Introduction
Effectiveness of E-marketing
The aim of this work based learning is to unfold the effectiveness of the e-marketing for the non-profit making organization in the United Kingdom. To begin with, it is important to note that Non-profit making organizations are organizations which provide goods and services to the consumers without the aim of making profit. The research paper shall review some of the existing literatures concerning e-marketing and its effectiveness to the non-profit organizations in U.K. Some of the areas of to be discussed include: effective website design and layout, its influence on consumer behaviour, how it improves competitive advantage and its effectiveness in customer relationship management. E-marketing refers to the application of marketing principles and techniques via the Internet. E-marketing has a fundamental role in any organisation.
During the past decades, internet marketing has become an important tool for marketing used by various organizations. Internet marketing has been growing explosively over the past decades in the United Kingdom.
Web analysis is important to a website's success. Google Analytics for analysing website statistics is a tool for business research and market research. It provides information such as the number of visitors to a website and the number of page views. It helps gauge traffic and popularity trends which is useful for market research and optimising web usage. Google Analytics is a hosted web analytics Software as a service by Google.
Research shows that the application of internet as a marketing tool has been on the rise in U.K. It is also in record that the number of companies and other organizations such as the non-profit making organizations that create web presence in order to get in touch with their clients has been dramatically increasing over time in the United Kingdom. This has been attributed to the high presence of people visiting social sites. In order to find out how effective internet marketing is in U.K, it is crucial that we analyse the following as used by the Google analytics.
- Visits - The number of times the visitors has been to the site
- Bounce Rate - The percentage of single-page visits
- Entrances - This metric identifies the number of entrances to the site
- Exits - This metric identifies the number of exits from the site.
- Time on Page - This field indicates how long a visitor spent on a particular page or set of pages, in the website.
- Page views - This field indicates the total number of page views for the site when applied over the selected dimension.
Actually, research shows that the use of internet as a marketing tool in the United Kingdom has increased significantly over the past years. The following table shows the number of visits made on the social sites if the data given by the Google analytic is anything to go by.
Monthly statistic Year 2010 and 2011
Despite internet being a new trend in marketing, it is surprising that it has been accepted by broad consumer segment for various purposes. For instance, the internet have been accepted as a means of delivering information about products and services offered by a given business organization. It has also been accepted as a way of initiating purchases of products by various consumers. According to Reibstein and David (2002), approximately 30% of the citizens who live in the United Kingdom use internet to search for the products and services information. Consequently, approximately 37% of the citizens use internet to purchase their products.
The researches done so far concerning the effectiveness of the internet marketing in the non-profit making organizations have yielded many important findings. Among all those studies, the internet has been seen an advertising medium, communication platform, understanding consumer behaviour, medium for self learning theory and a marketing channel. However, the fundamental purpose of this paper is to review some of the existing studies regarding some findings of some aspects of internet marketing in non-profit organizations and to provide direction for further studies in the area.
Effectiveness of internet marketing for non-profit organizations
In order to completely analyse the effectiveness of the internet marketing, it is prudent that we analyse it through the following headlines.
Internet as a marketing tool
The success of the internet as a marketing tool solely depends on the advantages that it can offer compared to other marketing systems available. Many researchers have compared the use of internet and other marketing system from different perspectives. In the United Kingdom, the following are some of the factors which have necessitated the use of internet as an advertising tool.
Effective Website Design & Layout.
Just to begin with, it is crucial to state that website design is a critical-mission for digital marketing. Actually, excellent website design has the ability to propel a new product brand to new heights of sales and marketing performance. On the other hand, bad website design can greatly harm sales volume of new and even the existing product. The following are some of the advantages that accrue to the companies which excellently design their website.
- A good layout and design of the website in terms of better search engine optimisation friendly layout and design, because a good look of design can force the visitors to stay longer.
- Improved Loading Speed of page contents, allows visitors to access more pages and reach get to the content they are looking, for information.
- Internal Linking or cross reference internal linking is one of most effective way to grow user's readership by linking internal links.
- Structuring the interactive features that have already been implemented the website. It can add value to any website. (Example Follow us page with Twitter feed and Face book feeds and updates, needs rearranging and better layout)
- More attractive and updated Flash intros on main pages but not a mini-movie intro.
- Calls to Action, providing clear and simple but enough guidelines for visitors to what to do next once they are in the website, so that they can reach the page with content they are looking for. This can also be achieved by user friendly navigation
The non-profit making organizations in the united states have employed a number of web designs mentioned above in order to enable them compete effectively in digital marketing.
Consumer behaviour
Research on the internet marketing have identified asset of factors which are likely to affect the consumers acceptance of the internet as a communication medium. For instance, it has been found that in both U.K, that male consumers with high income and education level are more likely to purchase online (Tse 2002). This in turn implies that demographic factors have no big influence in determining consumers’ internet acceptance since both the educated and the less income earners may have access to the internet.
However, research indicate that psychographic variables such as product involvement, novelty seeking, need for social interaction among others have great effect on the consumer’s decision on whether or not to purchase online. (Tse 2002). In addition, the consumer’s attitude also affects their decision on the adoption of the internet. Another factor that determines the consumer’s decision on whether to transact online or not is online security. Therefore, the factors mentioned determine the decision of the consumers to transact business online especially in the United Kingdom. This in turn affects online operations of the non-profit organizations.
The internet and competition.
The emergence of the internet has changed the nature and intensity of competition. The internet have the ability to change how the existing non-profit making organizations compete among themselves. The internet enables the organization to attract other clients into the organization. Research shows that the new generation prefer doing their things online. Therefore, organizations which advertise their products and services online are likely to have a competitive advantage over their competitors.
The internet and customer relationship management
The use of internet by non-profit making organizations has dramatically enhanced the ability of such organizations to interact, hence serving their clients better. According to Zabin (2002), internet can be served as a platform that enables relationship management. This implies that the internet provides non-profit organization with effective tool for customer relationship management
Self learning theory ( action learning theory)
Self-learning theory can be defined as the theory which explains how an individual learn a particular concept. In relation to this study, the theory which is appropriate in learning the Google analytics is the action learning theory. In this theory, learning is achieved through linking the world of action through a reflective process. This can be achieving through setting of small groups which meet regularly to brainstorm on a particular concept. This learning process is crucial because it has been used to study the effectiveness of e-marketing in U.K by the Google analytics.
Conclusion
References
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