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Key Topics
Requirement
Online Marketing Plan: “Book R Us”
Solution
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The offline sale of ‘Book r Us’ is spiraling down due to economic downturn. Therefore, company decided to go online with its products to cover more market and increase its revenue. For this purpose, three objectives were decided, that are: (i) increasing brand awareness among online target market, (ii) increasing online user engagement through various social media, and (iii) increase online book sales.
The outlined methods in this plan are using social media sites, developing customer centric mobile app, email marketing, mobile marketing, and others. It is expected that this plan will help company achieve ten percent sales increase in one year, and improvement in brand awareness and user engagement by 5%.
This plan recommends different online monitoring tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, and others that can be used to monitor the success rate and improve plan accordingly.
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ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS
Book R Us, is an offline book publishing company, located in the town of Pendle. The primary business goals of this company revolves around identifying good quality authors who write books that are in the realm of science fiction and fantasy and then selling these books. Books r Us are wants to diversify its product range and increase its online brand awareness.
A. The Marketing Environment
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1. Competitive forces. The competition in online book publishing and cover designing is very strong. There are numerous heavy weight competitors that are publishing books at cut-throat prices. In spite of the competition, everyone has the opportunity to enter into online format. In this field, competition can be expected from many freelancers who are always ready to serve at low rates. As per online marketing services are concerned, everyday a new company props up in the market that are ready to work for lowest price possible to gain the market share.
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2. Economic forces. Economy of the country has taken back seat, and cost of overall promotion budgets is rising. Therefore, due to surge in offline promotion budgets, most publishing houses have gone online. This reduces the cost of advertising, and in turn brings more customers comparatively. This trend is expected to continue as a weak, slow-growth economy forces most companies to focus more on the “value” they receive from their promotion dollar.
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3. Political forces. There are few political issues pertaining to certain countries, where due to various reasons, governments ban or block certain web activity. For example, blocking of Facebook in Iran, Vietnam, and North Korea will hamper the company to market its product in those countries. Also, Twitter, and Youtube are banned in most countries. To cope with these challenges, company can consider local alternatives, for example, Sina Weibo in China and Facenama in Iran and Afghanistan.
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4. Legal and regulatory forces. There are various regulatory forces that guide and monitor almost all online business operations in various countries. Normally, websites get banned on issues like copyright infringement (stealing images and contents from other websites), predatory pricing, selling customer data, misleading practices (paying bloggers to promote a business without allowing them to discloser), bribery act (paying commissions direct to staff not the company), and data protection violation (selling customer data). Book r Us must not dirty their hands in these destructive techniques. It might get the website blocked. There are situations when companies often contact attorney for help in online “battles between brands or identities” (Lynne).
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5. Technological forces. As per online marketing is concerned, technological forces are most sought after elements being considered. Understanding the technologies that are being used in the contemporary market is important. For example whether that is desktop or mobile, tablets, or wearable gadgets. The various issues for a business include screen size and where the internet is accessed, how use journey can be made easier, and whether advancement in new technologies will make elements of marketing mix redundant.
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6. Socio-cultural forces. There are socio-cultural forces that are impacting the online business in general. Access to internet and acceptance of technology are the two such issues. Not everyone has access to internet. Demographic that area aged beyond 75 years, and those with lower incomes. Acceptance of a certain technology changes over a period. This change forces business to change their strategy periodically. For example, Google’s Orkut can be seen no-where now. Young generation is moving towards Whatsapp, leaving behind Facebook for their parents and grandparents. However, online presence of humongous information helps companies understand what is acceptable socially or within a culture and what is not, and thus company can tweak their strategy accordingly.
B. Target Market(s)
‘Book r Us’ is going online to target its concerned market. As it wants to go online, its target market will be almost same as it was, and the only thing that will change is its reach. Through online medium, it can even target international customers that are not possible offline ('Capturing Customers: How To Target The Hottest Markets Of The '90S').
C. Current Marketing Objectives and Performance
The company is not performing as expected in its offline presence due to economic downturn. It is unable to engage customers to its products and increase brand awareness. And eventually, this has hampered the overall sale of the company. The current marketing objectives of the company are not sufficient enough to serve its targeted sales.
SWOT ANALYSIS
A. Strengths
‘Book r Us’ is a well known brand in offline market.
The existing distribution channel of the company.
Decades of experience in book publishing and designing.
Readiness to adapt to changing environment
B. Weaknesses
Online customers are unaware about this brand and its products
No prior technical experience in handling online sales and management
No online support from any possible media.
C. Opportunities
New market
Cross-selling
Wider reach
Supportive courier services
D. Threats
Emergence of new entrants every now and then
Freelancers
Cut-throat pricing
Customer preferences
E. Matching Strengths to Opportunities/ Converting Weaknesses and Threats
The popularity (to whatever extent it is) of ‘Book r Us’ in the offline market can help it reach its previous customers through online medium easily and convert them into buyers.
The existing distribution channel of the company can be used to supply books and designed covers to the online buyers in the local markets (that too quickly). This will build reliability of its online medium among local customers.
The prior experience of this company in book selling will help it to come up with customized products that can take care of specific customer needs. This will attract more customers who want to use the company’s vast experience in designing and publishing.
The company’s intent to go online is one example of its readiness to adapt to the changing environment. There were various instances in the past, when company continuously changed its strategies to fit the changing need of the customers.
However, in spite of all the above, unawareness about the company among online customers will force it to begin from scratch. It has to build online customer base by using different available tools and techniques. This process will take some time, and involve good amount of cost.
‘Book r Us’ is also not proficient in online sales management and customer engagement. Due to this, either it has to hire outsource its online activity, or it has to build its own expertise in this field. The internal expertise improvement requires hiring employees who have extensive experience in handling online market and can implement a marketing plan (like this one) effectively and efficiently.
It has never sold any books through already existing ‘online selling platfroms’ like Amazon and others. This state’s its lack of support from online media.
There are opportunities in the market that can be used by this company in spite of the weaknesses. Going online will present this company with access to new market segment. It will be able to reach those customers that can’t be accessed through offline medium.
After getting online, company can cross sell its different products to a single consumer. This can be done through better customer service and customer relationship management.
When this company will go online, it might get orders from the customer segment that situated far from its local distribution channel’s reach. In this case, ‘Book r Us’ can use various reliable courier services to tackle this issue. A partnership with any of the known courier brand will solve the problem at cost-effective rate.
However, there are threats which will discourage this company’s growth. For example, every day a new company comes into existence that sells products similar to this company. These companies’ objectives are just to somehow earn money out of nothing, this can lead to poor pricing, and thus hamper the overall profitability goal of ‘Books r Us’.
Freelancers – individuals who work on specific projects for a company or individual and earn money in return – will hamper its sale, particularly in ‘cover designing’.
Consumer preferences change every now and then. This will force company to change its proposition periodically, which is a nut job.
MARKETING OBJECTIVES
‘Book r Us’ faced several issues in its offline business, and, therefore, it has planned to go online. To venture into the online marketing space, the company established three objectives that will be achieved using this marketing plan. They are mentioned below:
Increase brand awareness among online target market from 0% to 5% in one year.
Increase user engagement on the social media profiles of this company, and also on its website and mobile application in one year.0
Increase book sales by 10% in one year.
MARKETING STRATEGIES
A. Target Market(s)
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Target market 1: Students studying in schools and colleges. Their taste for science fiction and fantasy stories are well known. Most of the students spend their after school/college time on reading these books and browse through internet to find more interesting books from the same genre.
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Target market 2: Professionals, who want to take some time off from their work pressure. They are aged between 25 to 45 years. They use these books as diversion from their hectic scheduled duty hours. These books help them relax, and travel in the world different from the one they are now.
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Target market 3: People in the age group of 55+ years, who are done with their life’s responsibilities and have ample amount of time to spend on their hobbies, be it reading or any other interests. Most of them spend their time on the internet book portals to find something interesting to read and spend their time. Customers from this group who are interested in science fiction and fantasy books will be an important asset for the company.
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Target market 4: Housewives. After assisting their family members, they spend most of their time behind television screens, surfing the web, or spending time on various social media websites. They also, spend their time behind reading interesting books. The company can target these customers who can be found online convert them into buyers.
B. Marketing Mix
1. Products. ‘Book r Us’ publish and design books. Their years of experience behind book publishing and designing can give them unique position in the online market. Their books come in two genres, Science Fiction, and Fantasy. They have good batch of authors who are always ready to drill down through their thoughts to bring in new stories periodically, which can give an edge to this company by publishing new and interesting books every now and then. Another product of this company is cover designing, however this marketing plan has not covered this product under current marketing plan. We are planning to tackle this product separately.
2. Price. Pricing decisions of all the books are generally made on two factors. First is the production cost, and second is the market expectation. ‘Book r Us’ will put the price of its product within this range. This will help ‘Book r Us’ in earning profit as well as more loyal consumers. The customer loyalty will come into picture when customers will get these books at prices lower than their expectation.
3. Distribution. As this will be an online venture of ‘Book r Us’, therefore, all possible online medium will be chosen to sell the products. The company will begin the product sale from its website. The website design will be interactive and attractive to the entire target market group. Another possibility is to use mobile applications to reach those users who are more likely to enjoy shuffling through books’ catalogue on their mobile app rather than desktop or mobile browsers. The app will also give one touch accessibility for the customers, and based on the previous behavioral studies of mobile users, it can be said that they are more likely to visit the ‘Book r Us’ app than website.
Both – website and mobile app – will be integrated with seamless instant payment system. This will allow users to make instant purchase of the product they choose. This will help in more conversion.
4. Promotion. Online promotions of books include various factors. They are:
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Social Media: The target market 1, 3, and 4 can be readily found on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Techniques like Guerrilla Facebook Marketing can be used to garner the benefit of Facebook at its full potential (Levinson and Lim). To search for professionals, company can use LinkedIn – a dedicated networking website particularly for working class people. There are various options in these social sites that can help ‘Book r Us’ in doing targeted advertising. This helps advertisers in relaying the ads only in the relevant geographic. This can help ‘Book r Us’ in publishing multilingual books and target respective customer group form a single place.
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Email: Targeted emails can be sent to the prospective users. The only thing that should be taken care of is, email shouldn’t look like spam, else it will give negative impression on the consumers.
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Mobile Advertising through apps: Company can advertise its service through publishing ads on other mobile applications. Sending text messages to the customers regarding new offers and prompting them to download the company application, will help to a great extent.
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Online ads on Google and other similar websites: This will help in getting to the customers in cost effective way. The company should choose only those websites for advertisement, which are into ‘books’ in any manner. The various blogs can be targeted as they can be proved as rich source of traffic.
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The company can target online public communities as they are always ready for “information sharing and learning, support, companionship, or entertainment (Booth and Kellogg)
MARKETING IMPLEMENTATION
A. Marketing Organization
The four target market segment for ‘Book r Us’ has their specific needs, and behavioral pattern. All of them have different tastes and preferences as per delivery of the products are concerned. Therefore, four online marketing professionals will focus on each target market. A head of operation will monitor the activities of these professionals and act as a coordinator between them. In spite of being four different target market, the online marketing must be coordinated as this will help in expressing company in unison. The professionals must be empowered to make decisions that will better satisfy customers of ‘Book r Us’.
B. Activities, Responsibility, and Timetables for Completion
All implementation activities are to begin from 1st January, 2016. Unless specified, all the activities are the responsibility of the Chief Marketing Officer of ‘Book r Us’.
On January 1, create four online marketing professional positions and the position of head of operation. Head of Operation will serve as project leader.
On January 15, assign three analysts to the following projects: (i) new products and clients analysis, (ii) billing cycle analysis, (iii) customer behavior analysis on web and app.
On January 31, analysts present the report, and team reviews recommendations.
On March 1, develop MIS to monitor customer reorder and satisfaction.
On March 31, make changes in transactions, and contact potential customers.
April 1 onwards, advertise on social media sites and other relevant places.
EVALUATION AND CONTROL
A. Performance Standards and Financial Controls
Assign 60 percent yearly budget of promotion for online marketing.
Budget breakdown: 20 percent for company’s website, 40 percent for social media and ad placements, and 40 percent for mobile app marketing.
All financial expenses will be reported periodically to finance dept.
B. Monitoring Procedures
Comparison of actual online marketing performance with planned objectives to be done through proper monitoring tools like Google Analytics for Website, Analytics for online ads using Facebook and Twitter analytics.
Use of project management concept will be beneficial for proper monitoring procedures. An ongoing comparison between actual and planned improvements should be conducted every fortnight. Team members should take the responsibility for the required changes in processes and implementation changes.
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Place Your OrderREFERENCES:
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Booth, Sharon E., and Shaun B. Kellogg. 'Value Creation In Online Communities For Educators'. Br J Educ Technol 46.4 (2014): 684-698. Web.
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'Capturing Customers: How To Target The Hottest Markets Of The '90S'. Choice Reviews Online 28.07 (1991): 28-3960-28-3960. Web.
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Levinson, Jay Conrad, and Kelvin Lim. Guerrilla Facebook Marketing. New York: Guerilla Marketing Press, 2013. Print.
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Lynne, Judith. 'Defending Your Brand Against Imitation: Consumer Behavior, Marketing Strategies, And Legal Issues'. Choice Reviews Online 32.11 (1995): 143. Web.
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