Promotion of Brand Awareness - Term Paper Example

? E-Commerce Introduction The web can be regarded as the most revolutionary technologies which are directing towards changing of business environmentand imparting dramatic impacts on the future of the electronic commerce (EC) industry. The businesses are growing highly through the power of the Internet and the customers are competing among themselves to choose a company for maximizing their utility. The Internet can fetch various physical barriers to commerce and can provide even the smallest business with access to various untapped markets all over the world. The future of the e-commerce industry is a booming industry and the market power is shifted towards a customer, which is changing the mechanism of the business. Thus, website development is highly crucial and it should be mainly designed using a customer centric approach so that it can steal the show among their existent competitors in the market (Chaffey and Dave, 2008, p. 152). I am a member of a website development team who is developing a website which deals with laundry products and apparels. The paper will focus on my justifications regarding the Internet market techniques along with other crisp business strategies which will be highly useful in making our website stand well in the competitive front. Promotion of Brand Awareness The promotion of brand awareness is one of the crucial parts to highlight the website and is one of the benevolent strategies of the e-commerce industry. The brand awareness must be executed in such a manner that the customers receive detailed and rational information regarding the firm and its offerings. This technique can be used as a signal to the current and prospective customers, which will state that the customer is on the cutting edge. I will develop a model with product differentiation strategies along with an image rich message with a tag line which should be in line with the actual performance of the products of delivery. Another stylized technique which I will apply to promote the website is AdWords which are an established mechanism of targeting the potential customers and establishing brand awareness at a reasonable price. I would also be posting some testimonials from our pleased customers along with a few photographs of our ways of functioning to support the services offered in my website. Target Audience Another major decision is the selection of target customers. The market has to be segregated into subparts of customers and sections should be set in the order of priority. Since our website focuses on the marriage laundry, domestic and hotel laundry, the market will be divided into subparts and focus on the micro analysis. People think of marketing management as finding as many customers as possible and increasing demand. But it is not the right policy and it is not possible for the marketing manager to serve all the customers coming in their way. Trying to serve all the customers, it would not be possible to serve any of the customers properly. So in our area of target, our top priority will be on the marriage sector as well as the hotel sector. For example, Holt Renfrew and Harry Rosen stores profitably target affluent professionals; Dollarama stores profitably target families with more modest means. The advertisement budget will also have to be considered and will be concentrated on key areas. The main things which will be taken into consideration are targeting, demographics, key words and the budget. Keeping a close watch on this, our target customers can be attracted (Website Promotion, 2012). Creating Value Proposition The value proposition of the company is also directed towards serving the targeted customers. It will be focused on how it can help in differentiating and positioning itself within the marketplace. Thus, it is my prime priority to establish a set of benefits or values which will be promised towards delivery. For example, BMW promises “the ultimate driving machine” (Kotler, 2010, p. 9). The value proposition of the company should be aligned with respect to different brands too. The companies must be designing a robust value proposition which will provide them with the opportunity to reap the maximum advantage with respect to revenue in their respective target markets (Todaro, 2007, p. 33). This will be done by constructing a web page introducing the services after a welcome note. My target will be in the broader selection of the services designed in such a way that will be targeted towards reducing the costs and oversimplifying the customer operations. Focus will be also made on the provision of improved quality as well redundancy provided through operations of a multi-plant. Focus will be directed towards enhanced customer service which will be delivered by a broader team with prior track record of success (Gay et al., 2007, pp. 101–102). Proper Marketing Management Marketing management can be regarded as the science and art of selecting target markets and simultaneously creating target markets as well as building a profitable relation with the target markets. As a marketing manager, my chief focus will be on finding, attracting, keeping and growing target customers through the creation, delivery and communication of superior customer values. The marketing management techniques are also dedicated towards designing strategies that will act as a solid foundation for building profitable relationships with the target consumers. The prime marketing strategy in the proper marketing management is a mix of product, selling, marketing, and social networking concepts (Wrenn, 2004, pp. 25–26). Proper marketing management of the website also requires the vital aspects of the site and then the actions are determined for improving the performance. This will include creating proper website designs, its structure and other general features that can be in the form of some add-ons too. Added features will be in the form of Adwords. They are easy to install for the developer and for the user as well. This would also help to enhance the design and appearance of the website. The plug-ins such as Flash 5.0 should be installed there so that the consumer faces no problem (Green and Weinmann, 2002, p. xxviii). Using Adwords, I will target choosing a wide array of keywords as well as phrases related to the products of our website. The keywords which will be used are dry cleaners, laundry services (J. Work and C. Work, 2008, p. 146), shirt / t-shirt / polo shirt, trouser / jeans / tracksuit bottoms, dress, pashmina, curtains, dinner suit, dinner shirts and so on (The Laundry House, 2012). This will place our advertisement on the front or right of the search results when googled (MacDonald, 2011, p. 319). This will also mean that we will have to decide on some specific key words for the products so that the user faces no difficulty while searching for it. This would be the main purpose behind Adwords. I will also include a unique visitors list for gauging the traffic trends. The total conversion rate will also have to be taken into account for the people monitoring the lead generation or the ecommerce. This would be done by introducing loyalty programs on the website. Shoppers would be offered discounts for participating in the online program. Addition of Adwords revenue will be also better and that of the social actions as social proof is becoming more important these days in search engine rankings. This will also help in our online ordering schemes that I plan to introduce on our website. Market and Competitor Analysis The market for websites is getting saturated with every passing day. The competitors are in the form of Google and Yahoo on the large scale and many local websites. Competitive intelligence will help our website to understand what sort of new product innovation I need to bring in (Mintel, 2012). There are many websites in UK in the laundry business such as Weightwash (Weightwash, 2009). The company offers many services in laundry and cleaning such as industry laundry service. Another competitor can be Royal Jersey Laundry for London (Royal Jersey Laundry for London, n.d.). These are established names in the laundry business, so I will be building similar facilities on my website to attract customers. Social Networking as a Significant Variable The web site developers are recently using networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for building awareness (Peacock, 2010, p. 23). The social networking sites are bringing dynamic interaction and maintain unique freshness. The social networking can be regarded as a vital community which will be allowing a user to connect with the others. The platform of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter has been a significant development these days and the users are very much flexible in using and contributing to it. The social media is also dynamic and can be edited by the user and sometimes by the community (Miletsky, 2009, pp. 76–77). The prime agenda in keeping a social networking site as an addition will be focused on the facts that the customers will be available here and the competitors might also be found here. The social network addition is also in creating and updating the page. The platform also leads to the sharing of all types of information in almost any format. It also provides assistance in the search engine placement. I will also focus on the process of monitoring business review sites and will post an appropriate review of laundry on sites such as Yelp, Merchant Circle and others that millions can read 24/7 (Weinberg, 2009, pp. 21–22). Conclusion Website development is a highly important tool in this world revolutionized by the thorough application of the Internet. Now e-commerce is an essential element of the website development dimension which is highly required in promoting and attracting customers. Our website is a UK based laundry service website and as an Internet marketing manager, I have to take care of the marketing dynamics of the website. The key issues which I will concentrate on for the development of our website and customer attraction are brand awareness, marketing promotion, value proposition, selecting the target customers and providing them with services at reasonable prices, and product differentiation strategies so that the market can be captured and strong competition can be provided to the competitors in the arena. The use of social networking platforms is also regarded as an important tool for customer attraction and brand promotion. References Chaffey, D., 2008. Internet marketing: strategy, implementation and practice. 3rd edition. Pearson Education India. Comm, J., 2010. The AdSense code: what Google never told you about making money with Adsense. Wordclay. Gay et al., 2007. Online marketing: a customer-led approach. Oxford University Press. Green, G. Weinmann, L., 2002. Dreamweaver 4:  H.O.T.: hands-on training. Peachpit Press. MacDonald, M, (2011), Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, O'Reilly Media Mintell, 2012. [Online] Available at: http://www.mintel.com/competitive-market-intelligence [Accessed on November 2, 2012]. Kotler, P., 2010. Principles of marketing: a South Asian perspective. 13th ed. Pearson Education India. Peacock, M., 2010. Php 5 social networking. Packt Publishing Ltd. Royal Jersey Laundry for London, n.d. [Online] Available at: [Accessed on November 2, 2012]. Todaro, M., 2007. Internet marketing methods revealed: the complete guide to becoming an internet marketing expert. Atlantic Publishing Company. Work, J. and Work, C., 2008. The Law firm Internet marketing book. Search Engine Marketing. Wrenn, W. B., 2004. Marketing management: text and case. Routledge. Weinberg, T., 2009. The new community rules: marketing on the social Web. O'Reilly Media. Weightwash, 2009. [Online] Available at: < http://www.weightwash.co.uk/> [Accessed on November 2, 2012]. Read More