E-business Marketing Analysis of Arnott Biscuits - Case Study Example

E-business Marketing Project – Arnott Biscuits Name Class Unit Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Executive summary 3 Introduction and background 4 The business concept 5 Situational analysis 6 SWOT analysis 6 Strengths 6 Weakness 7 Opportunity 7 Threats 7 Business online marketing model 8 Marketing plan objectives 8 Evaluation of the campaign metrics 9 Marketing strategy 11 Segmentation 11 Target segments 11 Positioning 12 Value proposition 12 Brand strategy 13 Service delivery strategy 13 Online representation 13 Multichannel integration strategy 13 Support service 14 Critical success factors 14 Content quality 14 Building trust and relationship 14 Involvement 15 Integration with other marketing platforms 15 Search engine optimisation 15 Online advertising 15 Social media tactics 16 Recommendations and conclusion 16 References 17 Executive summary The growth of internet has made social media to be one of the leading platforms in marketing. Social media acts as a medium to socialise and connect with prospective customers. This marketing strategy plan is based on Arnott’s biscuits social media marketing. Despite having social media presence, Arnott’s strategy is weak. The company relies on a YouTube and twitter especially during new product launch. This plan aims at strengthening the social media marketing strategy for Arnott’s. The plan proposes a strategy where different social media applications and channels are used. The plan aims at positioning Arnott’s as healthy and quality brand through viral marketing. The proposed channels are; YouTube, Facebook, twitter, instagram, snap chat, and blogs. The plan will strengthen the current channels and add new ones. Use of metrics which includes; brand search volume, lead growth, brand sentiment, inbound links and klout score are to be utilised. Value proposition and service delivery strategies are explained in depth in the new plan. The critical success factors proposed are; quality content, building relationship and trust, involvement, integration with other marketing channels, search engine optimisation and online advertisement. It is highly recommendable for Arnott’s to adopt the proposed plan in order to strengthen their social media marketing. The firm is expected to use the social media appropriately through use of professionals. Introduction and background Arnott’s biscuits started as a small bakery in Newcastle north of Sydney. The bakery produced bread, biscuits and pies for the local market and the ship crews which docked in the area port to load coal. The company was able to rise from their humble beginning to become Australia largest biscuits manufacturer. Over the last 150 years, Arnott’s has become one of the favourite brand and part of Australia history. The company products includes; Iced VoVo, Tiny Teddy, Vita-Weat, Shapes and SAO (Arnott’s biscuits, 2015). Arnott’s has been providing over 2,400 jobs in the Australian market. There are also employees in other countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and japan. Most of the ingredients are sourced from Australia farmers. Arnott’s has invested a lot in the Australian biscuit facilities. This includes automation in the Virginia bakery which is one of the largest robotic systems globally. The company has been expanding rapidly with their global strategy. At the moment, Arnott’s Australian made biscuits have been shipped to more than 40 countries which includes; New Zealand, Tahiti, United states, and japan (Arnott’s biscuits, 2015). There have been rise in the wave of social media use by a lot of firms. Social media has been one of the best opportunities to market products. The number of consumers using social media has been increasing based on rise in internet penetration. Social media marketing and the firms using it has been becoming more sophiscated. There has been an increase in use of social media tools such as YouTube, Facebook, instagram and twitter. Arnott’s has been having a social media presence. Arnott’s used the social media in campaigning for new products such as Tim Tam Chocolicious Bites. This involved use of interactive polls. Consumers were allowed to vote in real-time. The firm has also been partnering with popular YouTube stars that have experience in marketing especially in marketing shapes. The investment in social media by Arnott’s has been successful to some extent. Despite this, there is more room for improvement. Arnott’s social media marketing program needs to be improved (Arnott’s biscuits, 2015). The business concept The concept proposed is use of social media for marketing all Arnott’s products. At the moment, Arnott’s has been using social media to promoted selected product. Only a few of Arnott’s products are marketed using the social media. This makes the social media marketing strategy for Arnott’s to be weak. The company also utilises a few number of the social media tools relying mostly on the YouTube and twitter. There are a lot of reasons for the company to strengthen and improve their social media strategy. Overreliance on the YouTube denies the company a great opportunity. The firm have over relied on YouTube which may deny them a chance to market their products through other channels. Arnott’s have already expanded globally and their customers keep on growing. The firm presence globally is great hence the need to utilise all channels that makes it easy to reach a wide audience. Making use of wide range of social media tools makes it possible to reach a wide audience. Research shows that social media strategy is low cost and additional of social media channels will not have a great impact on the company marketing costs (Saravanakumar and SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). The marketing campaigns for Shape and Tim Tam chocolate bites have already been a successful marketing campaigns. This makes it prudent to carry out other marketing campaigns that will make it possible for the firm to reach a wider audience. The company requires improving their customer interactions through full use of social media. Situational analysis Australia biscuit manufacturing industry has been experiencing slow growth. The industry revenue in 2015 was estimated at $845 million and provides employment for over 5,000 people. Despite the slow growth, the biscuit manufacturing industry has been becoming bigger. Arnott’s is ranked at number 392 among the top 2000 companies in Australia. The firm was able to gain $ 1,041, 153,000 million in 2015. Arnott’s has been able to survive in the industry due to their improved products and marketing. Arnott’s also maintains good relationship with the suppliers who are farmers. This makes it possible for Arnott’s to have good ingredients as compared to the competitors. Arnott’s has been able to defeat the competitors and retain the position of market leader for a long time (Ibis World, 2015). SWOT analysis Strengths Arnott’s is a market leader in the Australian biscuit industry Arnott’s has a wide range of products as compared to the competitors The company has the ability to respond and anticipate for market trends Arnott’s knows what the customer needs and has been making delicious products for decades Arnott’s has established large factory and workers The company has the best ingredients near their locations Arnott’s is a strong brand name in Australia and also globally Weakness Has been facing problems from the competitors Collecting feedback and information is a major weak point for the company The company is smaller than some of the competitors such as nestle The company prices are in most cases higher than the competitors Prices of some of their products are not competitive Lack of a strong social media strategy Opportunity The company has great opportunity in expanding their operations in Asia Pacific region The company has a chance to revitalise itself in the Australian market To gain improvement in spending efficiency, the firm can upgrade their systems. Threats The rising costs of commodities. Agricultural commodities prices have been on rise which can affect the company profitability. The pressure from the competitors is strong making it a threat The higher prices for Arnott’s products may make them lose customers Poor social media strategy puts the firm in a bad competitive position in the market. In the biscuits industry, Arnott’s competitors include Goodman, Nestle, Housebrand, paradise and Kraft among others. Housebrand has a market share of 10.40% compared with the Arnott’s share of 58.8% in Australia. Paradise and Kraft commands a market share of 5.68% and 5.57% respectively in Australia. The rest are Goodman Fielder H.I and Manassen who have 2.57% and 2.14% respectively. Smith’s company lags with a share of 0.1% in the market (Ibis World, 2015). Business online marketing model The company has been increasing their marketing budget over the years. This is due to the increasing competition in the market. This was evidenced in Arnott’s recent marketing expenditure where they had to use extra funds in Tim Tams marketing. The company was ranked as the 12th biggest spender in the marketing budget of 2014 and 32nd place in 2013 (Ibis World, 2015). The company spends a lot of funds in marketing a new product during its launch. With the rise of social media, YouTube and twitter has been the main tools used by Arnott’s. Despite this, there are a lot of social media and web 2.0 tools that have been use in marketing in the industry (Berthon, Pitt, Plangger and Shapiro, 2012). There are Facebook, twitter, YouTube, instagram, blogs and applications (Rust, Moorman and Bhalla, 2010). This makes the current online marketing model weak since the firm underutilises the social media marketing. Marketing plan objectives The mission statement for Arnott’s is to gain recognition worldwide and sell their biscuits to all types of customers. Arnott’s wants to market their products and increase sales worldwide. The goal that is contained in this mission can be divided into the following objectives 1. During 2016, all Arnott’s biscuits will be advertised through social media to increase the firm marketing reach. 2. Arnott’s will utilise all social media channels and applications in 2016 to market their products. This will involve using twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and instagram among other during the next 12 months. 3. In a period of 12 months, Arnott’s marketing campaign will have enabled the firm to capture a larger market share. The investment on social media marketing will be covered in the short time after the launch of the social media marketing campaign. Evaluation of the campaign metrics Social media measuring is a based on the organisational needs and objectives. The main goal of social media use is to boost the customer engagement and create brand awareness (Tuten, 2008). Despite the fact that social media shares and followers can give some information, there are other metrics that are useful (Sterne, 2010). The brand search volume, lead growth, brand sentiment, inbound links and klout score are able to give more insight (Blanchard, 2011). Research has shown that customers who are exposed to the social media have high chances of searching for brands in the social media (Rust, Moorman and Bhalla, 2010). This makes it vital to measure the search volume which many brands fail to monitor. There are various tools that can be used to measure the search volume. These include the Google insights and Google trends. These tools are used in comparing the search volume of the firms brand and comparing it with the competitors. This will help Arnott’s determine their ability in creating engagement to consumers through the social media (Sterne, 2010). The number of social media followers and mentions is a useful indicator for brand awareness. It shows the firm ability to create lead to their sites (Creamer, 2011). Attribution programs can help more in determining whether the social media campaigns are able to lead to conversion growth. This includes tools such as Marketo or Converto. The tools are able to measure the social interactions, page visits and emails opens required for a prospect to become a customer (Rust, Moorman and Bhalla, 2010). The programs may also assign a relevant weight to each action to help in determining the role played by every action to conversion. This will help in determining whether the social campaign is performing well and help in allocating marketing resources (Creamer, 2011). Not all publicity contributes positively to the brand. Negative customers’ perceptions can damage the brand image. Social mention and Meltwater are vital in measuring the brand sentiments online (Saravanakumar and SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). The most vital thing is responding to the brand image when sentiments are negative. Inbound links are essential ranking factors. They help in determining the content popularity. This helps in tracking change in the link velocity based on the social media campaign. For example, the inbound links may increase after running a social media contest (Crain, 2011). Klout has been one of the most popular tools in determining and measuring the social media engagement (Sterne, 2010). It helps in determining whether the social media marketing efforts are leading to band recognition and higher perceived authority (Blanchard, 2011). Arnott’s will utilise the above tools in their social media campaigns. Marketing strategy Segmentation A study on market segmentation for Arnott’s biscuits shows four types of segments. The segments are; demographic, bahavorial, psychographic and niche segmentation. In the demographic segmentation, the biscuits are segmented based on the age where there are kids’ biscuits and those for mature people. There are also biscuits for youth. Income is also used based on the lower income and higher income. The biscuits by Arnott’s are for both genders. In bahavorial segmentation, the biscuits are segmented based on the benefits, user status, usage rate and occasions. The company has invested in healthy biscuits over the years due to rising health concerns. There are snack biscuits and chocolates for occasional purposes. Arnott’s has adopted themselves according to their global consumers. This has led to use of psychographic segmentation to come up with different product lines. Lastly, niche segmentation has been useful for people who want food characteristics in their biscuits. This has led to different biscuits being made to suit niche tastes and preference (Crain, 2011). Target segments Use of social media marketing has to target different market segments. Use of a single approach to all targets will lead to low uptake and hence wastage of efforts. The current target market includes children and adults. The chocolate flavoured biscuits are mostly aimed at children between the age of 6 yrs. and 12 yrs. There is also a youth target market. The target of women between the ages of 25 to 40 years is in the high class niche. This implies that the company has to use different social media marketing channels. Most of the youth are attracted to Facebook, twitter and instagram. This makes it vital to use these channels in marketing (Saravanakumar and SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). Most of the population globally has access to internet. The target market falls in the market segment that has high internet usage. For the kids, parents are able to use social media and get the product reviews. This will help in making the final purchase decision on the kid’s biscuits. Use of different social media marketing channels will make it possible to create viral marketing. It will be possible to reach a wide target market in a short time and in cost effective manner (Crain, 2011). Positioning Arnott’s will be positioned in the social media marketing as a manufacturer of healthy and cost effective biscuits. The company will be seen as a healthy alternative to the current market offerings. A suitable positioning statement will be: Arnott’s offers the consumers quality and healthy range of biscuits in the market. This is unlike the competitors who offer low quality biscuits at premium costs. Value proposition Customers purchasing Arnott’s biscuits seek healthy and quality biscuits. This may be caused by the rising health awareness among the consumers. Biscuits are in most cases taken as snacks in between the breaks. Most of the biscuits customers are repulsed by the high amount of sugar and fat. Most of the consumers are very keen on the ingredients to determine the nutrient content. For the Arnott’s customers, the products offer them health benefits. The social media platforms used makes it easy for the customers to access the required information about Arnott’s biscuits before making a purchase (Livingston, 2011). Brand strategy The marketing plan positions Arnott’s biscuits as healthy and quality biscuits as mentioned. The healthy aspect and quality are very important brand promise for Arnott’s. It is therefore recommendable that the social media strategy focuses mostly on quality and healthy aspect (Livingston, 2011). Service delivery strategy Online representation Arnott’s products are currently online in YouTube and twitter. The two channels have been used in the launch of the two brands Tim Tam and Shapes. The company website also shows all the products in offer. The Facebook presence advertises only Tim Tam. The new strategy will involve enhancing the current online presence in social media and addition of new social media platforms (Crain, 2011). Multichannel integration strategy To succeed in the modern social media marketing, use of different social networks is vital. Arnott’s will be required to use different social media channels. This is through establishing presence in different social applications (Livingston, 2011). The major applications to be used are Facebook, twitter, instagram, snap chat, and LinkedIn. This will involve determining the channels which target audience is likely to use. Most of the users have a Facebook and a twitter account. Research shows that Facebook photo has the capability to lead to 120% engagement as compared to use of text (Tuten, 2008). There is need to be cohesive and staying true to Arnott’s identity in all channels. In the website, there will be a single social media dashboard. This will allow engagement with users in a single interface (Creamer, 2011). Support service The social media strategy involves support for the Arnott’s customers. This is through use of experienced social media professionals (Stelzner, 2011). The social media will be utilised to create customer relationship through providing engaging content that is relevant to the brand. When coupled with a marketing plan, the social media will communicate and raise brand awareness to the untapped market. This will ensure that Arnott’s customers are offered the required support through the social media platforms (Crain, 2011). Critical success factors Content quality There will be use of quality content in marketing. This is due to fact that large numbers of followers are not an indicator of effectiveness (Stelzner, 2011). There is need to use quality content that generates conversation and engagement. The social media must be used to connect and communicate with customers to be effective in marketing (Crain, 2011). Building trust and relationship Marketing involves creating trust and long term relationship. This is through coming up with products that help the consumers in their problems. The marketing campaign will focus on long term effects. There will be use of engaging messages and a relationship which will create brand loyalty (Livingston, 2011). Involvement The executives will have to spend some of their time actively in the social media marketing. The firm must invite their customers to join the online community. This will involve posting the social media icons on the websites and giving discounts to new members. The firm must write engaging posts to the online community. These are posts which reflect humbleness and honesty (Livingston, 2011). Integration with other marketing platforms There is need for integration between the social media and main website. The social media will be linked with the website which will help in increasing the traffic. This will reduce cannibalisation of the company media platforms (Crain, 2011). Search engine optimisation Search engine is a major tool used by the consumers to find product information. Use of Google as a search engine is very common. This leads to the need of having search engine optimisation for the company. There will be use of professionals who will ensure that Google spiders and search algorithms are tuned for the firm social media presence (Livingston, 2011). Online advertising Use of Google ads will be utilised in the marketing campaigns. This will require Arnott’s to set aside adequate budget. YouTube adverts will be utilised in the most popular channels based on followers and viewership (Livingston, 2011). Social media tactics There is need for the company to employ a permanent professional on social media strategies. The professional will be accountable for blogging, using feeds, video sharing and social bookmarking. The firm has to engage actively on their YouTube channel and Facebook which has a lot of followers. It also involves using the social media channels in an interactive manner. This is through posting interactive videos and messages where customers are able to ask their queries and get instant answers. The use of twitter account must be active at all times. This will ensure a real-time communication between the firm and customers (Crain, 2011). Recommendations and conclusion The report recommends that Arnott’s improve their social media strategy during 2016. This is through engaging in multichannel platform where different social media channels are used. Arnott’s is also required to market all their products through social media instead of selective advertising. This project will succeed through integration of all social media channels to market all products. There is need for the firm to set aside revenue to employ a full time social media strategist. The professional will ensure that the firm has optimised their use of social media in advertising. Arnott’s should use the social media metrics to determine the success of their marketing campaign. Appropriate use of social media has a lot of potential for the firm marketing. The firm will have to improve their online presence through search engine optimisation. The effectiveness of the social media marketing will be determined by the content quality, involvement and integration with different media platforms. This is a strategy that will help in improving Arnott’s social media marketing strategy. References Arnott’s biscuits, 2015, about Arnott’s, Retrieved 27th December 2015 from http://www.arnotts.com.au/about-arnotts/ Berthon, P.R., Pitt, L.F., Plangger, K. and Shapiro, D., 2012. Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy. Business horizons, 55(3), pp.261-271. Blanchard, O. 2011. 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