ENTHYMEME: e-Marketing should be included as a marketing and sales strategy in business because it offers more efficient techniques than traditional marketing.
Web-marketing or online marketing; these are the other names used to refer to e-Marketing, which is defined as the utilization of electronic data and applications for planning and executing the formation, distribution and pricing of ideas, goods and services in order to create exchanges, and eventually satisfy the objectives of the individual and organizational (Strauss & Frost 454). It can be viewed as a new modern business practice in connection with buying and selling goods, services, information and ideas through the Internet and other electronic means.
The developments in information technology and communications have led people to change their ways of doing business. Increasing number of businesses have been observed to have used the Internet and other electronic media in their marketing efforts that gave rise to Electronic Marketing, more popularly known as e-Marketing, for their growth and success. This fast growing new electronic channel for marketing has emerged because of the rapid rise of theInternet, the World Wide Web (www), and the electronic communication. In light of the increasing use of e-Marketing especially by small businesses, how has e-Marketing helped smaller companies succeed?
In my perspective, e-Marketing offers more efficient techniques for the business’ marketing sales strategies than the traditional marketing approach. Inn this paper, my goal is to explore the aspects that made e-marketing efficient thereby helping businesses, especially the smaller ones succeed.
Kurkovsky defined e-Marketing as the direct process of buying, selling and promotion of information, services and products that is mainly done via computer networks (227). In particular, e-Marketing can be described as the use of the Internet as well as digital media capabilities by businesses in order to sell products and/or services. It involves the creation of strategy that enables companies of varying size and type to deliver the right messages and product/services to the right audience. Moreover, it is consists of all activities and processes with the goal of getting, attracting, winning as well as retaining clients. e-Marketing is broad in scope as it includes not only marketing and promotions over the internet but also marketing done via email and other wireless media. It also embraces the management of digital customer data, electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) and several other business management functions.
Several literature further illustrate e-Marketing as an application that unites the technical and creative aspects of the Internet comprising of the design, development, advertising as well as sales. Also indicated is the observation that e-Marketing covers the use of websites combined with online promotional techniques like the viral marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, online directories, interactive online ds, social media marketing and the search engine marketing or SEM. In terms of the delivery and communication mediums, e-Marketing uses of digital technologies including Internet media (e.g. websites and emails) and digital media (e.g. wireless, mobile, cable and satellite). According to Marketing Channels, some of the technologies used are online transaction processing, inventory management systems, electronic funds transfer, and electronic data exchange and automated data collection system (Coughlan 66).
Coughlan stated that marketing has evolved and has become very efficient in reaching potential customers (212). Before the emergence of the Internet, marketers have been using traditional marketing tools like magazines, television, radio, face to face communication, etc. to communicate their messages to their customers. Kotler emphasized that in traditional marketing the needs and wants of customers are being discovered and satisfied through traditional channels of communication; the purpose is to create products and services which sell themselves by being what customers need and want. With the innovation in information technology, the Internet channel gave the marketers new opportunities to gain customers’ attention and loyalty. Marketers become focused not on what the product needed to communicate but on what the audience (customers) needed or wanted to hear. Moreover, it became an imperative for all the businesses to build online presence to have competitive advantage. e-Marketing has provided businesses with access to mass markets at an affordable price and allowed them to undertake a personalized approach in marketing. Likewise, the cost-effective and flexible nature of e-marketing made it very suitable for small businesses.
Traditional marketing and e-Marketing differ mainly in terms of the type and number of people that can be reached. On the one hand, traditional marketing reaches a lot of people indiscriminately; e-Marketing can reach a lot of people in a targeted fashion.This implies that in terms of reaching target or potential market, the use of traditional marketing exposes different people (through television, radio, magazines, fliers, etc,) involuntarily and the promotion/advertising often are resented by the consumers because they are not the captive market (Dunne 36). As with e-marketing approach, the exposure and use of increasingly large number of customers of the World Wide Web enable them to voluntarily search for the products or services that they need or want (especially through search engines like Google, and social media like Facebook, Youtube). This implies that e-Marketing allows smaller businesses to directly reach their captured market as well as new markets. On the other hand, smaller businesses using the traditional marketing can reach a very small number of people. Given the limited advertisement/promotional budget, small businesses can only reach customer within the locale that can have access to the firms’ promotional tools (fliers, magazines/newspaper ads, in-store display). The case is different with the use of e-Marketing. According to Dunne, small businesses can create and share products inexpensively and easily (37). Businesses can easily reach their potential customers through online networks, tweets, blogs, and virtual lives which are all global in scope. The above discussion further implies that traditional marketing requires substantial time and budget to get the desired result using the various media including: TV and radio; newspaper; magazines; posters and billboards; mailers; and flyers. e-Marketing uses tools such as social media marketing, local directory listing, and targeted online sales promotions. It provides variety of methods such as pay per impression, pay per click, pay per play, and pay per action. It allows consumers to research and to purchase products and services conveniently.Also, e- marketing is a very effective way of reaching thousands of prospective customers directly at reasonably lower cost compared to other forms of advertising. It makes it possible to send business messages with beautiful mixes of text and graphics directly to potential customers. According to Capon, it’s worth noting that although e marketing is such a powerful marketing toll, traditional marketing will still be there in the foreseeable future (49). Traditional marketing is mainly based on the four marketing P’s namely placement, price, promotion and product. Some of the most common marketing tools include radio, television, newspapers and magazines. Regardless of the fact that e-Marketing is more popular compared to traditional marketing, there will always be a number of people will always embrace traditional marketing. Some people are more comfortable with face-to-face communication and will never trust web-based communications.
Other benefits of e-marketing include: (1) a properly planned and targeted campaign enables the business to reach target clients at lower cost; (2) the automation and use of electronic media enable smaller businesses to reduce transactional costs as well as promotional/advertising costs; (3) 24/7 marketing, i.e., customers can find out of the business’ product offerings even if the store are closed or even in the absence store structure; (4)e-Marketing allows businesses to reach customers who have interest to know about the company’s products instantly through PDAs and mobile phones; (5)e-Marketing allows the business to create interactive campaigns with the use of music, videos and graphics, as well as games and quizzes that engage the customers with the company; and (6) e-Marketing allows company to gauge how effective the marketing campaigns are. Moreover, Dunne emphasized that with e-Marketing, businesses have gained a great opportunity to reap the benefits from the powerful effect of the ‘word-of-mouth’ advertising; the emergence of the approach enables customers to pass on information about a brand to others (the most popular medium is the social media like Facebook and Twitter, and blog sites), making the information to be instantaneous and disseminated to a large number of potential customers (37). As of 2011, Facebook for instance has over 500 million users, sharing more than 30 billion pieces of content each month; more than 250 million users access Facebook through mobile devices, and these users are twice as active as non-mobile users; in America, at 62 percent participation among adults, online video watching outranks social networking at 46%, podcast at 19% and twittering at 11% (Dunne 37).
Furthermore, aside from these overwhelming advantages e-marketing has helped small businesses survived the highly competitive world of business. Through e-marketing, some companies do not even need a storefront because they keep their inventory in storage. This is because they sell their products virtually and do need customers to encounter their products physically. The elimination of stores allows smaller businesses to develop their line and flourish because they don’t spend money on real estate and salesmen. For instance, the store Burts Bee that started with very limited capital is now into expanding its product line. The owner utilized and continues on utilizing the social media on the web in promoting its product lines. Burt's Bees is launching a fragrance-focused offshoot brand named Gud (spelled with an umlat and pronounced "good") for millennial women with a fairly offbeat, lighthearted take. The campaign is social at its core, said David Baldwin, principal of Baldwin&, anchored on the Facebook video (which, along with product samples and exposure via the Burt's Bees Facebook page, has already built a fan base of 170,000 prior to launch) and Twitter. Also, small companies start on the internet selling honey but after success they start operate in bigger stores. By selling products over the internet, small companies can target those individuals who they think will buy their product, rather than trying to sell it to everyone.
As noted earlier, the invention of the Internet has completely revolutionized the way businesses are conducted. More specifically, e-Marketing has become very popular and many companies are embracing it to try to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. According to Coughlan, recent studies carried out by the American City Business Journal indicate that small businesses that have embraced e-Marketing recorded a growth of 46 percent (243). This is because e-Marketing has presented businesses with opportunities to increase their sales and lower expenses. Traditional marketing mediums like televisions, radios and print media have been making huge profits from advertising. Bakosstates: “with the increasing popularity of e marketing, it is expected that advertisement costs will come down” (Bakos162). This means that companies that spend less money in advertising therefore increasing their profitability.
The main investment that a company requires to start e marketing is to develop a website and employ people to maintain it and keep it updated. This one time investment saves companies a lot of money compared to traditional marketing. Other costs associated with employing advertising groups are also eliminated by e marketing. This explains some of the small and medium businesses that have implemented e marketing are registering increased growth compared to those that still use traditional marketing.
Another way through which e-marketing is more efficient than traditional marketing is that makes it possible for companies to establish a two way communication with customers. Capon states that “In traditional marketing platforms like newspapers, there was no two way communication and this made it very difficult for companies to get feedbacks from their customers” (Capon 78). Customer feedback is very important because it lets the business what they wanted improved as well as their tastes and preferences. Compared to traditional marketing, e marketing is more of a missile than a bomb because it is directed towards a specific customer unlike traditional marketing that does not have a specific target.
Another feature of e-Marketing that makes it more efficient than traditional marketing is because it makes possible to track your customers. There is no way through which a business can track or know how many people listened to their adverts over radios. When a company sends out e-mails to potential or existing customers, it’s possible to know how many people opened their emails. Additionally, it is also possible to know the number of people who visited a company website. The last factor that makes e marketing more efficient than traditional marketing is that it makes it possible for businesses to get feedbacks. This helps companies get the reactions and feelings of their customers. Although this is also possible in traditional marketing, it involves hiring people to carryout polls and analysis. This may take a lot of time and the information may be needed immediately.
In e-Marketing, the marketer designs an email and sends it to thousands of customers at once. By clicking the send command, the server sends the email message to all email addresses of the list. When sending the email, the company must have a list email addresses of customers who signed up or gave the company their addresses. Through the use of some software’s, it’s possible for the company to send different email messages to different customers depending on their tastes and preferences. Bakos states that other than sending email, e-Marketing is also done by displaying a product on the Internet mostly on a company’s website (69). This makes it possible for a customer to learn about the product features and price by a click of a button. Other mediums that are used for advertising are social websites like Twitter and Facebook. Such websites are good places to advertise because they frequented by a lot of people.
e-Marketing has brought a lot of positive influence on marketing. The first positive influence of e-Marketing is that it has brought about convenience because it can be done at the comfort of room. This eliminates the need to travel long distances in search of customers. Unlike physical offices, which are open during the day and closed at night, e-Marketing can carried out at any time without worrying about the opening or closing time. e-Marketing is also convenient for customers because they can look for products online and place orders at the convenience of their homes. Another positive influence of e marketing is that it has made it possible to overcome physical barriers and reach customers regardless of their geographical location. According to Ansari: “it is now possible for a business to sell its products in any part of the world without having to establish local retail outlets” (89). This saves companies a lot of money that could have been used in setting up local retail outlets. E marketing has also made it possible to initiate an export business without establishing distribution networks in different countries. Advertising and selling products over the Internet is cheaper compared to traditional marketing. It eliminates expenses like maintenance and property rental that businesses would incur from establishing local outlets. The other way that the Internet has positively affected marketing is that it has made it possible for businesses to build relationships with customers. After a customer purchases a product from an online store, the company can build a relationship with the customer by sending follow up emails to thank the customer.
Works cited
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