Direct, Interactive and Digital Marketing - Essay Example

Insert Lecturers’ A. What is direct marketing and how does it work? What is the difference between digital marketing? Marketingis one of the management processes responsible for identifying, anticipating and meeting customer demands effectively and efficiently. However, direct marketing, is a channel agnostic kind of advertising that enables an enterprise to communicate directly to the client. It uses techniques like cell phone text messaging, interactive consumer as well as emails to boost transaction between the vendor and the customer. However, digital marketing is a marketing strategy that often employs social media platforms in advertising and selling companies products and services. Implications for direct marketing Direct marketing is highly contributing to the growth of digital marketing and social media in the following ways. First, direct marketing is leading many firms to move from the monopolistic nature of marketing to the competitive type of market. Most firms are doing so in order to reach many clients across the world. In addition, they agree into the competitive market to be flexible in terms of their production to meet the customers demand. For instance, Tesco offers its clients with variety of products in its various branches across the world. It enables its clients to buy products online thus making it more competitive market. Moreover, direct marketing leads to the development of information environment within the society. That is; it opened transmission between individuals. Moreover, direct marketing made socialization and the society possible. The transformation of information networks is another significant role of direct marketing in the development of digital marketing and social media. Direct marketing is highly transforming information into the market place therefore giving clear understanding between the individuals. For example, Tesco club card is offering more discounting to the employees depending on how the client will agree with company management. In addition, one will also receive a voucher depending on the frequency of using the Tesco Club card. Moreover, the information, will aid to remove old barriers in the marketing industry and thus reducing inconvenience in the marketing industry. Advantages of direct marketing The message sent will not be distorted. That is the message you sent will ever be saved because of the backup from the sent items from the sending company. In addition, direct marketing is a faster way that can enable an individual to reach the audience quickly and without many difficulties. In addition, the technique allows the firm to have personal communication with the clients hence getting better understanding of the customers’ needs. The strategy can allow the entrepreneur to include a message with more details about the products thus enabling the customer to have proper comprehension of company products. Moreover, direct marketing can give one the ability to decide timely on when to approach the customers. Disadvantages of direct marketing Direct marketing has some shortcomings that make it not that effective. For instance, it is time consuming because one will have to wait for adequate feedback from the person sending the information. In addition, the kind of catalog contains more product photos and colors therefore making more costly as compared to any other marketing strategy. Moreover, the strategy is only reliable to people who frequently visit the web site therefore making it a disadvantage to people who don’t rely on websites for daily updates. b. What are benefits can direct marketing skills bring to the management of digital marketing activity. Development of new ideas As a marketing director, it would be your role to plan the best ways of promoting your employers products, services or brands. If you like proper organization and communicating messages and ideas, this could be the best task for you. You will need to have the management skills to lead and motivate a team. In addition, you will need to be able to handle pressure well while working under tight deadlines .therefore, to get this job you will need experience as a marketing executive. However, as a marketing manager, you will have to plan for the direction of all marketing activities and expertise to think of new ways of delivering your message to the customer. You could be in charge of various campaigns, managing and motivating people in the marketing team to make sure that the campaign strategy meets its set target. For instance, the marketing management of Tesco has come up with come up with new strategies on how to attract its clients. The management has come up with techniques of posting different features of its products in the social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The marketing strategies will enable the company to meet many clients within a short period. That is; the management of direct marketing will be able to plan properly and direct its activities in order to boost the sales volume at any particular time. For instance, Tesco multinational grocery is always increasing production of its products during hot seasons and winter times to fully meet its clients demand. Direct marketing skills has also helped in the management of digital marketing in the sense that, it has helped to understand on how to motivate and retain the client. Keeping the customer means that the company will win the loyalty of that particular client. For instance, the tom’s shoe is a company that produces shoes. The company has the strategy of retaining its customers through offering an extra pair of a child shoe if you buy off the adult shoe. Moreover, it helped in the enhancement of analytical skills in digital marketing. The management of digital marketing will help develop adequate analytical skills within the firm. That is, from various analysis and comparison of data, an individual will be able to learn how to compute the statistics online. In addition, individuals will also learn how to use various marketing tools to convince an individual to buy the company’s product. In addition, sales agents will also be able to know how to change customer’s perception towards a particular product. That is they can either rebrand the product or come up with a different name to the product that is easy to pronounce and remember. Direct marketing will also aid in generating new ideas. From the daily interaction with clients, an individual will be able to learn new things that will assist in creating a competent marketing strategy. Therefore, this will help the management of digital marketing to know what to offer to the clients at any particular time. In addition, it will help the management to be very innovative while producing its products. For instance, the Sainsbury Company came up with a new strategy of packing their drinks and other food materials in a more portable container. Therefore, it will give the consumers chance to carry the drink without a lot of difficulties while traveling. It also brings benefits to management of digital marketing activities in the following categories; Management The skill enables the management of a particular enterprise to plan adequately its activities, coordinate the production process of the products as well as developing good management customer relations. For instance, Waitrose retail ensures that it produces enough food and other products to meet its increasing customer demands adequately. Loyalty and customers It is the attitude that the retailer as well the customer has towards one another. Because of valuing the customer a lot, Sainsbury’s Nectar card introduced redeemable discounts to motivate its clients. It made customers loyal to the company and even referred their friends and family to the company. It is because of the quality of the products they receive and personalization of the relationship between the retailer and the customer. Business performance Because of a frequent visit to the company by the clients as well as increasing demand for company products, there will be an increase in business profitability as well as meeting customer demands. In addition, due to increasing in profits and clients the company will be able to expand by opening other branches. For example, the research shows that both Sainsbury’s Nectar card scheme and Waitrose Company had to open more branches because of the daily increase in the number of customers. Conclusion Most organizations are now employing direct marketing to meet its products because of its efficiency and effectiveness. However, companies have to lay down clear strategies in order to attain its set goals. Almost 90% of the firms across the world are currently using direct marketing to attract and retain customers in the business. In conclusion, direct and digital marketing are a reliable marketing strategy that needs proper implementation in order to maximize profits and minimize expenditures. 2. Consultancy (2012) has reported that marketing budgets for 2012 will show that digital marketing remains a priority for the majority of companies. 68% of client-side respondents report increases in their digital resources over the next 12 months. In contrast, only 16% plan to increase their traditional offline budget. At a time when marketing budgets, in general, are stable or even decreasing, why are companies choosing to increase their spend on digital marketing? Companies are increasing their sales on digital marketing because of the trust that many people have on social media services. In addition, most companies are increasing their budget on digital marketing because it will enable it reduces on unnecessary expenditure like transportation cost that would have been used in road shows and promotions. Moreover, companies are increasing their budget in digital marketing because of stiff competition. Most firms are trying to win more clients in the marketing industry, and therefore they need a reliable platform to market themselves properly. Almost over 60% of the firms across the globe are using Facebook to market their products because of it is reliable and cost effective. Companies are also increasing their budget on digital marketing in order to expand their area of operation. That is, with digital marketing, most organizations will be able to reach many clients within a very short period and thus meeting their needs as well as attaining maximum profit. In addition, firms are increasing their budget in digital marketing because it has more advantages as compared to any other method of marketing. For instance, digital marketing enables timely communication between the supplier and the consumer thus leading to the appropriate production of products. On the other hand, traditional marketing will consume a lot of time for one will have to confirm the actual specification of products before shipment thus delaying production and consuming more time as well. Moreover, digital marketing will also help the firm to have a direct one on one communication with the client thus enhancing the reliability in production and delivery of the products to the client. 3. Why do brands fail to achieve customer engagement? Brands fail to make customer engagement because of various reasons. First, the brand will not engage the client if it has a poor description. Almost 95% of the clients prefer the products that have clear prescriptions or labeling for it explains to them how to use the products. Moreover, packaging of the products also has a better contribution towards customer engagement. Most clients prefer the products that are well packaged. Packaging of the products means that the product will have good protection and will be saving for consumption. For example, innocent smoothies are a company that produces fruit juice to its consumers. However, the products of the company did not engage the clients because of the packaging as well as the quality of the product. Unlike Sainsbury Company, it came up with quality products that are in proper packages with appropriate prescriptions that can be sold online. As a result, it enables Sainsbury products to attract and retain customer’s more than innocent smoothies. Therefore, the products with reduced packaging and description will not engage the customer. Moreover, the comparison of the quality of the product with its specification will also contribute a lot to customer engagement. How does a correctly implemented integrated direct and digital marketing communication strategy develop customer engagement with the brand? Proper implementation of integrated direct and digital marketing communication will boost customer engagement to the brand in the sense that, it will offer adequate information about the product to the customer. For instance, Innocent smoothies are a firm that specializes in producing fruit juice. But because of their consistent nature of the product, Tesco company took over them by coming up with various products and introducing Tesco club card that enable individuals to easily acquire products. In addition, digital marketing wins over customer engagement because it will provide timely feedback in relation to the customer inquiries. Digital marketing also entails frequent post about the shipment of the product to the customer. Therefore, the customer will be engaged to the product because of the reliability of its supply. Finally, the quality of the product is the primary objective that the client views in the project. The customer will only stick to the product that its quality is in line with the prescriptions received through digital communication. However, the product should also seek to engage its consumers in order to increase its consumption thereby increasing is value and profitability. Should brands seek to engage all their customers? Brands should not try to engage all of their customers. Instead, you need to segment your customer’s base and invest heavily on in customers that provide higher revenues. That is; it should be in line with Pareto’s that states that 20%of the customers are accountable for the 80% of the total income. The brand is the name or sign that identifies the product. Therefore, the name of the product needs to be engaging the client. The producer should design the product in a way that it is pleasing to the eyes of the consumer. With proper branding, an individual will be able to differentiate company’s product from other products. Users view the brand as an important part of the product and, therefore, the product should highly seek to engage their customers. For instance, the coca-cola brand has proper labels that enable clients to differentiate it from other related products like Pepsi. However, in order for a brand to properly engage the client, it should have proper labeling as well as packaging of the product. 4. Direct and Digital Communication Managers must be able to access customer insight in order to plan and implement effective marketing communication strategies. Which processes, technical capabilities and staff training and skills must an organization implement tool in order to generate, capture and use greater customer insight in its direct and digital marketing communications planning? Process 1. Identification of customers demands or available market Fist the management should identify the need for producing a particular product. It should also carry out an analysis on the attitude of clients in relation to the product and its consumption rate. 2. Production of the product After identification of the need, then the enterprise will now have to produce the product that will meet customers demand. The management should ensure that the product is of high quality and has proper prescriptions. 3. Strategy development The Company will now have to generate a reliable marketing strategy that will enable the product to penetrate the market readily. The organization will have to decide the kind of social media to use to reach the clients. 4. Delivery of products The organization should come up with a reliable distribution channel that will enable quick shipment of the product or service from the point of origin to the point of consumption. Technical capabilities The management should be in a position to settle technical problems or challenges that might be stumbling block from its set goals and objectives. The organization should be capable to make hard decisions that will enable it to utilize its products properly. For instance, the management of an organization should be able to make a decision on whether to buy or make a product. Staff training An organization will have to conduct on the job training to its employees. That is; the management of a particular organization will have to find an expert in the marketing field to train organizational employees. Training will enable employees to improve their skills and expertise thus effectively and efficiently meeting customer demands, as well as organizational set goals. What are the main challenges for a Direct and Digital Marketing Communications Manager in producing great customer insight? However, the retention direct and digital marketing also has some challenges that one need to put into consideration. First, retaining a client who is in another country will be very expensive in terms of communication and deliveries of products (Blythe, 2006). In addition, there are upcoming competitors who can use transactional marketing, as well as relationship marketing, and thus becoming a threat to the company’s client. In conclusion, retention is a very reliable strategy that an organization can use to win over large share in the market. However, it has some significant challenges that need to be in consideration to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. C. generating customer insights In business to business transaction, the manager can make customer insights by analyzing the buying behavior of the clients. In addition, the manager will know the different types of consumers hence preparing adequate products to meet their daily demand adequately. For instance, the research shows that the management of Sainsbury’s is increasing the customer insights through the discounts it offers to the clients who use nectar cards. The research indicates that each card holder receive 2 points for every pound in each transaction. With this technique, the company has attracted more than 17.7 people who are currently part of the scheme. On the other hand, Waitrose a chain of British supermarkets is offering its clients high-quality food making them loyal customers to the retailer. The reach shows that the management of Waitrose reaches its customers insight through the provision of quality and affordable services. 5. Explore the impact of the research findings for direct and digital marketing retention communication strategy. Loyalty One can measure customer loyalty in various perspectives. First, the commitment of a particular client can be measured in terms of the retention rate. Moreover, it can be measured in terms of attitude that the client has towards the products of the retailer. It is a strategy that most firms employ to expand its marketing boundaries. The companies are making their efforts to attract and retain clients in the business at whatever cost. For instance, the research shows that, Tesco club card is increasing its budget by 10% in order to win the loyalty of its clients. The 10% is to increase the discounts that it offers to new customers, as well as the existing clients. In addition, the amount will cater for the provision of vouchers to motivate the clients of the club and increase new subscribers. Retention of customers will also come as a result of loyalty to the retailer and the client. Loyalty is simply the attitude that the customer has in relation to the firm as well as its products and services. In addition, loyalty can be in the form of frequency of the client into the firm as well as the level of consumption of company products. The research shows that customers always prefer to buy their products in any retail shop that they receive quality products, as well as good public relations from the management of the retail store. The findings also indicate that the strategy will help the enterprise to strategies on its marketing techniques in order to win in the marketing completion. Moreover, the statistics from the study will also show the organization on what product to produce to products that will fast move in the market. That is, it will help the company to balance between product demand and its supply. For instance, Tesco produces 25% extra of its products in order to meet customers demand at any particular time. In conclusion, proper employee retention is as a result of the provision of quality services and products. In addition, the research indicates that customers prefer buying products in their daily retail because of the quality, prices as well as the attitude that they have towards a particular retail shop. Benefits of using loyalty programs The loyalty program will enable an enterprise to increase the spending of the current customers. In addition, it allows one to acquire new clients in the business. Moreover, it also helps improve the natural churn rate of the clients in an enterprise. On the other hand, loyalty helps to shift spending to higher margins in terms of profits. 6. Gadgetsonline.com is developing its database. Write a report outlining the key considerations and opportunities the company should take into account in developing its Database. The database is a structured kind of data contained in a computer more so the one that is accessible in many ways. On the other hand, marketing database is a detailed interrelated customer prospect that enable timely and as well as accurate retrieval use, the use of that particular data is to boost marketing goals of an enterprise. Gadgetsonline.com is the website of the company that will be selling gadgets especially electronic gadgets to its customers. The database the company will develop will contain many data items from both the customer details and device details. What the data should capture Devices data will include product details like prices, manufacturer of the item, the quantity in stock, manufacture dates and expiry dates, distribution channels and various campaign strategies. The customer side of the database will contain several categories that capture customer details. The types include the primary and secondary data. Primary data contains names and addresses of the customer. Secondary data It contains customer demographic details, lifestyle information and geographic details and profiles. Performance data It is a database that contains customer purchase behavior details like customer response, the amount of money spent at any given time and products each customer buys. In addition, it will provide marketing campaign response data like which campaign has a positive response or negative. External data It contains customer data from external marketing agencies. The data contains a list of product bought, rented or acquired from other vendors. Ensuring quality of data captured requires the following database management stages; Managing data sources All the data from the different sources are not essential to marketing, and therefore data that is relevant to marketing should be categorized and stored. Therefore, accounts data, sales data, quality control data and external data should be standardized before being stored. Managing data entry It involves verification of each data entry, removing all duplicate data, merging several entries and suppressing other files. Managing the database It should be in an external environment, focusing on its security as well as the people who have access to its operation. It requires keeping the databases up to date especially details like customer contacts, geographic data and cleaning data regularly to remove outdated data entries. Managing applications It will entail selection of accurate data from a particular database, the output as well as its response. Moreover, it ensures that all the feedback given to the customer on several platforms like email or SMS is very accurate, and the information sent to customers are very specific. Legal issues The system should adhere to data protection Act 1998 that is the British code of advertising. In addition, the legal issues to consider while developing and using the database are applied in data usage, customer communication, and sales promotion. 7. Assess the role of marketing research in guiding direct marketing decision-making. Will direct marketing, with its dependence on customer databases, ever replace conventional research techniques? Marketing research involves acquiring sales, customer demographic data, purchase behaviors and analysis of the data in ways that will guide a company to make sales decisions. Direct marketing decisions aim to defend company’s market share by retaining its existing customers. Retention of customers is done by studying their lifestyle, demographic data that a company acquires through internal or external marketing research. Other aims of direct marketing are to ensure there are adequate customer’s satisfaction and proper communication through marketing and product decisions. Marketing decisions require segmentation of products according to specific customer purchases. Purchase history of clients will be stored in a database generated by studying the history of current customers or acquiring the data from marketing research companies that sell the data to companies. The study will determine what prices have been favorable to customers for certain regions. Marketing research also provides data that can be analyzed to attract new customers to the study of core products a company is offering and providing purchasing incentives that will be favorable. The data from marketing research will also give the company insights into what incentives they can add to attract new customers. Marketing research is, therefore, a good way of acquiring customer data because they are always researchers for specific purposes, and they provide respondents anonymity that will not bring any legal issues. Marketing research also ensures representativeness. Direct marketing is gaining a lot of popularity and has overtaken conventional or traditional marketing research methods that rely on face-to-face focus groups. The advantages of traditional methods are that it taps and gauges customer emotions and palpability. Traditional research it still very valid and useful. Direct marketing will eclipse traditional research because they are currently not just monologs of isolated data copies but are involving direct dialogs between the customer and the sales companies. The advent of new technologies like the Internet, direct communications, email, rich media content for advertising, research engines and savvy marketer have all change the perspectives of conventional research techniques. Email can offer customized email to specific customers while search engines provide statistics that can be attached to particular persons. Rich media offers companies the abilities to create adverts that provide quality customer interaction. More importantly the new technologies are making marketing research very cheap to conduct, and nowadays there is customer interaction through email and instant follow-ups. All these will be done with a high accuracy of the data acquired. 8. Discuss how the following media can work together in an integrated direct and digital marketing strategy. Direct mail and email voice and SMS social media (select one channel with which you are familiar) you must illustrate your answers with examples Media is one of the channels that an organization can use to market its products and their prices to the client. However, there are many social media platforms that an organization can use to meet its clients at any particular time. However, in order to have an effective marketing channel, the organization will have to pick on reliable marketing tool in order to give room for efficient communication between the company and the clients. Moreover, there are organizations that use the integration of more than one social media platform. For instance, the use of direct mail and email voice at the same time will enable reliable communication between the company and its clients. How direct email and voice mail works Direct email and email Direct mail provides an individual with quick notification from the supplier. The notification is majorly the short descriptions about the product. It will help an individual to know what to expect from the producer. On the other hand email is detailed prescription about the product; the email can contain the pictures as well as payment details of the product. The two channels work together in the sense that, an individual will receive a direct mail in his phone and be able to see prescriptions of the emails or the summary of product details. After that, an individual will now have to find a reliable gadget like a laptop to read full details of the product. Voice and SMS The voice and SMS work together in that, an individual can receive a voice notification on the current products available with the retailer or the producer. However, the voice information will be helpful in case the phone that the client does not have a god screen to enable him to read the product details accurately. However, with real phone or computer, an individual will read the description of the goods sent via SMS and be able to understand it correctly. In addition, the both voice and SMS can be retained by an individual for future reference. The channel that I am familiar with is the use Facebook. It is one of the most reliable marketing strategies that an enterprise can rely on to market its products. I prefer this social platform because it is quick, and it can reach many people across the world in a few minutes. In addition, it is not very expensive as compared to traditional marketing. Also, the technique offers the client an opportunity to inquire about anything in the company and receive instant feedback. List of references Blythe, J. (2006). Marketing. London: SAGE Publications. Read More