Digital Marketing Strategies For Boo.com

The differences between traditional and digital marketing

The differences between traditional and digital marketing

Digital marketing is a tool to create awareness and to develop the attitudes regarding the brand than promoting for purchase, and it is not only about advertising the product. Whereas traditional media is all about primarily advertising. The foundation principle of the Digital marketing are that the marketing should be judged based on the contribution to the business goals leading to business opportunities, lower customer acquisition cost and revenue. The digital marketing considers customer as the center of the marketing. Traditional marketing channels include TV commercials, print ads, outdoor advertising such as the billboards, exhibitions, promotional items and sponsorship of the events. The traditional forms of media are not generally strong enough for reaching the goals, as tracking is not well defined in traditional marketing. Digital marketing involves blogging, videos, social media, email marketing, managing digital marketing, and digital analytics through tactics like account-based marketing and customer relationship management (CRM). Digital marketing provides personalization, provides flexibility to the switch courses, instant tracking, and analysis for making the data-driven decisions. The traditional marketing provides the wide reach and the strong branding effect of the business even without the internet connection whereas, in digital marketing, the customers can only be reached with the internet connection. The message of the business cannot hit the desired target market by the traditional marketing methods whereas digital marketing is more likely to hit the target market, as the analytical data are available. In the traditional marketing, the ad placement is unchangeable and static whereas, in the digital marketing, the ad location can be revised as the new analytics become available in maximizing the marketing spend (Leeflang et al. 2014).

The focus of traditional marketing is to push the message to the audience whereas, in the digital marketing, the engagement is achieved through targeting and interacting with the customers. The traditional marketing may require the large investments for obtaining the desired impressions, but the digital marketing requires the little investment to reach the customers, or without any investment, the message of the business can be reached to the customers (Buchanan et al. 2018). The traditional marketing involves tracking and analytics, which are not available to understand if the goal is achieved but in the digital marketing, the immediate analytics are available so that the campaigns can be recognized and redirected if necessary.

According to Electronic Communications Act 2000, this forms the legal framework that supports the electronic communications and the transaction between the organizations. This also enhances the  proper marketing communication for the organization and provide the guideline to follow the correct marketing communication strategies.

Boo.com is a growing business in the Global market and for the successful business; it requires following the great marketing strategy and the best marketing strategy involves the digital marketing. Today, the internet provides an extraordinary platform for the business to spread their information and reach the audience. Traditional marketing also hopes to reach the audience but the internet does it better. Using an internet platform for marketing provides the more persuasive and more effective process and provides the client total control depending on their experiences (Charlesworth 2014). The prospects can provide the assets for a product, reviewing its specifications and other opinions on that product. The traditional Marketing media has very limited impact on the customers, as the marketers using the traditional means are not able to segment audience as effectively as the digital marketers are. The various types of digital tools help to find out the ideal target audience and focusing on them will provide the best result for Boo.com. The digital strategies are the most preferred method of advertising for much business, thus Boo.com can invest for adopting the digital strategies for advertising their product and they need to update their content with the relevant information constantly and need to invest in this for making the experience worthwhile for the users. One of the main advantages of investing on digital marketing is that it provides all the available options for turning the most ambitious project into the reality that is by allowing the business to develop the new concepts and ideas (Leite and Azevedo 2017). Digital marketing allows the business to use any innovative formats for creating a better impact on their audience by strengthening the business’ brand identity more (Grishikashvili, Dibb and Meadows 2014). Boo.com can monitor the digital strategies with the precision in real time. The digital tools use digital marketing metrics, which helps the business to judge how the strategy is useful and also let the business know whether they are on the way to achieve the projected ROI. Investing in digital marketing will be better for Boo.com as it helps to establish a strong relationship with the clients and clients are always should be the most objective critics. This will help BOO.com to correct the mistakes made by them and as it is entering the global market, this is quite obvious that it would make mistakes (Järvinen and Karjaluoto 2015).

Explain why it would be important for Boo.com to invest in digital marketing?

Website performance optimization should be given the top priority especially when there is maximum online competition. This involves the speed in which the web pages are displayed and downloaded on the web browser of the user. Web performance optimization is the field of knowledge regarding increasing of the web performance. The various web optimization techniques are listed below for improving the performance of the website:

In general, this is to be noted that the more HTTP requests on the web page of Boo.com make the loading slow. The browser is limited to the opening of the certain number of the connections simultaneously from the single host connections. For preventing the bottlenecks, there need to be a reduction of the number of the elements of the individual page and are need to be bundled together to a single file. This decreases the HTTP requests and the number of round tips that need to load. Whereas the making of the less amount of the HTTP requests is turned out to be the most important optimization technique, with the major impact (Levy and Gvili 2015).

Web pages are developed from the code files like the JavaScript and HTML and as the complexity grows in the web page, their code files also become complex as well as the load times. BOO.com need to introduce files compression that can reduce the code files by 80%, also by improving the site responsiveness.

Boo.com need to introduce Web caching optimization as it reduces the server load, bandwidth usage, and latency. They need to use the dedicated web catching software for storing copies of the document passing through the system. This is important for BOO.com to leverage the browser cache as this saves the sever time and makes the system faster (Li et al. 2016).

Code minification helps Boo.com to differentiate inconsistencies between the written codes developed by the web developers and how the network elements interpret code. This minification technique also removes the comments and extra spaces and also the crunch variables names for minimizing the code.

This lossy compression technique is the same as the audio files for removing the non-essential header information and improving the lower image quality to the high-resolution images. The changes like the pixel complexity, color gradations, which are transparent to the end-user and it also does not affect the perception of the image.

Boo.com need to replace the vector graphics by the resolution-independent raster graphics. For the simple geometric images, Raster substitution is best suited.

Boo.com need to understand the usefulness of the image optimization and should not upload the original photos on the websites they will be too heavy for the users. The tools like TinyPNG, Kraken.io, JPEGmini and other reduces the image size, whereas the quality remains more or less the same only.

Boo.com need to avoid the redirects as redirects are the performance killers. Generating the additional round-trip times, a redirect quickly doubles up the time, which is required to load the initial HTML document even before the browser starts to load other assets.

Demonstrate and discuss how Boo.com could have utilized website optimization techniques to improve the performance of their website?

Boo.com need to adopt the cloud-based Website monitoring as there are important advantages for offloading the website monitoring to the cloud-based host like the cost, scalability, efficiency and other (Patrutiu-Baltes 2016).

Prefetch and reconnect

The domain prefetching is the best solution for Boo.com as it already resolves the domain name even before the user can follow the link.

BOO.com should have this certificate as Google penalizes the websites, those don’t have it.

There are various disadvantages of the Wen fonts like the Google Fonts as they add the extra HTTP requests for the outside sources. This Web fonts are also reduced blocking and Boo.com need to prioritize based on the choice of styles as per the need, browser support and keeping the characters set down to the minimum and other (Royle and Laing 2014).

This is equally important for the Boo.com to have the fast web host as it allows making of any website optimization performance for the backbone of the site and needs to stay away from the cheap shared hosting (Kannan 2017).

Boo.com need to use Search Engine Optimization in the effective ways of attracting and retaining customers. The effective ways are:

• Need to follow the effective keyword research for getting the new customers to their website and using those keywords in the contents is one of the ideal ways for boosting customer acquisition and getting traffic to the website. Boo.com need to rely on the use of the long-tail keywords as it carries more weight than relying on the main keywords. The main motto of this tactic is not to attract an ample amount of traffic to the site but to boost up the conversations by targeting the search queries, which will end up in sales (Ryan 2014).
• com should have the list of the keyword variations and the SE ranking keyword suggestion tools allow the quick access of the different keywords variants and the long tail keywords. This tool also allows looking for the highest-traffic pages for the certain domain and the rankings of the keyword in the organic search. This also provides the estimated traffic and the traffics cost and also this allows the keyword research for the competitors in the same industry for unveiling the bunch of good opportunities. The Google AdWords’ “ad group ideas” was designed for the building purposes and it also shows the brief outline of the actual potentials of the certain group (Karjaluoto,  Mustonen and Ulkuniemi 2015).
• com need to improve the customer experience on the site as the customer experience is one of the significant factors that affect the willingness of the customers for being the loyal advocate. Whenever the potential customers visit any company’s website for the first time, they are already reviewing the services and the products depending upon that first impression. The listed SEO factors can enhance the customer experience at the touch point that is:

Page load time: Nobody wants to remain on the buffering site as everybody looks for the easy navigation.

Responsive design: The customer should be able to view the site that fits their screen, no matter whatever screen size the customers are using.

H1 and h2-h4 tags: This boost scanability and readability.

Metadata: Google uses this data in the SERPs for spending the time and effort for creating the brief and the compelling description of the content.

Broken and dead links: This need to be removed as this prevents the web content from being navigable.

Boo.com need to make use of KPIs at the multiple levels for figuring out the pathways for reaching the targeted goals of the business. The most important SEO KPIs are the rankings of the site’s pages on the Search Engine Results Pages, which demonstrates the value of the page that is how well the page can be optimized. The organic search results appear when the users search for the specific information and it arrives on the pages of the website because of the relevance of the content. This also involves the Organic Landing Page Bounce and the Conversation Rate, this is important to focus on the organic journey and incorporating the conversion into the mix (Kaufman and Horton 2014).

Boo.com need to use social media (SMM) for attracting, retaining and engaging the customers. This allows the company to know the customers like the individuals which will be easy for the company to identify their needs and offer the appropriate solutions for the new challenges they can face. The profile enrichment services allow the company to fill gaps in their knowledge’s regarding their customers in the company’s CRM solution. Boo.com need to make sure that their business can be easily found out in the social media and need to identify the platforms in social media, where the customers are active and are talking about the business. They need to promote their various social media profiles on the site and promoting communication with the customers are also beneficial for the business. Boo.com should serve the customer, where they can spend their time that is social media expanded its direct messaging system to provide the customer support teams, the ability to automate the welcoming messages (Ryan 2016).

The social media KPIs are the values that measure the performance of social media marketing (SMM) campaigns. These are to be used by the marketing teams to assess their efforts in the matter. The KPIs of social media are generally focused on the following ideas of marketing that is how the meaningful leads are generating the business’s efforts, where the posts are reaching, how the peoples are interacting with the content and how many persons are responding back as the result of the communication (Chaffey 2016). The social media KPIs should track the average clicks per post, average shares per post, the list of the new follower versus the old followers, the number of the subscriber, subscriber’s age, gender, goal conversion rates and return on the investment, story turnaround time and the average comments per articles.

Boo.com need to properly use the content marketing strategy that is by providing the content, which reflects the various stages of the customer journey. This is important for the company to understand the entire customer journey while creating the content to cater the customers at each stage. The company needs the readers to get engage with the content and this is one of the effective styles of engaging customers. The brand consultant needs to create the engagement strategy that can be done by involving the activities ta end of each blog, this will make the customers more enthusiastic in participating and this will also increase the engagement rates and the time readers will be spending on the blogs. Boo.com also need to leverage each channel that is the content need to be tailored on every platform (Baltes 2015). For example, the content provided in Facebook should include the images, live videos as this makes sure that the posts are getting regular responses through the messages or questions. Thus, Boo.com need to provide content on every platform like mobile messaging, emails, Facebook, Twitter and other. The contents involving the small pop-up box, that will allow the reader to respond back whether the content was helpful or not.

The proper content marketing involves its own ROI as the channel and the contents must be measured by the set of the unique key performance indicators (KPIs). The content marketing needs to involve the referrers as the significant metric to gauge, this helps to identify how the content is being picked up by the readers and also provides the director real-time insight into who is liking the content. The engagement metric with the content provides the site concepts like the social sharing figures and overall traffic but it also sometimes rarely quotes the serious engagement statistics to show the value of the content on the site (Stephen 2016).

The Pay-Per-Click is the model of internet marketing, where the advertisers pay a fee for each time of their add is being clicked. Basically, it is the way of buying visits to the site rather than earning those visits organically. The online display advertising includes the promotional banner on the web page. Today the advertisers have the ability to choose from the range of the formats involving the video, interactive ads, and rich media.

The steps that are needed to be taken for designing an effective PPC and Online display advertising campaign are:

Selecting goals and KPIs: Boo.com need to select their own company’s targeted goals that is what they want their customers to do after seeing their advertisement. After seeing their advertisement, if they want their customers to remember their brand while browsing products, then their goal is to raise brand awareness and on the other hand, if they want their customers to buy the product after seeing the advertisement then their goal is to drive sales.

Identifying the target audiences: This is important for Boo.com to identify their target audience and their actual customers. Displaying the products or services to those who are not looking for that is the waste of marketing strategy and wastage of investment also (Taiminen 2016).

Buying media: After finalizing the campaign’s goals and the target audiences, the company needs to buy media or ad space on different websites. Advertisers can buy the media from the publishers, ad networks and advertising agencies (Stone and Woodcock 2014).

Developing campaign creative: The advertisement needs to be creative and creating ads are even eye-catching and the advertisements need to be made depending upon the several display formats and sizes.  The successful creative and is the one that captures the audience interest with the graphical elements and compelling copy (Taiminen 2016).

Tracking and Optimization: The display advertising allows the business to track the campaign performance and optimizing it in the real-time and the KPIs can be tracked several times.

The budget of the PPC campaign could play an important role in its performance and it is common to believe that bigger budget of the PPC campaign, better the result will be.  This requires setting clear goals for the campaign, estimating the budget, the business needs to be strategic with the allocation of the budget of the company, focusing on targeting, improving the quality score for setting the budget of the company (Taiminen and Karjaluoto 2015).

There are certain laws related to the online display advertising, this involves the  Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations of 2008 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011. These laws are related to the unfair misleading and the aggressive marketing practices and are channel-neutral and in respects of the advertising policy, this is regulated by the Trading standards (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014).

Email marketing performs all the online marketing strategies including the SEO, PPC and content marketing. Email marketing is an important part of the marketing strategy as it is the most cost-effective ways to promote products, communicate with the customers and reaching the business goals. The best email marketing strategies that Boo.com can use for reaching their target goals are listed below:

Use of personalizing messages: Boo.com need to personalize the messages for every customer, this does not mean that there is a need of sending individual emails to every subscriber, the personalization means there is the need of using the customer data for creating the personalized message (Vien 2015). The use of the customer name and the following factors will help the business to get started with the personalization:

• Asking for the right information upfront: The great personalization requires the personalized data and without which there will be limited sources for carrying personalized communication.
• Using the real reply to the email address: If there is the use of the do not reply type services then this will take away the authenticity from personalized messaging. If boo.com need to engage and respond to the campaigns, then they need to use the real reply to the email address that will improve the credibility and would seem to be more personal (Watrobski, Jankowski and Ziemba 2016).
• Using of the real email signature: Like the use of the real reply to the email address, the business also needs to introduce the real contact information within the email. The best way to include the contact details in the email signature, this gives the reader the opportunity to contact or connect with the business online and this enables the business to build a relationship with the customers (Aguirre et al. 2015).

Segmenting the subscribers: Boo.com need to segment their subscribers based on the listed factors, this will enable to grow up a better relationship with the customers like:

• Segmenting by the industry: this will help the business to know whether they provide services and products to the consumers or the business. This will provide knowledge to the business by knowing the industry of the subscribers and it is a great way to segment the email campaigns (Goodrich, Schiller and Galletta 2015).
• Segmenting by the company size: for increasing the response rates, segmenting email campaigns by the company size or the annual revenue is the best way.
• Segmenting by the sales cycle: the early stage buyers may not be ready for the sales pitch but they will be more appreciative for receiving the industry research and on the end, the buyers will respond well to the free trial offers (Khoo and Xu 2015).

This marketing strategy also involves sending of the friendly emails by implementing the responsive email designs, keeping the short subject line and the pre-header and making the CTA big and obvious. There is also the need for the test copy, designs and buttons and automating the email campaigns whenever possible. The trigger emails like the mails of activation, win-back emails and surprising emails for better communication with the customers and growing healthy relations with the customers (Balakrishnan, Dahnil and Yi 2014).

Boo.com could have used the following factors for the proper management of digital marketing methods that involves the following steps:

• com need to build the buyer personas that is for any marketing strategy online or offline the business requires to know with whom they are marketing with. The important marketing strategies are built upon the details of the consumer’s personas and the first step of the business is to create them. The personas of the buyer represent the ideal customers and this can be created by researching, interviewing and surveying the business’s target audience. This is to be noted that the information is generally based on the actual data as the marketing strategy can be lead in the wrong direction. This requires both the qualitative and quantitative data. The quantitative data includes the location, age, income, job title of the targeted traffic of the website and the qualitative data is comprised of the goals, challenges, hobbies, interest and the priorities (Khraim 2015).
• com need to identify the goals and digital marketing tools, the marketing goals should be tied back to the fundamentals goals of the business. The business requires knowing the overarching goals, how to measure it and the procedure of measuring the goals is different for every business (Adhikary and Sinha 2018).
• com need to evaluate the digital channels and assets that is Boo.com need to consider the digital marketing or assets for incorporating it into the business’s strategy and it is helpful to consider the bigger picture for avoiding getting overwhelmed. The owned, earned and the paid media framework helps to categorize the digital vehicles, assets or the channels that the businesses are already using (Wiley and Cory 2015).
• In the case of digital marketing for owned media, content is the most important factor. Everything from the product description, eBooks, blog posts, social media posts, info-graphics or about us can be normally classified as content. This content can help turn a visitor into a potential customer as well as raises the brand value of any particular brand. Hence, irrespective of goals and objectives, owned content is necessary and vital for digital marketing strategy. Earned media campaign can help evaluate current media goals against the previous earned media campaign as it can deduce the source of the traffic and leads. Along with that, it can also help determine the least and most effective media campaign (Jakobson and Rueben 2016).
• This step is almost as similar to the previous process. Much like the previous one, evaluation of existing paid media platform (such as Facebook, Google Adwords, and Twitter) is required to determine the likely criterion to meet the current objectives. For example, if spending money on one platform does not produce the required results, consideration and evaluation have to perform for new strategy regarding platform choice or modification of an existing platform.
• Finally, to bring it all together, following requirements or aspects should be available at hand for an efficient and cohesive digital strategy: Comprehensive profile of buyer characteristics, Marketing specific goal, Catalog of existing earned, paid and owned media, Audit of existing earned, paid and owned media and wish or plan list to create owned content

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