DMKT5008: Digital Marketing Strategies and Boo.com Case Study Analysis

This report provides a detailed analysis of Boo.com's digital marketing strategies and the reasons behind its failure. It begins by differentiating between traditional and digital marketing, emphasizing the importance of digital marketing for businesses. The report then explores various web optimization techniques, including the use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), choosing the right hosting services, image optimization, and minimizing CSS and JavaScript files, among others. Furthermore, it discusses techniques to improve customer relationships, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the use of Google Trends. The report also covers Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, Online Display & Video, email marketing integration, and the importance of ongoing analysis and digital marketing management. Finally, it touches upon the relevant laws and regulations to consider when developing a digital marketing strategy, concluding with a summary of the key findings and recommendations for Boo.com's potential success.

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Student’s name
University
Digital marketing
Date

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Executive summary
The purpose of writing this report is to analyze how Boo.com digital marketing could have
been improved. The paper will discuss the differences between traditional and digital
marketing and outline the reasons why Boo.com should invest in digital marketing. The
paper will also discuss how the company could have employed different techniques to
develop and create effective and integrated digital marketing methodologies across all of its
digital domains. This would have prevented bankruptcy to the company.

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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction..........................................................................................................................4
2.0 Difference between traditional and digital marketing..........................................................4
2.1 Reasons why it would be important for Boo.com to invest in digital marketing.............5
3.0 Web optimization techniques that could have been used by Boo.com to improve
performance................................................................................................................................6
4.0 Techniques that could have been used by Boom.com to improve customer relationship. . .9
5.0 Pay-Per-click advertising and Online Display & Video....................................................12
6.0 How Boo.com could have incorporated Email Marketing into its marketing strategy......14
7.0 How Boo.com could have utilize ongoing analysis and digital marketing management
options......................................................................................................................................15
8.0 laws and regulations that must be considered in developing digital marketing strategy...16
9.0 conclusions.........................................................................................................................16
10.0 References........................................................................................................................18

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1.0 Introduction
Boo.com was founded in the year 1998, it was a European company which was operating in
its main office in London. The company was founded by three entrepreneurs from Sweden.
Kajsa Leander, Ernest Malmsten and Partrik Hedelin. Leader and Malmsten had business
experience in special publishing, initially, they had created specialist publisher and online
Bookstore which they called Bokus.com, this company was rung the third largest in the world
in e-retailer behind Barnes & Noble and Amazon (Ryan, 2016).
The company collapsed on May 2000 because the investor's funds were not raised enough to
meet the increasing marketing cost, wage bills, and high technology demands. This paper
would explain various ways on how Boo.com failures would have been prevented (Rowley &
Keegan, 2017).

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2.0 Difference between traditional and digital marketing
Many business organizations struggle in choosing the kind of marketing to use, depending on
the budget each and every organization have, the decision to be made are not so easy. ‘’
which method of marketing will give me most bang of my buck?’’ ‘’ How do I know the
kind of marketing which is working?’’ ‘’ who should I trust in marketing?’’. These are the
kind of questions that are always in mind for every business intending to market products or
services (Jernigan, Padon, Ross & Borzekowski, 2017).
To illuminate the terms, the application of print materials such as ads in magazines and
newspapers is an example of traditional means of marketing. On the other hand when a
company use website or advertising products and services using social media such as Twitter,
Facebook, or YouTube, the kind of marketing is known as Digital marketing ( Lui &
Au,2017).2.1 Reasons why it would be important for Boo.com to invest in digital marketing
The company can target both local and international audience. Furthermore, the
company can modify a campaign to certain demographics of the audience such as, the age,
location gender and interests. The campaign for Boo.com will be more effective.
With the use of digital marketing the company’s audience would be able to choose
varies ways of receiving the content, for instance others might choose to read on blogs,
others may choose to stream from the YouTube. Unlike the traditional marketing whereby the
audience does not have a choice, most of the audience receive sales flyers or phone calls at
inappropriate time and the may not have little or no interest. The online guys are able to opt
in and out of communications freely (Bampo, Ewing, Mather, Stewart & Wallace, 2010).
The interaction of customers would be made possible. With the application of networks
for social media the communication is made fast, convenient and reliable unlike traditional
marketing whereby it does not allow interaction with the clients. Boom.co would be able to
encourage prospects, followers and clients to take an action, visit the company’s website,

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read about services and products offered, buy goods and services, rate the company and
provide visible feedback to the company’s market ().
Digital marketing would be cost-efficient to the company. Though may invest on ads
payable online, the cost of marketing would still be much cheaper than the traditional means.
The company’s data are safely recorded- by the use of insight tools and google analytics
offered by most many channels of social media, the company would be able to monitor their
campaigns at any given time.
Increase the company level of competition
With the use of digital marketing, Boo.com would be able to compete favourably with
competitors irrespective of size with robust digital marketing strategy.
Brand development- If the website of boom.com is well maintained with high quality
content which meet the needs of the clients it would lead to generation of opportunities and
provide significant value to the company.
3.0 Web optimization techniques that could have been used by Boo.com to improve
performance
The speed of the website is the first impression for the company. It is crucial to know that the
company would not have an excuse when it comes delivering fast and reliable user
experience. If the website has low speed it’s a frustrating issue to the company and would
turn most clients away (Quinton & Simkin, 2017).
The following are several ways in which website can be optimized:
I. Use CDN (content delivery network) – CDN consist of several servers that are
distributed across many geographical locations which provide content of the web to

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the end users according to their location. When the website is hosted to a single
server, all the request are directed to same hardware. Due to this, it increases the time
that is need for processing of the requests. Furthermore, it increase the load time even
if the users are far away from the server. By the use of CDN, user call are conveyed to
a nearest server. Because of this the information is supplied to the user faster and the
website also would be quicker. Although this is expensive but it is the most effective
method of optimizing the website load time.
II. Relocating website to best hosting companies – Boo.com should apply the
following type of hosting services
 Shared hosting – this is the most popular and type of hosting services which
widely used globally. This is the cheapest method for Boo.com to get their site
online within a short time with a low cost. It is very crucial for the company to
choose to choose the best web host in order to guarantee better optimization.
 Dedicated servers and VP servers are faster than. Virtual private servers are
utilize many servers of content distribution. If boo.com would have a website
that have a typical traffic or electronic commerce site containing traffics
spikes at some times. Virtual Private servers would be the optimal resolution
for the company.
Another method Boo.com can apply is hire a dedicated cloud server from
Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google or any other cloud provider, this makes the
website to be more
Faster especially if both dedicated server and Virtual Private Server are
combine to form hybrid cloud.

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III. Image size optimization technique- every individual love attractive images, if
boo.com need to have a successful digital marketing site, photos , graphics and
images would improve the website engagement. Large size image slows down the
website and should be avoided
IV. Reduce plugins – it is very common to have plugins in every website. Plugins add
certain features to the website that are suggested by third parties. More plugins would
mean that more resources would be needed. Because of this the website is going to be
very slow and also would raise insecurity issues. Some plugins may not be able to
work after some time, I recommend boo.com to check plugins regularly and delete
those that are unnecessary.
V. Reduce the number of CSS and JavaScript files- if a website have many CSS and
JavaScript files, it will cause the web to have many HTTP requests when visitors of
the web try to access certain files. The requests would be treated by browser of the
website individually and will lead performance of the website to be slow. Reducing
the number of CSS and JavaScript file will definitely increase the speed of the
website. Grouping all CSS and JavaScript files would minimize HTTP requests.
There are many tools that can be used to minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML files
faster, for example the company may use Script Minifier, Grunt or WillPeavy tools.
VI. Use web caching- servers work slowly when there are many servers accessing the
website page and the site will need more time to deliver the content to every user.
Caching means storing current version of the web until it is updated.
VII. Optimize database in CMS- optimizing the database would be the effective
technique to increase the website performance of Boo.com. If the content
management system with multifaceted plugins is utilized it will lead to slow
performance of the website because of the increase in the size of the database. For

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example the CMS for WordPress stores blog posts, comments and other data, this
consumes a lot of data space. Every CMS needs its optimization measure and certain
plugins. If the company will use WordPress for instance, one may think of WP-
Optimize.
VIII. Minimize the use of fonts on the web
The use of web fonts has become common in the design of web. Unfortunately if web
fonts are used it have negative implication to the page load speed. Web fonts add
many HTTP requests to outward resources. The following measures would help
Boo.com to minimize font traffic on the web.
 Use contemporary formats WOFF2 for the modern browsers.
 Use only the set characters for the site
 Select the needed styles only
Ix. Detect and minimize 404 errors
404 error implies that the ‘page is not found ‘the message is given by the host to the browsers
to the search engines when the content accessed does not exist. To detect and eliminate the
error, the company may use plugins and the detection tools. As said earlier many plugins
reduce the efficiency of the website. So I recommend the resource to be run over an external
error detection tool. For example the company may use (GWT) Google Webmaster tool,
Xenu’s Link Sleuth or Redirected Plugin.
4.0 Techniques that could have been used by Boom.com to improve customer relationship
I. Search Engine Optimization – search engine optimization would have helped the
company to appear on the first page of the search. If the company does not have use
SEO techniques, the online bleaches of the company would remain empty. Search
Engine Optimization means that the website of the company would be improve to
enhance visibility. By making certain changes of the website the company would be

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able to increase traffic and make the website to be visible. Boom.co would have
boost the rankings of their website by applying the following SEO tools without
having to look for a webmaster.
 Google trends- search queries change over time, it depends on how
frequently users search for a product on the google search, if the products of
the company would have been appear on the google trend, definitely would
have create more awareness and hence more sales would have been realised.
 BROWSEO- the tools how search engine would be able to access the site.
The tool is able to trip down the website to base level. By looking at the
Boom.com site this way, the company would have been able to view what is
to be improved.
 Streaming frog- turning on streaming frog would have enable the company
to troubleshoot problems. The tool would be able to view missing metadata,
broken links, duplicate pages and many more. It is like auditing of the SEO
in other words. The results from the audit would have been used by the
company to improve the SEO and the website.
 GTmetrix- ‘’how fast had the boo.com website load?’’ ‘’did the Boo.com
website had some pages that too long to respond’’? Slothful speed of the
page obstruct SEO. The website speed does not play any role in the rankings
of the search engine. There was need for the Boo.com to counter check site
speed with GTmetrix. The company could have think of the way to improve
the speed of the website, for instance resizing of images in order to optimize
the load time.

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II. Social Media- I can say with a lot of confidence that Boom.com failed to leverage
the use of the social media with their marketing strategy. The company putter, sure,
but unfortunately their efforts end up with content and advertising. This was a big
mistake for the company and here is the reason why…( Kannan, 2017.).
Many of the people during that time had adopted the use of internet, many people in
Landon in 1999 had started to get updated on business news via social media. There
are four stages that I would have recommend boo.com to follow in order to develop a
robust social media marketing. The stages are:
a) Listening – it gives the insight that the company would have need to
influence, network and sell products and services. Listen would have help
Boo.com to develop a marketing strategy that that would have given the
company influence, robust network and many sales and leads. The main
purpose of listening is to obtain information to the customers and prospects.
b) Influencing – in this face the company would have tried the following:
 Improve engagement with both the brand and the content.
 Start off conversations related to the business organization.
 Increase the traffic of the website.
 Increase the product awareness
c) Networking – at this stage the company would have been able to connect
with many other authorities and influencers and start moving on very well.
d) Selling- this is the interesting part whereby the company would have been
able to begin delivering products and services to the people.
III. Content Marketing Strategy – content marketing is where by the company could
market their products by creating and sharing online materials like blogs, videos and

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posts on social media. Boo.com could have created content marketing strategy by
following the following 5 steps:
a) Creation of buyer personas.
b) Creation of list of keyboard that is based on the personas.
c) Identify the persona which is highly preferred by buyers.
d) Occasionally create a personality that is very appealing to the buyers.
e) The final step is to the settle into ‘content frequency pattern’
KPI is refers to ‘key Performance Indicator’ the goodness of digital marketing is
that everything can be tracked very easily. If Boo.com could have used KPI the
company could have monitor their progress very easily. The following are the key
KPIs that the company could have adopted:
a) Determination of return on investment- this is the crucial part because it
answer the following question effectively ‘’ is this digital stuff working’’
return on digital id calculated by subtracting digital marketing cost from total
revenue accrued from the digital marketing
b) Conversion rate of the website- can be tracked by calculating total number of
forms that is submitted , tracking of phone calls and emails on the company’s
website
c) Cost per Lead- if Boo.com could have measure cost per lead all for web
source, the company could have focused on digital marketing operations that
are very useful.
d) Measurements of percentage sales of digital marketing – this is calculated by
dividing the total attributed revenue with monthly sales from digital
activities.

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5.0 Pay-Per-click advertising and Online Display & Video
Pay Per Click is a way of utilizing search engine such as google to produce clicks to the
company’s website somewhat earning the clicks occasionally. For a company could have set
up PPC adverting in Bing ads or in Google AdWords by following the following steps:
Step 1: create login e.g. E-mail and password. One need to have Google AdWords account to
do this
Step 2: Target a certain geographical region- the company would decide whether to do
business locally or globally then choose the preferred location.
Step 3: Set daily budget- in the case of Google AdWords one need to decide how much to
spend every day. The company would then pay if it receives a click.
Step 4: controlling the amount that is pend per click
Step 5: creation of ads
Step 6: selecting keywords- keywords are phrases for which the ad will appear one it is
searched in the search engine.
Online display (& video) – this includes a promotional banner of any size or shape that is
put on the website, Boo.com could have choose from the variety of banner formats including
rich media, interactive ads and video.
The following are the steps I would recommend boo.com to set up online display (& video).
Step 1: Select objectives and KPIs – effective campaign are found by using a sound strategy,
the first step the company could have taken is deciding on the goals, the calls may be for
instance increasing the web traffic. The goals would thereafter monitored using KPI to
determine viability (Kumar & Reinartz, 2018).

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Step 2: define the target audience- this process is closely related to the campaign goals. The
target audience are those that the company need to reach.
Step 3: purchasing of media- after finalizing on the objectives of the campaign the next step
would be to buy a media. BOO.com could have bought their media from the following
channels like Publishers, Ad networks advertising agencies and many more.
Step 4: Developing creative campaign – it is very important to think about how the products
would be display to bring about positive impression. There are several display formats to
choose from, for instance, Text, Image, video or Rich media ads
Step 5: monitoring and optimization- the interesting part of display marketing is that it is
possible track the performance of the campaign.
6.0 How Boo.com could have incorporated Email Marketing into its marketing strategy
Email is revenue driving machine if used effectively, it is a very powerful channel for
marketing when it comes to return on investment on companies that have applied this
strategy. I would recommend Boo.com the following ways to improve their email marketing
strategy: (Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014).
1. Retention of customers by the use personalization- personalization is the key element
to retain customers. Personalisation can be done by copying data for clients, sending
emails reminders that features products preferred by customers.
2. Creation of email subject lines that boost conversation. Consider the length of the
subject it should be brief and direct.
3. Try segmentation/ triggered automation. Once customer information are known it is
important to segment to categories based on interest, behaviour and the current
situation of customers.

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4. Personalization using the dynamic content- with the use of campaign marketing tools
it is very easy for the company to customize their content to meet the customers’
demands. Dynamic content allow the company to customize the emails send to
customers very easily. Personalised email help the content to be relevant to
customers.
5. Tracking behaviour using robust analytics- a web snippet allows the company to
monitor behaviour of the users whenever they follow links send to them via email.
Tools such as Google analytic help the company to make sense the data which would
help in boosting segmentation and personalization (Leppäniemi, Karjaluoto, Lehto &
Goman, 2010.).
6. Creating consistency - according to most entrepreneurs, magic number on how
frequently marketing emails are to be send does not exist. Marketing Sherpa suggest
that it is better to send emails more often, like let say everyday than less often (Taken
Smith, 2012).
7.0 How Boo.com could have utilize ongoing analysis and digital marketing
management options
Market ongoing analysis describes the current state or status of the target market. Hence,
Boo.com could have cater information that are generated from analysis and research on the
target market, customers , competitors and the challenges that are faced by the company.
The ongoing analysis would have helped boo.com to compare business data over time in
order to determine whether the results are consistent or not, the company would have then
develop a digital management strategy to respond to the trends in accordance to the
objectives of the business (Smith, 2011).

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Ongoing analysis would have help the management team for Boo.com to understand the
performance of the business over time, this would have help the company to the outcome of
their business operations. This would have given ideas on the changes that was necessary to
be made to prevent further risks (Leeflang, Verhoef, Dahlström & Freundt, 2014).
The company could have employ the following ongoing analysis to help improve on their
performance.
 Identification of areas where business is performing very well so as to duplicate
success.
 Identification of areas where the business is under performing and
 Provision of evidence that will inform the decision making
8.0 laws and regulations that must be considered in developing digital marketing
strategy
There are certain regulations that relate to digital marketing specifically. Any organizations
that use digital marketing should keep abreast of growth in the area to make sure that it is
complying with the rules and regulations (Wind, Sharp & Nelson, 2013).
SMS and Email marketing rules
The ‘Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations’ have introduce an unsubscribe
feature to all commercial emails, this means that a business organisation can only contact
individuals who have agreed to receive emails alerts (Mackey & Liang, 2013).
Social media and website
The website should have registered address for the company according to the law. Business
organizations should consider to include the website disclaimer for the web and terms and
conditions (Weber, 2009).

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The use of cookies as key performance indicators (KPI).
Cookies are text or files that remain on the browser of the computer. Cookies may be used to
track user browsing partialities. According to the laws, all business must tell their clients that
they are using cookies (Chester, 2007).
9.0 conclusions
To summarise this report it has clearly shown that future marketing is highly depend on
digital means. The digital marketing is not concern only to posting ads on the portal, it
involves integrated channels and integrated services. Many companies seek to use varies
components that has been discussed in the report to reach build their brands and reach the
target groups (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2010).
Digital media is mostly preferred by most marketers because it is the best platform where
they are able to convert their product into a brand. Digital marketing is cost effective as
compared to traditional marketing and it provides lots of touch points to the company. Digital
marketing enables a company to engross their target segment in an effective and efficient way
via digital platforms. The digital platforms enhance the influence of brand recall in the target
groups (Blakeman, 2018).
I honesty trust and believe that this paper is the most useful to marketers to master the digital
marketing and plan future strategies to avoid business failure that has been witnessed by
Boo.com.
I conclude this report by quoting that ‘’ business organizations must pursue digital platform’’.

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10.0 References
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Blakeman, R., 2018. Integrated marketing communication: creative strategy from idea to
implementation. Rowman & Littlefield.
Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2010. Digital marketing: implementation and practice.
Chester, J., 2007. Digital destiny: New media and the future of democracy. New Press.
Jernigan, D.H., Padon, A., Ross, C. and Borzekowski, D., 2017. Self‐Reported Youth and
Adult Exposure to Alcohol Marketing in Traditional and Digital Media: Results of a Pilot
Survey. Alcoholism: clinical and experimental research, 41(3), pp.618-625.
Kannan, P.K., 2017. Digital marketing: A framework, review and research
agenda. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(1), pp.22-45.
Kumar, V. and Reinartz, W., 2018. Customer relationship management: Concept, strategy,
and tools. Springer.
Leeflang, P.S., Verhoef, P.C., Dahlström, P. and Freundt, T., 2014. Challenges and solutions
for marketing in a digital era. European management journal, 32(1), pp.1-12.
Leppäniemi, M., Karjaluoto, H., Lehto, H. and Goman, A., 2010. Targeting young voters in a
political campaign: Empirical insights into an interactive digital marketing campaign in the
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Lui, R.W. and Au, C.H., 2017, December. Designing simulation games for information
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Rowley, J. and Keegan, B., 2017. Looking back, Going forward: the role and nature of
systematic literature reviews in digital marketing: a meta-analysis.
Ryan, D., 2016. Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the
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Smith, K.T., 2011. Digital marketing strategies that Millennials find appealing, motivating, or
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Tiago, M.T.P.M.B. and Veríssimo, J.M.C., 2014. Digital marketing and social media: Why
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Weber, L., 2009. Marketing to the social web: How digital customer communities build your
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