The past years witnessed the growing importance of mobile technologies in e-marketing and e-commerce. As more consumers start to use mobile devices for daily communication, online and brick-and-mortar companies seek to use these technologies in their marketing strategies.
According to Hovancakova (2011), the current trends and patterns in global marketing justify the importance of mobile development as a tool of marketing, but with the growing intensity of business competition, organizations and marketing professionals will have to be aware of the new mobile technology developments, in order to be the first to use their advantages in the short and long run.
Hovancakova (2011) writes that mobile marketing is a relatively new term, which is used to define messages that are distributed with the help of mobile technologies, including SMS, MMS, and others. For many organizations, mobile technologies have become a real salvation in the field of marketing.
With the help of wireless communication media, organizations can reach broader audiences and reduce the costs of their marketing efforts. In the meantime, potential and real customers can use these messages to keep in touch with their suppliers and be aware of the most attractive product and service propositions that may be available within a limited period of time.
For instance, it has become quite common for large and small stores to inform their customers of new discount propositions, by sending an MMS or an SMS. As a result, the company knows that its customers are informed, whereas customers are not afraid of missing an attractive product opportunity.
Mobile development in e-marketing has become so important that some governments develop new legal frameworks to be applied in the field of mobile marketing (Hovancakova, 2011). At the same time, due to the rapid development of the mobile technologies field and the lack universal criteria of use, cases of misuse in mobile marketing are not uncommon (Hovancakova, 2011).
Nevertheless, mobile development offers immense advantages to organizations and marketing professionals. A piece of technology as small as mobile phone can empower the largest organizations to reach each and every customer with a simple and attractive product or service message.
The success of mobile development in e-marketing depends mostly on the quality and consistency of the technologies used by firms. Given the growing diversity of mobile applications, only organizations that are aware of the latest technology developments will be able to use their benefits in their marketing strategies.
For instance, as more customers start to use smartphones for daily communications, marketing executives and researchers should focus on the analysis of marketing opportunities that become available with this kind of technology (Persaud & Azhar, 2012).
Certainly, customer preferences, tastes, shopping styles and commitments should also be considered (Persaud & Azhar, 2012). Still, smartphones offer a remarkable opportunity for organizations to engage customers in an interactive marketing dialogue.
In conclusion, mobile development is likely to remain an essential component of successful marketing strategies in the nearest future. Mobile phones, smartphones, SMS, MMS, and other mobile technologies and equipment open new venues for engaging potential customers in an effective marketing dialogue.
The risks of mobile technology misuse should also be considered, but it is possible to assume that most companies will do their best to protect their marketing reputation and address their customers in an ethical and value-added manner.
Email Marketing
Electronic marketing is a relatively new phenomenon, but it keeps growing at an enormous pace. Small and large business enterprises perceive electronic marketing as a potent instrument of their economic, market, and organizational growth.
Email holds a promise to expand companies’ outreach and maintain effective marketing communication with individual customers, but companies must keep in mind the crucial differences between traditional and email marketing and their implications for organizational and strategic performance.
The growing popularity of email marketing goes in line with the growing number of email users. Gone are the times when post offices were the only point of departure for letters, educational and marketing materials. Email enables Internet users to send a message without leaving their homes.
Organizations can use emails to send their marketing messages to thousands of consumers around the globe. The benefits of email marketing can hardly be overstated: Storey (2009) writes that it is through emails that companies can achieve and sustain the right balance of openness and anonymity in customer communication.
Email marketing can serve as a reliable channel for spreading relevant information about new products, services, and their advantages for customers. However, not all email marketing strategies are equally effective. Differences between traditional and email marketing should also be reviewed.
On the one hand, companies cannot simply send text-based email messages to customers. A high degree of creativity is required to ensure that the email marketing strategy is successful. Ultimately, the goal of any email marketing approach is to boost sales and attract new customers, rather than simply inform them of new products and services.
This is why Storey (2009) recommends using a robust email application that allows sending graphical emails. It is graphical emails that hold the greatest potential to generate high response rates from customers (Storey, 2009). The quality of such emails greatly impacts customers’ perceptions of the company, brand, quality of the store, product and service (Storey, 2009).
Therefore, such messages can have profound effects on customers’ purchase intentions. On the other hand, one should not forget that, unlike traditional marketing, email marketing does not allow potential customers to touch and taste the product (Salehi, Mirzaei, Aghaei & Abyari, 2012).
Therefore, companies that apply to email marketing must be particularly thorough in their choice of the right message. Email marketing campaigns must be attractive, convincing, and engaging, in order to persuade the customer that the product/service is worth purchasing even without touching it.
To summarize, email marketing is getting more popular among organizations. For many companies, the use of email has become a distinctive feature of their marketing efforts. The growing number of email users, low costs of email technologies, and the simplicity of use facilitate the implementation of effective marketing approaches that generate high rates of response among consumers.
However, email marketing success depends on many factors. First of all, the email message should be attractive, engaging, and persuasive. Customers will hardly be interested in reading a text-based message. The use of graphics is a must, when it comes to email marketing.
Second, because email marketing does not allow potential customers to touch and taste the product, the central message of the marketing campaign must persuade the customer that the product is worth purchasing, even if he/she cannot touch it.
Social Media Strategies
Whenever customers hear the word “marketing”, they imagine the annoying messages sent through television, radio commercials, spam email, and billboard advertising. Today’s marketing professionals understand that successful marketing is unobtrusive, mild, but still persuasive and engaging for every customer.
The emergence of social media and Web 2.0 has altered the global marketing landscape. At present, potential customers and social media users have a unique opportunity to control the flow of advertising messages and participate in the development of relevant e-marketing content.
The growing popularity of social media as an instrument of e-marketing is not accidental: as of 2009, a total of 175 million users were registered with Facebook (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). The figure is impressive, given that it is almost equal to the population of Brazil and is twice the number of people living in Germany (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).
Social media differ from everything that has ever been used in marketing, at least because they enable users to continuously modify online content in a collaborative and participatory fashion (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). For product and service suppliers, social media open an easy and cheap access to large audiences, while letting them tailor their marketing content to the unique needs and requirements of social media users.
Marketing and promotion through social media are attractive for several reasons. First, they enable potential and current consumers to engage in the process of generating and recreating marketing content (Thackeray et al., 2008). Customers who actively participate in product discussions and marketing content analyses through social media are also more likely to purchase the product (Thackeray et al., 2009).
Today, it is quite common among companies to organize social media contests that motivate potential customers to develop marketing content. In 2008, Dove asked customers to develop commercials for its products, and five of them were showed during the Oscars ceremony (Thackeray et al., 2009).
Second, social media create a unique communication environment, which brings potential and existing customers together in their analysis of various products, services, and marketing campaigns. A single positive word about a product or service published in a social network is likely to generate a wave of other positive (or not always positive) responses, thus motivating a greater number of potential buyers to purchase the product.
Before using social media, marketers must consider their costs, target audience preferences, and segmentation issues. Because the prevailing majority of social media users are young, social media marketing may not be suitable in the contexts that target senior audiences.
Nevertheless, at all times, social media are a preferred option for the companies, which expect their users and customers to engage in collaborative marketing activities. It is time for companies to accept the fact that consumers are not passive recipients of marketing messages, and that by engaging them in marketing strategy development, most companies can benefit themselves in a long-term perspective.
Overall, social media represent a potent instrument of e-marketing for companies around the globe. Social media differ considerably from other marketing tools, at least because they enable their users to generate and modify online content.
Social media promotion can be extremely relevant in the context of e-commerce, when companies are ready to engage their customers in developing marketing content, as well as when they acknowledge the enormous impacts the word-of-mouth can have on the public perceptions of the product, service, or marketing campaign.
Certainly, social media strategies should be based on a thorough analysis of the target audience and market segmentation; otherwise, they will hardly bring expected sales and promotion results.
Search Engine Optimization
Online and brick-and-mortar companies apply to a diversity of marketing mechanisms, in order to attract new customers. Search engine optimization (SEO) has recently become a buzzword in e-marketing research and practice.
SEO promises that sellers will make themselves more visible and attractive to potential customers, if they modify their website codes to achieve better positions in search engine listings. Still, there is no way to achieve success in SEO better than generating relevant information and marketing content that will attract potential and real customers.
SEO exemplifies a distinct approach to designing and implementing Internet marketing strategies. Maley and Baum (2010) define SEO as “the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines” (p. 301). In other words, by using the benefits of SEO, e-businesses, as well as brick-and-mortar companies, can make their websites visible to potential customers.
With the growing number of website visitors, chances that they will buy the advertised product or service will also increase. However, SEO is a complex and challenging strategy, which cannot be effective without a thorough understanding of how search engines work.
It is not enough to simply modify website codes, making them more search-engine compatible (Sen, 2005). It would be fair to say that search engine optimization is a continuous process, and its chief goal is to keep the website visible by offering relevant content that is interesting to online users.
To a large extent, a successful SEO strategy incorporates the elements of keywords analysis, link building, and relevant content provision. Because most search engines list websites by keywords, only those websites which use proper keywords are likely to appear in the top lists (Maley & Baum, 2010).
That, however, does not mean that these keywords should be used as many times as possible; many websites are blocked as a result of spamming and search engine manipulations (Maley & Baum, 2010). Certainly, keywords alone cannot guarantee the success of SEO. By incorporating relevant links into authoritative sites, companies can boost their traffic rates and become much more popular among Internet users. Yet, even then, the success of e-marketing is not guaranteed.
The key to successful performance in e-commerce is the ability to provide users with an easy access to relevant and interesting reading content. This is why SEO is a continuous process – the content must be updated regularly to ensure that the website is easily identified and listed by the search engine.
To conclude, search engine optimization is an extremely promising and challenging process. It is not enough to identify and use several keywords. SEO is a continuous process that demands attention, perseverance, professionalism, and commitment. It becomes successful, only when the company can provide its online users with relevant and easy-to-access content.
Online Reputation Management
When Facebook went public, thousands of people chose to become its shareholders, because they realized the inherent value of information. In the age of digital technologies, even a single word can throw a company into a marketing hell.
Tainted reputation is a nightmare many companies wish to avoid by all means. Online reputation management is a unique e-marketing approach that secures online and brick-and-mortar companies from reputational pitfalls.
In the world that is governed by technologies, brand and identity are more than words. Companies fight to develop and preserve their public image, and online reputation management serves companies’ reputational needs.
Generally, online reputation management is described as the strategy used by companies to ensure that only the right information about them can be found through search engines and social media, such as Google and Facebook (Russell & Cohn, 2012). Although many companies consider online reputation management to be a tool of the past, it is still alive and works well for the benefit of e-commerce.
According to Rampton (2013), companies must use the advantages of online reputation management to improve their public image. They also need to understand the value and significance of positive reputation for their future.
To a large extent, reputation is one of the most important e-business assets, as well as a potential source of a strong competitive advantage. All other conditions being equal, customers will definitely choose a company with a better reputation and image. Unfortunately, not all companies realize the value of well-designed strategies for managing reputation online.
For any company that wants to monitor and preserve its positive reputation, changing reputation management strategy is an important element of success (Rampton, 2013). Times and conditions of market performance vary considerably across times and settings.
Technologies used to spread positive or negative information about companies also evolve. E-businesses must update their online reputation approaches from time to time, if they do not want to face negative situations online (Rampton, 2013).
Marketers can accomplish quite a lot in their striving to learn more about the organization and its image. All they need is initiate a Google search on the company’s business name and pay particular attention to the top results (Rampton, 2013).
Ss social media acquire greater weight in e-marketing strategies, it is worth creating business profiles in the most popular social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ (Rampton, 2013). Also, the effects of mobile technologies on companies’ public image should not be ignored.
Effective online reputation management strategies must consider the ways, in which Google optimizes search results for mobile devices and the way, in which mobile users access and see online information about the company. Finally, the most successful online reputation management strategy must be proactive: RSS feeds and news streams are likely to divert the risks of reputational pitfalls from most e-businesses.
To conclude, online reputation management is an effective approach to managing a company’s reputation online. It is wrong to believe that online reputation management is a matter of the past. With the growing intensity of market competition, reputation often becomes the only source of competitive advantage for firms and the most valuable organizational asset.
It is clear that, in the markets full of identical products that are sold at identical prices, customers will prefer a company with a better reputation. However, a good reputation management strategy must be proactive and cover all aspects of the company’s e-performance.
Social media, mobile technologies, RSS feeds and other components should become part of reputation management strategies used by online businesses. This is the only way e-businesses can meet their strategic goals without sacrificing their valuable reputation and damaging their public image online.
References
Hovancakova, D. (2011). Mobile marketing. Studies in E-Commerce, 4 (14), 211-225. DOI: 10.2478/v10151-011-0007-y.
Kaplan, A.M. & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business Horizons, 53, 59-68.
Maley, C. & Baum, N. (2010). Getting to the top of Google: Search engine optimization. Medical Practice Management, March/April, 301-303.
Persaud, A. & Azhar, I. (2012). Innovative mobile marketing via smartphones. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 30(4), 418-443.
Rampton, J. (2013). Online reputation management dead?Huffington Post. Web.
Russell, J. & Cohn, R. (2012). Online reputation management. NY: Book on Demand.
Salehi, M., Mirzaei, H., Aghaei, M. & Abyari, M. (2012). Dissimilarity of e-marketing vs. traditional marketing. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 2(1), 510-515.
Sen, R. (2005). Optimal search engine marketing strategy. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 10(1), 9-25.
Storey, P. (2009). Optimizing your website: Search engine optimization, pay per click, email marketing. International Journal of Pharmaceutical Compounding, 13(4), 312-314.
Thackeray, R., Neiger, B.L., Hanson, C.L. & McKenzie, J.F. (2008). Enhancing promotional strategies within social marketing programs: Use of Web 2.0 social media. Health Promotion Practices, 9, 338-343. DOI: 10.1177/1524839908325335.