Digital Marketing Plan

This document provides insights into the importance of a digital marketing plan and how it helps in organising digital marketing activities and building multi-channel capabilities in an organisation. It covers topics such as environmental analysis, critical assessment of business concern, methods of monitoring and measuring digital marketing, and more.

Digital marketing plan

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
Environmental analysis for organisational digital presence through emphasising on
opportunities, challenges addition to likely impacts the digital environment for the sector.......1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................5
Critical assessment of business concern by comparing contrasting digital presence. ................5
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................6
Organising of digital marketing activities and building multi-channel capabilities in an
organisation..................................................................................................................................6
TASK 4..........................................................................................................................................10
Methods of Monitoring and Measuring Digital Marketing.......................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Digital marketing plan can be said to the document that shares relevant details for
planning digital marketing actions addition to campaigns. In other words, digital marketing plan
is a effective plan which maximises benefits of company concerned with data assets as well as
technology focused initiatives (Chaffey and Smith, 2017). By developing effective digital
marketing plan, organisations identifies the aspects that makes their business unique along with
the ways for communicating messages to targetted audiences by opting wide digital channels.
For gaining insights for digital marketing plan, Hilton Hotel is selected which is international
brand that performs operations in hospitality industry. The respective entity has amplified its
digital leadership in various dimensions such as e-commerce leadership, social leadership
addition to marketing leadership for building unique, new together with important competing
advantages. The present report covers demonstration of understanding challenges, opportunities
and impacts related to digital environment within hospitality industry. It further provides critical
assessment of key digital tools, channels addition to platforms by comparing an contrasting
digital presence of the hospitality company. Further, a plan is provided for organising activities
related to digital marketing in order to support organisational initiatives to build multi channel
capabilities within luxury division and active holiday seekers. At last, it evaluates methods
concerned with monitoring as well as measuring digital marketing in effective manner.
TASK 1
Environmental analysis for organisational digital presence through emphasising on opportunities,
challenges addition to likely impacts the digital environment for the sector.
Hilton is one of leading brand within hospitality industry that operates worldwide. It is a
hospitality entity which manages as well as have franchise of wide portfolio of resorts as well as
hotels. The purpose of such organisational existence is to expand the activities of business at
worldwide so to deliver best offerings to customers and earning huge revenues. Recently, Hilton
administrative team has appointed digital marketing head who is responsible for developing
report for digital presence of the business concern. For this purpose, environmental analysis is
conducted that focuses towards opportunities together with challenges and impacts digital
environment have on hospitality sector (Kingsnorth, 2019). The description of the analysis is
underneath:
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Environmental analysis: A strategic tool which involves processes for determining
internal addition to external elements that affects performances of firm is termed to
environmental analysis. With this analysis, the digital marketing head of Hilton can develop a
suitable digital marketing plan through communicating and coordinating activities with all
decision makers. Within PESTLE analysis, diverse factoral types are analysed and all the
opportunities and challenges are closely monitored so to form strategic determinations for
upcoming that determines several ways for dealing with threats in effective manner. Hilton uses
wide types of digital technologies for promoting the hotels and resorts online in order to
strengthen its customer base. An environmental analysis is being conducted by digital head for
monitoring the organisational digital presence (Dodson, 2016). The elements which are analysed
are underneath:
Political: Diverse kinds of foreign trade policy, political stability, taxation policies,
governmental policies and integrity of politicians are some of political factors which requires
more emphasis of Hilton managers while working with digital techniques so to ignore
interference of political systems of UK and other nations (Kotler, Kartajaya, and Setiawan,
2016). With this, digital environment of hospitality sector is affected as companies in the
industry are not able to work with technology related policies due to which transactions with
other nations are not conducted properly that impacts negatively on digital presence of Hilton.
Opportunity: When digital head of Hilton considers all policies and programmes that are
implemented by political system while utilising digital technologies then various growth
opportunities will be created and implemented without any interruptions and barriers (Chaffey
and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019).
Challenge: There are various circumstances when organisations such as Hilton not able
to follow code of practices in digitalised manner then it results in issues, for example, political
party interference in operational performance which becomes challenge for the entity.
Economical: The factors which pertains within nations economy are economic factors
(Simula, Töllmen and Karjaluoto, 2015). Economic growth, business cycle, unemployment level
and entire economic system are the factors that required detailed analysis by Hilton managers at
time time planning usage of digital technology for promotional aspects as they impacts in
positive and negative manner. For example, rise in rates of inflation affects organisational
pricing policies that results in impacting entire hospitality sector negatively.
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Opportunity: UK's government supports business concerns that posses huge visibility on
social media platforms, online websites addition to uses digital techniques for promotional
purposes as it results in development on economic status of nation (Deiss and Henneberry,
2017). It is huge opportunity for Hilton as it uses advanced and unique digital techniques for
grabbing attention of customers towards its hotels and resorts.
Challenge: Commodity prices are changed by managers as per cost incurred by company
and using advanced techniques generally increases product prices. In context to Hilton, when
prices of hotels and resort services are increased then it affects customer choice due to which
they switches to another hospitality company that offers similar services at least prices and to
retain them becomes challenging for the entity.
Social: Factors which are direct contemplation of society within which entity operates are
social factors (Kotler, Kartajaya and Setiawan, 2016). These includes cultural beliefs,
educational level, population perception, class distribution and age demographics that needs
more emphasis by Hilton managers at the time implementing digital technological tools for
purpose of marketing its resorts and hotels. It affects digital environment of hospitality industry
as it is importance to consider customer preferences as well as attitude while marketing
commodities and when these aspects are considered properly then execution of operations
becomes easy that impacts positively in marketing commodities and services.
Opportunity: the target market of Hilton is upper and middle class population and when
the company works with digital technology tools then they analysis major preferences and wants
of targetted population which provides diverse opportunities to attract mass clients through
offering the services as per the analysed wants.
Challenge: When Hilton managers will ignore or avoid customers preference and choices
then it creates challenge for company to grab attention of such audiences and sustaining in the
industry.
Technological: Technological awareness and innovation level are few technological
factors that are analysed by Hilton managers as these factors provides information about latest
trends and techniques with the adoption of which Hilton can perform successful marketing. By
analysing the technological environment, managers of Hilton makes certain improvements in the
digital marketing aspects with the help of automation or innovation that attracts wide customers
towards it. Moreover, technological factors improves digital marketing as all the factors related
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to advancement of techniques are considered while framing strategies (Reske, 2017). By having
proper and detailed information about market then it assist entities to limit their expenditures on
irrelevant technologies which impact positively on digital environment of the hospitality sector
as whole.
Opportunities: Hilton has effective and competent information technology team that
have huge knowledge about what digital technique to be used at what time which provides the
entity huge opportunities to reach customers that are located at far areas and attracting them for
its resorts and hotels.
Challenges: When technology becomes obsolete or introduction of new technique creates
challenging environment for the entity as it results in huge burden for Hilton information team to
overspend in technological enhancements so to sustain in industry.
Legal: Particular legislation such as employment law, intellectual property law, safety
law and discrimination law are part of legal parts that requires huge concentration of Hilton
managers for applying digital technology for purpose of promoting business. It is because it
ensures fulfilment of legal requirements in proper manner or not (Chanavat, Desbordes and
Lorgnier, 2017). Some of the ethical issues that are experienced by managers of Hilton in context
to digital technology are ethical delimas, job displacement, heath issues and many more.
Moreover, failures in storing data, ignoring preferences of some audiences and so on are some of
ethical issues that the companies have to overcome by using legislation. When laws are not
adhered by entities within hospitality industry then it impacts on digital environment within the
sector as non-adherence results in inappropriate conduct of activities that impacts negatively.
Opportunity: By implementing digital techniques through properly executing activities
by adhering with al legislations provides growth and sustaining opportunities as all these assist in
meeting regulations that are governed by government and achieving success.
Challenge: When legislations are not properly followed by Hilton while marketing its
services then creates huge challenge for the firm to enjoy competing edge and work in digital
environment wherein hospitality industry operates.
Environmental: Environmental factors are concerned with natural disasters, changing
climate and many more which needs more focus of management team of Hilton while using
digital technological frameworks for promotional aspects as it influences the intermediaries or
middle mechanisms which are opt for promotions. It could affect digital environment of whole
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hospitality industry as environmental changes generally results in impacting negatively on
activities concerned with promotions that are heavily dependent on digital media.
Opportunities: When all the environmental factors are forecasted in advanced then
Hilton can gain wide opportunities to plan programmes for dealing with upcoming complex
problems promptly.
Challenges: The phase when managers of organisation are not able to properly forecast
environmental factors then huge operations are affected which will result in challenges related to
improper marketing for Hilton.
Thus, it is significant for digital marketing team of Hilton to analyse all the mentioned
impacts, challenges and opportunities while formulating determinations for upcoming durations
that will assist in working within digital environment of hospitality sector and achieving
sustained competing edge.
TASK 2
Critical assessment of business concern by comparing contrasting digital presence.
In order to enhance the digital presence, there are wide types of digital platforms,
channels together with tools that are used by the companies (Hanlon, 2019). The digital tools,
platforms and channels provides diverse opportunities to business concerns. In context to Hilton,
managers uses wide types of tools, platforms and channels so to enhance their reach and digital
presence in comparison to other hospitality organisations. Some of the platforms, tools as well as
channels that various hospitality entities uses for digital presence are as assessed:
Search engine: It is one of effective digital tool that helps companies to promote their
websites through increasing visibility or presence within search engine result pages via paid
advertising (Spiller and Tuten, 2015). With this tool, Hilton managers searches as well as
identifies frameworks in database which are concerned with keywords as specified by the clients.
Google, Bing, Yahoo and many more are some types of search engine that Hilton uses for
boosting and comparing its digital presence in contrast to other entities working within
hospitality sector. The digital tool provide advantage of making offerings addition to web content
visible that is important for digital presence and marketing for Hilton. At same time, the filters
within search engines do not provide accurate reflections about real interest of users.
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E-mail marketing: It is a digital channel through which business concerns sends
commercial messages to different group of population by using email (Popovic, 2017). With this
digital channel, Hilton promotes its hotels and resorts through sending information or content for
the services offered to different people by using e-mails and at same time, solves their issues or
concerns. The digital channel promotes online presence of the hospitality firm as it helps in
developing strong relationships with potential audiences and clients. Moreover, e-mail marketing
allows companies working within hospitality sector to improve awareness of customers as well
as tailoring marketing messages for the mass customers that strengthens the presence on digital
mechanisms in comparison with other entities. But at same time, e- marketing also involves
spam emails that irritates the customers and various times poorly designed mails are not
delivered that restricts digital presence of Hilton and other hospitality business concerns.
Social media: It is considered as prominent digital platform which is leveraged by
business owners for the purpose of creating brand awareness about its merchandise and services
(Floričić, 2016). By using social media platform, Hilton company reaches highly targetted
potential audiences via person to person as well as direct responses. Digital marketing team of
selected entity works with suitable social media platform such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest,
YouTube, LinkedIn and many more in order to promote its diverse kinds of resorts and hotels to
specific targeted audiences that improves its digital presence in the market. In context to other
hospitality businesses, they uses social media platform so to improve attention of customers
towards the company. At same time, social media platform lacks emotional connection, conveys
inauthentic expressions, diminishes understandings as well as thoughtfulness and creates skewed
image while various times limits digital presence of respective entity in comparison to others.
Thus, digital marketing team of Hilton uses above mentioned digital tool, platform
addition to channels for the purpose of enhancing its digital presence in comparison to the rival
hospitality entities. With these mechanisms, Hilton has achieved its digital presence in almost all
nations and made effective relations with customers that belong to far located nations.
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TASK 3
Organising of digital marketing activities and building multi-channel capabilities in an
organisation
In present time, every company wants to gain popularity on digital platform in order to
maximise their sales and earn massive profit to reach the desired goals. Manager use to prepare
effective digital marketing plan that help in increasing the brand image and make product reach
to large number of audience. Digital marketing plan is an effective document that help to provide
valuable and important detail relevant to planning of a company (Deiss and Henneberry, 2017).
This will support to execute crucial marketing activities so that main objective are attained and
overall customer base gets increased. This essentially addresses the specific elements: short,
medium and long-term market objectives, it also addresses digital-level approaches and
platforms that will be used.
Multi-channel method is related with the practice that is mainly adopted by the
organisation to formulate the effective interaction among large number of consumer by using
different channels. Channels like direct and indirect are primarily used to make customer aware
about the goods which influence them to buy specific product or use particular service. Hilton
Hotel is among the biggest brands throughout the hotel and service industries. It is therefore
essentially necessary for Hotel to engage in digital development. This help to ensure that Hilton
simply remain the highest position and maintain the loyal audience through the provision of
high-quality and luxury services (Karjaluoto and Ulkuniemi, 2015). In this regard, this leading
Hotel has now come up with a digital marketing plan to undergo digital transformation within
the organisational premises. This plan will assist the enterprise in effectively organising digital
marketing activities as well as providing efficient assistance to company in development of
multi-channel capabilities for its luxury business division. To complete the plan marketing
manager of Hilton hotel makes a plan of digital marketing that contain several elements that are
elaborate underneath:
Background: This is recognized from its clients as well as its dedicated team workers all
over the world for its trendy and successful facilities. The Hilton Hotels represented and
addressed several leaders and famous people. The Hotel is able to build its name and maintain a
legacy by making sure that they provide valuable and luxury services by investing majorly in
innovative services that satisfy the customer needs.
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Initiatives: In this respect, in order to develop clear communication with consumers,
hotel has develop official website where visitor can get any information regarding availability of
rooms, special offers, additional facilities etc. Hilton Hotel has intended to experience digital
innovation in which they have the aims to create maximum customer experience (Karwal,
2015). Thus visitors might get comfortable with the services and product that the Hotel supplies
like, spa facilities, large concerts halls, luxury rooms etc. Head of digital marketing of Hotel is
planning to use different social media platform like Facebook, Pinterest, You tube, Instagram
etc. which help in expanding unique services in competitive environment. In present time there
are some other facilities and services which are offered by Hilton Hotel that includes
Audiovisual equipment, faxing, modern and advance business centre and most important notary
public for companies convenience. For comfort of children, they include babysitting facilities,
pushchairs. They offer free art galleries, elevators, book-store, bar, multiple languages
employees, baggage storage, washing, and deposit-saving among other comfort and luxury
facilities.
Promotional Mix: In recent time Hilton hotel make effective use of promotion mix in
order to ensure that activities of digital marketing are being executed according to the set criteria
by Management team. It is done to insure the social media team meets its targets. A commodity
can either be measurable products or intangible services provided to the visitors. Safety and
quality of facilities are choices which come within this category (Gupta, 2015). The Hilton
maintains customers to buy only the highest quality of services which keeps them safe and
protected in any way. Some of the planned activities are discussed underneath:
 Advertising: This is among the most relevant and essential aspects for which respective
hotel create a sustainable digital marketing strategy plan in which they illustrate the
entity's brand and product range. They also highlight the unique selling point of the Hotel
to promote a positive and influential identity in visitors minds. Manager also use email
marketing in which large audience are provided with essential information about offers
and packages. Important information related with additional facilities and special
discount offers are delivers to customer on official website.
 Public relation: This is another key element that Hilton hotel uses to create a strong and
successful brand identity and lets the business develop new goods in the Hospitality
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sector. This will be beneficial in improving the Hilton current market revenue and
productivity and growing customer base in competitive environment (Malar, 2016).
 Sales promotion: It is an important tool and consider to be essential element of the
advertising process that lets a business promote and grow sales. Company mainly based
on short-term objective and purpose so they adopt different strategies to increase sales or
invite more and more customer within a specific period. For example, on festive season
in UK Hilton hotel provide additional costume facilities for visitors so that they can enjoy
events as per requirement and culture.
In order to improve the experience of customer Hilton hotel has adopted omni channel
strategy which is help to define that there have a segregation among the promotion, distribution
ans communication platform. This provide crucial benefit to Hotel by providing higher
efficiency and make more amount of profit in a respective year. It has been germinate in
different manner that are discussed underneath:
 Improves organisation structure: The strategy of Omni-channel aids Hilton Hotel to
improve their structure by making attract potential visitors to use different kind of luxury
services (O’Connor, 2015). This also support in making valuable decision that enable in
developing proper and correct brand awarenesses which makes customer to believe that
Hilton services are far better than other Hotel. Therefore, with help of the approach of the
respective company's omni channel advertising, their consumer base can become large
which will support them improve sales and profits. Thus, they deliver services which
provider a way to new tools, technology, advance thinking strategies and hard working
team member that will help them to remain at top and attain the competitive advantage.
 Customer Centric: It is also important method of Omni-channel which means that
customer preferences and demands must be regularly noticed that help in delivering most
suitable and valuable services. In fact, members of the team of the relevant company
monitor their consumer's actions by helping them to communicate their needs and
requests (Marques, 2018). In addition the organization seems to have the opportunity to
obtain loyal customers and keep their new customers with the aid of omni channel
marketing. Thus the Hilton hotel is building a solid consumer base and gaining
confidence, it will help them develop and expand. The performance advantage in
consider to be an important integrated system that help in providing innovative solution
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and latest technology that combines together in order to increase the overall business and
lower the cost with out compromising quality.
 Integrate analytics: In the context of Hilton hotel, omni channel strategy implies that the
manager of marketing team must examine their consumers past records (Baker and Saren,
2016). The analysis can help management apply the information and recognise customer
behaviour regarding the desire and preference for rooms and food. Thus it can be stated
that with the support of omni-channel practice valuable services can be developed which
will give maximum satisfaction to different visitors coming for different culture and
country. The more details manager collects, the more possibilities are there to recognize
customer satisfaction. In turn, the relevant Hotel often delivers valuable services and
feedback facilities to their prospective customers by which they can enhance their
connection.
Opportunities: Hilton hotel have the main opportunities to expand their present market
share by effectively using more advance digital marketing tools and strategies. Such as Over the
past 3 years, programmatic advertising networks have offered new consumer targeted
possibilities to hotels (Malar, 2016). This has been used to devastating effect by several huge
hotels and hotel groups and there are many hotels that still have to examine the advantages of
this. Thus Hilton Hotels must put more effort into testing qualitative programmatic
advertisements to attain potential customers in year 2020.
Challenges: The major challenges for respective hotel is that due to shutdown of internet
because of several reason might lower the booking rate. There must be an effective team that
regularly update the website as many time customer might gets confused because of old offers
blinking on site that create confusion.
TASK 4
Methods of Monitoring and Measuring Digital Marketing
This is primarily important for a hotel like Hilton to track and evaluate the digital
marketing strategy efficiently and address any area underneath the plan (Floričić, 2016). The
primary reason for those assessment and tracking is it would support the organization in figuring
out ways that are perfectly appropriate to its present problems and help to attract more
consumers with its successful efforts and numerous new and existing goods and services. In
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order to reach the desired results some of the main techniques are discussed below in the context
of Hilton hotel:
Key performance indicators:
It is consider to be the most important approach of digital marketing assessment is by
developing appropriate KPIs to track the success rate. The Hotel Hilton is working on three
important components of its online marketing thus KPI's will help to manage their efficacy
according to the fixed standards (Gupta, 2015). Organization will essentially set standards for its
content's opinions, comments, mentions, and re-tweets, and regularly evaluate whether Hotel
Hilton will create more convincing and interesting content. This would help manger of hotel
efficiently assess the path in which its initiatives are moving and change their material according
to consumer expectations sufficiently. Customer contact is yet another KPI that the business can
use for the media content.
 Processes for Measuring Digital Campaigns:
To assess the efficacy of the initiative, Hilton could use Google, AdWords as a significant
instrument to measure the progress of its initiatives toward hotel business. The method is useful
for the enterprise as it efficiently handles PPC advertising for an enterprise (Spiller and Tuten,
2015). Therefore, it will be beneficial to give Hilton, a better scope to handle their marketing and
advertising.
 Performance Measures via Online Metrics:
There are different online measures which act like indicators that provide exposure to a
corporation's true-time performance on the local, regional, and foreign marketplaces. It's an
important element that Hilton wants to assess the effectiveness of all its advertising on the
internet. In addition to some KPIs, electronic metrics will view the results in statistical way,
thereby assisting the company on issues that need to be addressed (Verhoef, Kooge and Walk,
2016). To achieve efficacy in this, Hoot Suite is a measure that acts as an instrument for
assessing an organization's total social media efficiency. It covers both the web content and
communications with customers.
 Population Measurements:
Another important aspect to accurately quantify and track digital marketing is by
assessing population that is affiliated with the business as well as its social-media posts. It is
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quite difficult for an organization to track each channel at the same time to achieve exposure to
its output in real time (Spiller and Tuten, 2015).
CONCLUSION
In the end of report, it has been founded that digital marketing is one of the most
important elements which makes a company product and services get popular among the large
customer base at global level. In hotel industries large Hotel like Hilton which have number of
Hotel and resorts all over the world uses number of digital marketing technique to expand the
types of goods ans services they provide. Social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram etc. and promotional mix methods are helpful in reaching the desired audience at
attain the top position in competitive environment.
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REFERENCES
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Dodson, I., 2016. The art of digital marketing: the definitive guide to creating strategic, targeted,
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