Internet Marketing Assignment

Introduction

Internet marketing tools and technology has revolutionized the way people shop. There is no need anymore to be present in a physical shopping outlet with the convenience to shop at one’s home conveniently using the internet anytime and anywhere. This internet marketing assignment stresses on the advantages of internet marketing and various tools that are used in internet marketing such as search engine optimization, churn rate, pay per click, banner advertisement and electronic customer relationship management. I have taken the example of amazon.com a successful internet marketer for this report.

Task 1

The e-Marketing tools used by Amazon.com:

• Amazon Pages- these are e-Marketing tools of Amazon.com intended to increase the brand value of the firm. By using this tool the customers for Amazon can create their own business page by using the URL for Amazon.com.
• Culture of metrics- Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos at a corporate event revealed that the organisation uses culture metrics as a marketing tool and gets amazing insights of human behaviour. They consider the time, frequency and duration that the customers spend on their sites (Ingram, 2012).
• Creator Metrics tool – this is a tool developed by Amazon for its e-Marketing that supports the culture of Metrics. With the use of the tool the content creator for Amazon can see the efficiency of the working of the product listing and the product copy.
• Data driven Automation – Amazon uses technology integrated tools that automated the channel preferences and the display of content to different users according to their past shopping data. The news releases and top selling products are displayed differently to different users according to their past shopping history by an automated process (Chaffey, 2014).

P 1.1- Examine interactive order processing.

By the use of interactive order processing e-businesses are able to a reliable presentation of the way they work. This enables those carefully choosing authentic suppliers and reliable brands that enable the customers to trust while shopping with them. Amazon works along with Payment Service provider that ensures safe transfer of money of their customers and all the details of the credit or debit card been used is kept secured.  Amazon validates the payment and it takes about 30 seconds after the customers opt for the final payment option. After the approving or disapproving of the funds by the third party payment gateway used by Amazon an Order Confirmation message appears on the screen of the customer The customer gets an email and SMS confirmation of the order and then receives the delivery of the product. Amazon takes a post-delivery feedback form their customers.

Task 2

2.2 – Write the copy for a suitable opt-in email marketing newsletter

Amazon does not use annoying lay-over pop-ups that compel new visitors to opt-in with their details such as their email address and name. Amazon uses landing page optimization. That enables them to get users in their web page itself.

Copy of an opt-in newsletter of Amazon: As you are a member of the Amazon student you are receiving this e-mail. For stopping to receive this email on behalf of Amazon student, you can cancel your membership for Amazon students by clicking. Please keep in consideration that the prices of the products mentioned in the website can be revised from time to time. Prices mentioned here are according to the one’s set at the time this newsletter was sent to you and might change when you log into our Amazon.com website.

@2012 Amazon.com Inc. All rights reserved.

An email newsletter of Amazon:

P 2.3 – Follow guidelines for best practice in online public relations.

What is Public Relation?

PR is the process of strategic communication of the organisation and the public that helps the organisation to build strong and mutually beneficial relation with the public.

Advantages and disadvantages of PR

Advantages

• PR campaign using a newspaper and magazines get millions of readers to know about your business
• It has great power to appeal the audience and a TV advertisement reaches to many users and inform them about the business or the product
• Online public relations comprise of activities that lead to influence marketing, communities and customers by the use of online medium in the internet. The online PR activities are comprised of search engines, forums, discussion etc.
• PR is a very crucial part of the online marketing mix. 

Disadvantages

• It comes with a constant pressure and demands investments to develop stories that are news worthy so having a PR is a costly affair
• Measuring the success of the PR campaign is very difficult
• There is a requirement of a publicist for the launching of a PR campaign. The businesses requires to incur heavy investments for hiring the publicist depending on the type of business and the location
• There is always a problem in selecting the appropriate media to launch the PR campaign. It requires market research to check if the media selected has the readers and viewers that include the market targeted by the business or not (Brookins, 2015)

For ensuring best practices in the online PR activities, it is necessary to consider the following; To develop an informative PR strategy that would introduce the targeted customers to the company and inform them about the services offered by the company and promote an event of the company. The PR activities should be targeted at selected customers by selecting the content properly and using the right keyword. This would lead to a valuable online traffic to the e-Business.  The PR activities and the press releases should be done at the right time.

P 2.4 – Demonstrate how businesses can use new digital media communities, e.g. file-sharing sites.

Amazon uses new digital media communities to design their marketing planning and target the end customers. Internet is used as a community as it has enabled to establish a social network of people interacting with each via the social media. The digital media has enabled businesses such as Amazon to cross geographic barriers and market and communicate to their end customers. Technologies such as Usenet, Multi-User Dungeon, chat rooms and internet relay chats, email lists etc. are used by Amazon to have virtual community in their business and be able to communicate to the customers directly.

Facebook is used by Amazon to market their brand value and inform customers of any ongoing sales and offers by banner advertisements also take customers feedbacks and engage themselves in relationship marketing with the customers. File sharing sites such as YouTube, Flickr are used by businesses such as Amazon to advertise them. Amazon has video promotion and advertisement in these media.

Advantages of internet communities for businesses:

• Business such as Amazon can use internet communities to offer instant exchange of promotional information to the customers
• These information results to customer engagement such as shopping from home, ordering , payment of bills, getting relevant information
• This enables the user to gain access to discussion groups and access e-Business related information and businesses can use them to manage their reputation

Amazon using YouTube for file sharing and marketing

Amazon’s social digital community presence in Facebook

Task 3

LO 3.  Be able to produce market research to support Customer Relationship Management.

P 3.1 – Conduct secondary market research.

A secondary Market research for Amazon.com: Amazon.com is a customer focused organisation. They test and tap market opportunities and use digital technology to achieve market competitiveness  (India, 2013)...

They work on the principle of:

Reach – having a sustained business growth by the use of SEO and AdWords

Act – making a user friendly experience by the help of testing

Convert – they use personalised data to suggest relevant purchases to the customers and enable them having a hassle free checkout process

Engage – they work on the principle of customer engagement (Chaffey, 2014)

Researching customer needs of Amazon: The needs of the customers of Amazon has been research and identified by the company and the CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos states them as follows:

• The customers need that the marketer understands them and be obsessed by the customers and serve their needs (Baldacci, 2013).
• Amazon CEO brought an empty chair always to the meetings and stated that the executives should consider that the chair that is empty is occupied by the customers of Amazon and treated as the most important person present in the meeting
• Customers do not want 99% satisfaction but the marketer should aim for 100% satisfaction and Amazon works on this principle  (Ruiz, 2012).
• Amazon is a customer centric company and that is the secret to their success

Types of information required for the research –  The information required for the research of Amazon’s customer satisfaction and customer handling is both qualitative and quantitative.

Primary Market Research Method used – Questionnaire method by using both open and closed questions sent   via email

3.2 – Design an online survey

Online market research: To identify if shopping with Amazon easy for the customers, And how is it related to customer satisfaction

Sample size – 100 customers will be sent the online questionnaire

Survey Link from Surveymonkey- 

Most of them shop from Amazon quite often this seems that Amazon has got brand loyal customers that can be a result of high satisfaction.

P 3.3 Demonstrate the use of electronic customer relationship marketing

Relationship marketing: this is marketing intended to have customers that are brand loyal and are satisfied highly and feel valued as the marketer values their needs, feedbacks and views(Akers, 2014). A specific segment of customers are selected and relationship marketing is oriented at them.

The benefits of relationship marketing are following:

Relationship marketing helps in creating value to the customers as with the aid of relationship marketing the marketer gets information of the customers who will not add any value to the company Relationship marketing is used by Amazon to communicate to their customers this enables customer satisfaction

The cost of relationship marketing has become quite reasonable with the advent of internet relationship marketing. So marketer like Amazon is able to communicate to their clients saving a significant amount of costs There are security issues too in relationship marketing as internet relationship marketing means an access to client related personal details which needs to be handled safely and securely

Amazon’s relationship marketing:

• Amazon has a system of maintaining database of the number of visitors that open the website of Amazon
• The number of internet hits to Amazon’s page is maintained in their database and this enables them to position their marketing strategies
• AMAZON records their repeat visitors so that they can be awarded loyalty programs and retained

Electronic relationship marketing or eCRM:

This is managing the relationship with customers using the internet by the use of information technology. Amazon uses web channels to increase sales and provide customer service support.

Analytical CRM and Data Mining of Amazon:

AMAZON uses systematic analytics by profiling customer information and by data mining in their operation. Amazon gets customer related data I this process and targeted them by suitable marketing message (Oliveira, 2012). By this process Amazon integrates the past purchase data of their customers and so in their shopping widow relevant promotional message, deal of the day are shown. Collaborative filtering enables Amazon to get customer related data filtered and thus design filtered relevant messages to them and target them(Oliveira, 2012)

Task 4

LO 4.  Be able to design an internet marketing plan.

P 4.1 Create a presentation on pay per click advertising.

Conclusion

With technological advancements internet marketing has become very user friendly. Amazon has received its market position by its customer centric attitude and internet marketing methods such as search engine optimisation, banner advertisement, relationship marketing and innovation. It is required to access the needs and demands of the customers by data profiling and data management via internet to implement methods to keep them satisfied. Although, the benefits of internet marketing are many but there are security concerns also as internet is prone to virus attacks and hacking. Dealing with personal data of the customers’ needs the marketer to be concerned for protection.

References

Akers, H., 2014. Chron Small Business Advantages & Disadvantages of Customer Relationship Marketing. [Online] Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-customer-relationship-marketing-45503.html [Accessed 12 Febreuary 2015].
Baldacci, K., 2013. Blog Salesforce - 7 Customer Service Lessons from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos -. [Online] Available at: http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2013/06/jeff-bezos-lessons.html [Accessed 12 Febreuary 2015].
Castro, J. P., 2013. SEM Guide. [Online]Available at: http://blog.landerapp.com/search-engine-marketing-guide-for-small-businesses/[Accessed 10 February 201
Chaffey, D., 2014. Amazon.com case study. [Online] Available at: http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/online-business-revenue-models/amazon-case-study/