality, tight contract to protect your rights. You can satisfy by eBay usually.

(E-marketing changes in products/ distribution, retrieved on 17 November 2010 from http://marketingteacher.com/lesson-store/lesson-emarketing-product.htm)

4. Price

Pricing in e-marketing is quite competitive. Each company is trying to lower their price to get customer’s attention to their products. Price is usually shown and listed in ascending price from different companies on the website. With the greater access to pricing information, more quickly and in a format that makes pricing comparable and transparent. There are a number of sites that will compare and contrast prices for the same or similar goods and services

Example:

Thegioididong.com is one of the most popular website for buying quality cell phones in Vietnam. It is offered and encouraged clients to shop their products online by lower the price of the cell phone compare buying the product at thegioididong stores. For instance, Nokia N8 on the website is 11.000.000 and at the store is about 11.500.000 VND, so if you buy online, you can save yourself 500.000 VND with the same warranty and benefits for the product you purchase.

Amazon.com is another trusted website for selling and buying online after eBay. It is separated products into individual sections (clothing, electronics, toys, shoes, electronics, computers, jewelry or even books), just by clicking, we can find all the stuffs that you need with suitable price from the online retailer. Usually, products will be discount from 20% up to 40% when you purchase from Amazon.com. The pricing is usually discount due to the company’s competition in e-marketing.

Buying a newest product without “moving your chair” is today innovative technology, or what we call in business is “online shopping”, and for the retailer, it is “e-marketing”.

CRM is needed to ask direct questions to customers to get their feedback on the products and advertisement of new products will be sent by email to their home address (costing of labor and time) => inefficient way in CRM

eCRM feedback in one the process before customers can finish purchase online step and whenever there is a new product, the retailers have their email and for one easy click, all the advertisement will be sent to hundred or thousand email inboxes in just a few minutes with a small cost => save time and money.

(E-marketing changes in CRM, retrieved on 17 November 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECRM)

Example:

To buy an Ipad eBay, we must fill in a form that includes: name, address, postcode, country, gender, and especially the email address (so they can send you a confirmation of your purchase and keep in touch with you). If you want to buy any product, this is the very first step in purchasing (forcing the customers to stay in contact with the retailers). When there is a new advertisement, the retailers has record your previous purchase and they send you an email. Furthermore, by the website, they can track the frequently of customer go to their website and purchase products => Knowing consumer’s online demand => Affection of the company on customers.

III. Conclusion

E-marketing is becoming the main role in general marketing. It helps to improve the traditional marketing in segmentation/ targeting, differentiation/ positioning, product, price and also customer relationship management. As the internet is more involving in life, the demand of customers is also higher and more complicate. They prefer the convenience and saving time than going around and looking for the product they want. Based on that changing, marketing has to extend and develop in e-marketing to satisfy today customer’s demand. Until now, e-marketing has been successful, according to the popularity of eBay, Amazon.com, apple.com or Google all over the world. And for every corporation in this innovative century, e-marketing is needed cannot be ignored, take seriously if company wants to survive.