Introduction
This paper illustrates a case study related to the Kuwait Flourmills company. The main purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the essential digital commerce marketing and advertising strategies and tools and also identify and describe the leading technologies that support online marketing. For the purposes of this case study, a specific product recently launched by the Kuwait Flourmills company, namely Brunch Box, has been analyzed in terms of its commercial success, revealing some potential issues of the launch that may have decreased its effectiveness. Thereby, the paper is structured as follows: executive summary of the case study, identification of the problem related to the launch of Brunch Box, solution based on digital commerce marketing, and recommendations suggesting various technologies that can support online marketing.
Executive Summary
The conducted study has revealed that the main problem of Kuwait Flourmills’ Brunch Boxes is low product awareness amongst potential customers. Thereby, the most effective solution to the problem appears to be utilizing e-commerce marketing strategies, including search engine and paid marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and display and video advertising. In addition, supporting techniques should be used, such as mobile marketing, marketing automation, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Problem Identification
After conducting a thorough analysis of the Kuwait Flourmills Brunch box marketing campaign, it has been recognized that the primary problem related to the case is low brand awareness or, to be precise, the concrete product awareness. According to Shethna (n.d.), product awareness is one of the key business considerations since increasing sales always requires invigorating people’s interests first, which is practically impossible if they do not know that a particular product exists. A survey conducted for the purposes of this case study revealed that only 5 people out of 40 knew about the Brunch Box by the Kuwait Flourmills company, meaning that only 14% of respondents were aware of the new product’s launch. Thereby, increasing product awareness is the main goal that the company under discussion should pursue to maintain their business effectiveness and increase sales.
Solution to the Problem
In the previous study related to this case, the main marketing goals for increasing the effectiveness of the Kuwait Flourmills’ business strategies have been established. They include four objectives presented on this slide; however, the current primary interest of this study is focused on raising awareness of the Brunch Box as a product because of the methods that can be applied to achieve that goal, namely digital commerce marketing and advertising strategies and tools and technologies that support online marketing. Improving the brand awareness amongst the target market recipients will allow the company to improve the pickup of sales for Brunch Boxes.
Nowadays, digital business technologies are an essential element of the modern market. Many people have made computers, mobile phones, and the Internet integral parts of their lives, which is why effective electronic commerce, or e-commerce for short, has become crucial for many business enterprises in almost any market (Almitri & Miah, 2020). For instance, the number of people preferring to purchase goods via the Internet and various online marketplaces has been growing annually, which leads companies that do not engage in e-commerce to lose customers and, potentially, financial profits. Kuwait Flourmills is not even a small or medium enterprise in the case under discussion. It is an organization that dominates within its domestic market with “nearly 3,000 tonnes of daily milling capacity, a chain of nine industrial bakeries and a range of processed products” (McKee, 2018, para. 1). Therefore, conducting an effective business without implementing digital commerce strategies is practically impossible for the company.
Solution: E-commerce Strategies and Techniques
Following everything discussed in the previous slides, several key e-commerce strategies have been identified that can be effective in increasing the sales of Brunch Boxes of Kuwait Flourmills. Firstly, one of the most appropriate digital commerce techniques would be paid marketing (Thakur, n.d.). It is a paid marketing form that involves the usage of platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other similar ones. The platforms’ tools have many functionalities for targeted marketing: one should determine targeting aspects of customer segment, including geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral ones.
Email marketing can also be effective since it can generate more leads compared to other marketing platforms. Thakur (n.d.) believes that the reason for that is the messages’ personalization and the audience’s relevancy. Furthermore, email marketing is a highly budget-friendly e-commerce technique, meaning that companies can boost their sales and control their expenses simultaneously. Considering the business level of Kuwait Flourmills, the company can probably gain maximum effectiveness from email marketing since it can apply even higher budgets for the cause (Kuwait Flourmills, n.d.).
Solution: Technologies Supporting Online Marketing
In addition to primary e-commerce marketing techniques, several technologies can support online marketing. The first of them is mobile marketing: most potential customers nowadays use their smartphones instead of laptops or PCs to access the Internet (Thakur, n.d.). Therefore, it is highly significant to implement mobile-friendly advertisement layouts and website designs to ensure higher visibility and positive response. Another technique that can support e-commerce is called marketing automation. A vast number of different marketing technologies implemented at the same time may create certain challenges associated with controlling the digital marketing campaign (Thakur, n.d.). However, there are many apps for marketing automation and correlated software that can help with handling online advertising campaigns or even manage them automatically. The final and probably the most crucial technology is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). According to Thakur (n.d.), content is the main product in digital marketing, which is why “it should be optimized properly for the search engines like Google to interpret it right and make your brand visible to your customers” (para. 3). Highly optimized content usually receives higher ranks within searching platforms, meaning they will show such content higher on the search page.
Critique and Recommendation
Overall, it appears that utilizing e-commerce marketing strategies is the most effective and appropriate way for Kuwait Flourmills to boost the sales of their Brunch Boxes and attract customers to that concrete product and other goods sold by the company. The Internet and all the related platforms are the most efficient way for advertising products now since most people receive information from various websites, social media, and searching platforms today. In the case of Kuwait Flourmills, it was probably the company’s decision to ignore e-commerce that led to unexpectedly low financial returns and the weak launch of Brunch Boxes. There is a high chance that the company can increase its sales and raise its profits by applying digital marketing technologies, such as paid marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and display and video advertising. The company seems to have enough resources to engage in e-commerce and gain an advantage.
References
Almtiri, Z. H. A., & Miah, S. J. (2020). Impact of Business technologies on the success of E-commerce Strategies: SMEs Perspective. In 2020 IEEE Asia-Pacific Conference on Computer Science and Data Engineering (CSDE) (pp. 1-7). IEEE. Web.
Kuwait Flourmills. (n.d.). Company Introduction. Web.
McKee, D. (2018). Kuwait’s milling giant. World-Grain. Web.
Shethna, J. (n.d.). Marketing objectives goals. Educba. Web.
Thakur, M. (n.d.). Digital marketing techniques. Educba. Web.