Digital Marketing Strategy of Samsung and Apple - Case Study Example

Digital Marketing Presents Opportunities and Challenges to Organisations Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Digital Marketing 3 Literature Review 4 Plan and Implementation of Digital Marketing & Business Model 4 Digital Marketing Strategy of Samsung and Apple 6 Comparing Digital Marketing Strategy of Apple and Samsung 6 Conclusion 7 Digital Marketing Concept of integrated marketing communication has drastically changed in recent years. Effectiveness of print advertisement and television commercial has decreased due to evolution of digital marketing. In today’s world, a small firm can outplay big players of industry by taking help of viral video. Television commercial, radio broadcast and print media work as one way inert broadcast model in contrast to digital marketing. Digital marketing provides long cherished interactive platform or two way communication channel to marketers. This study will try to analyze digital marketing from the view point of primary and secondary aspects. Primary aspects will be analyzing present opportunity and challenges for organization to implement digital marketing. Secondary aspects will be analyzing implementation plan and success for digital marketing in two organisations. Social media marketing has particular business model and this study will try to focus on business model of digital marketing. Many companies use digital marketing as a cost effective way to create awareness among customers. IBM uses more than hundred blogs to generate awareness about their products among customers. Small business organization uses social media to counterbalance integrated marketing communication mix used by big players. Although digital marketing is going strong but still it is in its early stage of evolution. There is ample opportunity for digital marketers to use the technique in larger context (Zarrella, 2009, p. 3-10). Understanding social technologies in terms of social relevance, social media and social networking will be a part of this study. In the later part of the report, the essay will try to figure out digital marketing strategy for two renowned organizations. The intention of the study is to analyze digital marketing from the view point of technical aspect, application and structural business model (McKinsey, 2007). Literature Review Digital marketing is a multi dimensional concept. Digital marketing concept can directly influence consumer behaviour. In 2005, kramarae has pointed out the psychological consequence of social media marketing. According to kramarae many users use social media to create fantasy world where they can create virtual images of themselves. According to the research scholar, people use social networking sites for creating new friends and contacting the existing ones. Digital marketers have the opportunity to tap down these social media users by creating customized advertisement to lure them. In 2005, Smith and Chaffey have described digital marketing as a way to achieve marketing objective. According to them, digital marketing can be used for both product and services and the model is a cost effective way to promote product portfolio among target customers. In 2003, Eid has established a theoretical definition for e- commerce. According to Eid, e-commerce is trading of goods with the help of internet. Digital marketing concept is a sub part of e- commerce model. Business model of digital marketing is influenced by traditional e- commerce model. Understanding the business model of digital marketing will help the marketers to use the medium in a profitable manner (Gohary, 2010). In 2003, Reinartz and Kumar proposed a relationship between email marketing efforts by the company with customer life time value in their research paper. Digital marketing can be used to increase the customer loyalty value and companies have the opportunity to increase the frequency of email marketing to earn loyal customer base in future. In 2005, Hargrave tried to figure out benefits of digital marketing by giving example of online promotional technique used by Nike (Nike launched online fashion show for youngsters where they can post their own photo in the website and with this strategy they intended to create brand awareness among young generation (Merisavo, 2006). Plan and Implementation of Digital Marketing & Business Model Companies need to integrate digital marketing plan with exiting marketing plan. A separate digital marketing plan is needed for organization extensively focussing on online promotion. A digital marketing plan is able to influence non marketing elements like human resource pool of the organization. Step wise planning process is described in the following section. 1- Organization creates annual business plan. 2- They decide online marketing plan based on market research data. Demand estimation is an important part in the phase. 3- Short term plan includes designing the website and creating campaign micro site. 4- Long term plan includes selecting right digital marketing tools and implementing the tool to build traffic. Companies can use various tools like e- CRM, social networking sites like Linkedin, Facebook or twitter, web analytics to create efficient digital marketing strategy (Chaffey, 2008, p. 156). 5- According to Scott Klososky, company can integrate digital marketing with mobile technology to connect with geographically distant clients. 6- Various systematic tools like pay per click promotion, search engine optimization and traditional advertising are used to build online traffic for particular digital marketing campaign. 7- In the final step organizations measure the success ratio for the adopted digital marketing by using qualitative and quantitative techniques. Crowd sourcing has emerged as latest trend in the field of digital marketing. The model helps to increase internet readership and many organizations use it to train employees. Employees can learn new techniques by using crowd sourcing without taking help from external trainer. Companies can save huge amount of money by using crowd sourcing because they do not need to invest large chunk of money on training and development program designed for employees (Financial Executive International, 2012). Digital marketing is still not well accepted in contrast to four distinctive models (advertising, sales promotion, public relation, direct marketing) of integrated marketing communication and it is a challenge for digital marketers to establish online marketing as essential part of existing marketing communication model (Decker, 2011). Internet business model can be described in the following manner. 1- Brokerage Model- this model brings buyers and sellers together in online marketplace and broker charges a percentage of commission, example- eBay, ChemConnect, PayPal etc. 2- Advertising Model- advertising model includes web advertising via website, email, browsers and promoting brands through digital medium and this model is applicable when number of users is large. 3- Infomediary Model- database about consumer purchase pattern, gender ratio, etc is sold to companies by others and this model is mainly acts as market information provider. 4- Merchant Model- in this model, retailers operate their business in online mode and retailers create a virtual marketplace for buyers, example- Amazon.com. 5- Community Model- this model is based on loyalty and internet usage of a customer and customers can create an online community to share information, example- Torrentz.com. 6- Subscription Model- there is periodic (monthly or daily) service charge for the users and they get paid membership in this model, examples- America Online and Classmates. Digital Marketing Strategy of Samsung and Apple Samsung used viral marketing to promote their life style oriented Note PCs. The technique worked brilliantly for them to create awareness among online community. They used various online portals like yahoo, msn to promote demo test and concept. Designed banners are used by them to lure customers to go through demo test and participate in contest. The company asked online community members to tell their friends about the contest and win bonus point. More than fifty thousand contestant participated in the contest to win Samsung Note PCs. Samsung also designed an online questionnaire for customers to know their feedback on the product. They improved the functionality of the product by taking suggestion from the feedback (Digital Market Asia, 2011). Apple Inc. has created a distinct brand image in the mind of consumers by offering uniquely designed products enabled with state of art technology. They created online communities for iPhone in various social networking sites like linkedin, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter to create awareness among users. They also used free tools like Google Alert, Google AdWord and Yahoo pipes to increase the penetration level. The strategy was very much successful in terms reach and frequency of communication. Comparing Digital Marketing Strategy of Apple and Samsung Apple Samsung The company has created campaign to promote iPhone. The company has created campaign to promote Note PCs. Target customers are corporate users and early adopters. Note PCS is targeted to customers in the age group of 25 to 45. The company used social networking sites and free tools to generate awareness among customers. Samsung used yahoo and msn to promote the product. Target customer base is more than 0.4 million. Target customers base is more than fifty thousand. Online forum is used to promote the product. Online contest and distributing questionnaire are used as promotional techniques. There is no fix duration for the campaign and customers can access online forums in regular basis. It was a month long promotional activity. Conclusion Digital marketers have the opportunity to increase efficiency of existing model by improving communication frame work. They need to select right business model for inculcate profit. In conclusion we can say that the web based marketing model has the ability to redefine the definition of integrated marketing communication in near future. In this writer’s opinion, organizations need to think seriously about crowd sourcing to improve bottom line and the process can be used by them to design employee empowerment model (Pride, Hughes and Kapoor, 2011, p. 295). References Chaffey, D., 2008. Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education. Decker, K.M., 2011. Integrated Marketing Communication Plan. [pdf] Available at: [Accessed 14 September 2012]. Digital Market Asia., 2011. Samsung Viral Marketing. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 September 2012]. Financial Executive International., 2012. Cover Story: Social Technology - The Next Frontier. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 September 2012]. Gohary, H.E., 2010. E-Marketing - A literature Review from a Small Businesses perspective. [pdf] Available at: [Accessed 14 September 2012]. McKinsey., 2007. How Companies are Marketing Online: A McKinsey Survey. [pdf] Available at: < http://www.sata.ca/file/HowCompaniesAreMarketingOnline.pdf> [Accessed 14 September 2012]. Merisavo, M., 2006. The Effect of Digital Marketing Communication on Customer Loyalty: An Integrative Model and Research Proposition. [pdf] Available at: [Accessed 14 September 2012]. Pride, W.M., Hughes, R.J. and Kapoor, J.R., 2011. Business. Stamford, Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Zarrella, D., 2009. The Social Media Marketing Book. Sebastopol, California: OReilly Media, Inc. Read More