Business Strategy in the Digital Environment: YourHome Report

This report focuses on the development of a digital strategy for YourHome, a bed and breakfast (B&B) business facing challenges from a newly opened hotel chain. The study begins with an executive summary highlighting the proposal of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Social Media Marketing to improve business performance. The report includes an introduction outlining the importance of digital marketing in the hospitality industry, followed by an analysis of the B&B industry and YourHome's current marketing practices. It presents industry analysis using data from the England Occupancy Survey (EOS) and performs a SWOT analysis of YourHome. The report recommends the implementation of CRM for customer database management and integration with social media, and social media marketing using platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram to broaden customer reach and generate revenue. The implementation section details the objectives, features, and key skills needed for both CRM and social media marketing, including advertisement strategies. The report aims to provide YourHome with a comprehensive digital strategy to enhance its competitiveness and attract more customers.

Running head: BUSINESS STRATEGY IN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT
Business Strategy in the Digital Environment
[YourHome]
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive summary
This study is aimed at understanding the importance of digital strategy in improving the business
performance. The aim is being served through the proposal of ‘CRM’ and ‘Social Media
Marketing’ for the case company “YourHome”. The proposal is being made after identifying the
loopholes in the business strategies of the case company. The case company has struggled to
maintain the same momentum after the opening of a reputed hotel chain in the same town. The
proposal is being made, so that, the case company could score good performance based on
‘CRM’ and the ‘Social Media Marketing’.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Digital Strategy Analysis:................................................................................................................4
Digital Strategy Implementation:....................................................................................................8
Limitation:.....................................................................................................................................10
Conclusion and Future Work:........................................................................................................11
References:....................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction:
Business nowadays is not just limited only to word-of-mouth publicity kind; it actually
has identified a lot other potential marketing tools. Few of the examples of marketing tools are
search engine optimisation (SEO), Pay per Click Advertising (PPC), ‘Social Media Marketing’
and Content Marketing (Levy and Gvili 2015).
The case study company ‘YourHome’ is a small family owned business that provides
both accommodation and breakfast services to travellers. The business is known as bed and
breakfast (B&B). They offer budgeted accommodation to travellers and have become quite a
popular name in the town. The business has been running quite well; however, with the arrival of
chain-hotel of a reputed brand, the business is now getting hampered. The hotel chain is offering
cheaper accommodation charges and their rooms are much more modernised & attractive as
well. The case study company has already lost their few customers. Adding to the worries the
case study company does not have any digitalised platform which could promote their image to a
wider customer and construct a new brand image. The hospitality industry is the fourth largest
industry of Britain. The industry reported to being contributed over £115 billion per annum to the
UK economy. It has reportedly created 153,000 new jobs in the two years period from 2010 to
2012 (Bandbassociation.org 2018). Additionally, Britain is considered as the leading nation in
the B&B industry. In fact, five of the top 10 B&B service providers are from Britain
(Bandbassociation.org 2018).
The study is aimed at understanding the importance of digital marketing from the
perspective of Case Study Company as it struggles to post any competition to the newly opened
hotel-chain in the same area.

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Digital Strategy Analysis:
Industry analysis: The prospects in the B&B industry can be understood from the survey
reports of England Occupancy Survey (EOS). ‘EOS’ measures the bed-space and
bedroom occupancy across the accommodation sectors in big-size hotels to small-size B&Bs and
farmhouses (VisitBritain 2018). They provide reports on accommodation type across the
country. The data is collected through the reports submitted by the panel that consists of the
various kinds of participating accommodation formats. The different types of accommodating
formats like the hotels and the B&B submit their data every month (VisitBritain 2018). However,
some changes have happened to the system in June 2017. The panel is now bigger and is known
as a syndicate panel which now has more than 3,000 hotels & other kinds of accommodation
service providing formats. They now also set a benchmark for a specific company, so that, a
meaningful comparison can be drawn on an annual basis (VisitBritain 2018).

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Figure 1: England Room Occupancy by Month
(Source: VisitBritain 2018)
The survey report suggests that the flow of customers or the travellers have remained more or
less the same in the time span 2015-17. The number of visits has remained quite good in every
month though have little variations which are significantly evident in December and January
months. The figure also suggests that there are potentials in the accommodation sector.
Illustration: The case study company seems to have been following the traditional style
of marketing. This looks quite evident in a fact that they are only involved in word-of-mouth
kind of marketing. They do not have any digitalised platform where they could have possibilities
to reach to a million of customers in a very less span of time. On the other hand, the strategy that
the case study company follows is quite time consuming and possibly not a potential choice to
reach to a large customer base. This is quite unrealistic as well considering a fact that the B&B
industry is booming and Britain is at the top position at the global level (Bandbassociation.org
2018). It further means that the case study company is offering a decent service at cheaper prices
but they are yet to take the advantage of the opportunities which are ample there in the B&B
industry. Adding to this, they have a very outdated website that lacks in attractive and engaging
contents. Aspiring travellers may be able to get the required information but then they would not
feel like being through the website every time as it could have happened, had they considered the
digital marketing strategy to make it look like more engaging (Stone and Woodcock 2014).
Results of the strategy analysis / Recommendations: Considering the fact as stated
above, the case study company needs to have the sufficient resource, so that, it could take the

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advantage of ample of opportunities which are there in the accommodation sector. The case
study analysis being a small family owned business, it is yet to consider a switching to the
digitalised platform where they have adequate responses to visitors database management and
the digital marketing. Digitalisation is important from every perspective and the case study
company must get digitalised through two digital strategies like Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) and Digital Marketing (Karjaluoto and Ulkuniemi 2015).
Assumptions: CRM is important for maintaining a customer database, integrating various
operational divisions at just one platform and integrating the CRM with the social media
marketing. The customer database is necessary to realise the choices that the existing customers
have from the case company. It was due to the incapability to read the customer’s desires that
few of the existing customers have preferred switching over to recently opened a reputed hotel
chain. Moreover, using database only they could be able to meet the demands and offer relevant
services to existing customers. Additionally, CRM could also be integrated with the various
social media platforms. Additionally, data of a wider audience base can then be produced which
is necessary to make the necessary amendments, so that, the case company is able to retain its
existing customers and attract more new visitors in future (Tseng 2016).
Social media marketing is another way to digitalisation that the case company needs at
the moment. Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram can be
quite beneficial for bringing the much needed digitalisation in the case study company. Images
and video could be uploaded to the Facebook platform. It takes a very little time and people start
noticing the advertisement. However, the content and the graphics need to be attractive and
engaging as well. In case of video, the first 5 to 10 seconds is important as people, on most

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occasions, do not like entertaining a time waste video ads. The first 5 to 10 seconds of the video
is vital and needs to be of great quality (Ashley and Tuten 2015).
YouTube is also very important and may help to attract the attention of a million of
customers in a very less span of time. The company can prefer uploading either a short or a long
clip. Videos can be uploaded to a channel which is specific to the company. Viewers can be
asked for a subscription to the channel at the end of every video. The profit through YouTube
campaigns is in direct proportion to the number of the subscriber to the particular channel
(Constantinides 2014).
Organisational analysis:
SWOT of YourHome-
Strengths  Operation in a growing industry
 Customers have liked the cheaper staying
options
 A very first of its kind in the entire town
Weaknesses  No existence at the social media platforms
 Reliance only on word-of-mouth publicity
 Outdated website interface
Opportunities  Growing industry
 Britain tops the list of best destination offering
the B&B services across the globe
 Travellers love this concept
Threats  Rising success of recently opened a reputed
hotel chain

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 Hotel offers modernised infrastructure at the
cheapest prices
Table 1: SWOT analysis of YourHome
Digital Strategy Implementation:
Objectives with CRM-
 To attain the highest standard of customer service
 To maintain a customer database
 To integrate various operational domains at just one platform
 To incorporate it into the social media platforms, so that, responses of viewers could be
monitored & measured
Objectives with Social Media Marketing-
 To enhance the business productivity by increasing the number of visitors
 To reach to a wider customer base through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram
 To attain some revenues from social media marketing
 To generate ample of leads for company’s CRM
Explaining the features-
The digital platforms ‘CRM’ and ‘Social Media Marketing’ are being proposed to yield
some benefits, so that, the case company could stand strong in competition and be able to attract
& retain the travellers. CRM is being proposed because it systemizes the operations. The
different operation domains can be integrated into just one platform. Hence, it is accessible from
remote areas also. Most importantly, different data can be stored in the software. Moreover, an

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accounting professional can now be able to cross-check the entries by matching this with the
other department’s data like the sales department (Basit et al. 2017). It also can be integrated
with the social media platforms which are necessary to monitor the viewer’s reactions to text,
image and video ads. Moreover, a lot of useful data can then be made available to the case study
company. The company may then be able to deliver more specific services to travellers by
making the required amendments (Mullins et al. 2014).
‘Social Media Marketing’ can be a platform for not only reacting to the audience but, also
making significant revenues. The number of subscriptions at the YouTube channel will go on
increasing the revenues. On a similar note, the number of likes on Facebook will also fetch
revenues. The case company can then be able to draw good revenues while pulling more
travellers influenced by the advertisements (Dahnil et al. 2014).
Purpose-
The purpose of the CRM implementation is to enhance the customer service standard.
Moreover, customer loyalty level will then be increased. Additionally, marketing activities could
also be tracked. ‘Social Media Marketing’ was necessary as the case company had just relied on
traditional marketing strategies. They did not even utilise it properly and kept on confined just to
word-of-mouth publicity. The digitalisation had missed which is why they found it difficult to
understand the reason behind travellers being switched over to the recently opened hotel.
Key skills-
Before implementing the CRM, it is necessary to identify the CRM for their purpose.
The range of CRM is available in the market; however, not every single CRM is made for the
particular case. Post CRM implementation will require trained professionals from within the

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company who can efficiently manage and track the performance. It is necessary to identify the
downtime or else unnecessary charges will then be paid to the vendor. It is also necessary to
identify the number of operational domains which will be integrated with the CRM (Elena 2016).
Advertisements on Facebook can be created by following some strategies like selecting
the number of characters in text, size & resolution of the image and the video size. Additionally,
call to action button like Shop Now, See Menu and Learn More can be established. Once the
strategies have been developed, the next move will be to approach an appropriate advertiser that
can construct the advertisement based on the strategies being provided to them. The similar
process will be followed on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. However, call to actions button
may be different for different platforms (Leung, Bai and Stahura 2015).
Expected change-
With this new CRM, the company may be enjoying an enhanced customer satisfaction.
Additionally, they may also be enjoying an increased customer loyalty. The business is expected
to get better with an improved understanding of customer demands (Gu et al. 2017).
The proposed social marketing may be helping to attract a wider audience base from
different parts of the world. Healthy revenues are expected in future. The number of travellers
may be increasing due to increased awareness in social media for the service and the service
provider (Balakrishnan, Dahnil and Yi 2014).
Inclusion of a software platform-

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The digital strategy implementation includes the installation of CRM software. CRM is a
software application which is programmed with coding with the chosen language format. The
languages used in CRM are C# and ASP.NET (Gu et al. 2017).
Limitation:
There are other digital marketing platforms like search engine optimisation (SEO) and
Pay per Click (PPC) advertisement which has not been proposed for the case company. This is
because it will take time to actually realize the importance of the other platforms. Once, it is
being found that CRM and social media marketing have fetched good values then that will be the
most suitable time for hitting again with the SEO and PPC.
Conclusion and Future Work:
Therefore, the case company needs to implement CRM and go with the ‘social media
marketing’. This is necessary to reduce the threats of the rival hotel in the same town. This is
also important to redefine the value of YourHome to its customers and the others. They had first
initiated the concept. They should be getting ample of shares from the market. This is only
possible if the existing strategies are successful as it will open up doors to more advanced
advertising platforms like SEO and PPC.
The future work will be to identify the exact outcomes of the implemented ‘CRM' and the
‘Social Media Marketing'. If the outcomes are encouraging then the further study will be in the
advanced form of digital marketing which are the SEO and the PPC.

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study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1),
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