Clinton Cards: A Comprehensive Digital Marketing Strategy Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of digital marketing strategies for Clinton Cards, a greeting card and gift product retailer. It contrasts traditional and digital marketing methods, emphasizing the importance of investing in digital marketing for Clinton Cards to compete effectively in the evolving market. The report explores website optimization techniques, search engine optimization (SEO), and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to enhance the company's online visibility. It also examines the use of online display and video advertising, social media marketing, content marketing, and email marketing to attract, retain, and engage customers. Furthermore, the report discusses how Clinton Cards can leverage website analytics to improve performance and offers recommendations for strengthening the company's digital marketing expertise.

Running Head: Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing
Clinton cards

Digital Marketing 1
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Differences between Traditional and Digital Marketing........................................................................3
Importance of investing in Digital marketing for Clintons.................................................................4
How Clintons could utilise website optimisation techniques to improve performance?......................6
How Clintons can use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC), to
improve its website visibility amongst its competitors?........................................................................8
Steps taken to design effective SEO campaign for Clintons...............................................................8
PPC Campaign by Clinton cards.......................................................................................................10
Steps taken for effective PPC campaign..........................................................................................10
Relevant Laws and guidelines..........................................................................................................11
How Online Display & Video Advertising and Social Media Marketing can be used to attract, retain
and engage new and existing customers.............................................................................................12
Key Activities used in Implementing Online display and Video Advertising strategy and social
media strategy.................................................................................................................................12
Justification for the use of different social media marketing channels by Clinton cards.................14
How Clintons could incorporate Content and Email Marketing into its digital marketing activities?. .16
Email marketing...............................................................................................................................16
Content Marketing..........................................................................................................................16
How Clintons could use website analytics to improve performance?.................................................17
Conclusion and recommendations......................................................................................................18
References...........................................................................................................................................19

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Introduction
Digital marketing can be understood as the set of tools and channels through which
advertising, marketing or sales takes place. These channels include emails, social media,
mobile phones, applications and more. It includes the use of digital technologies mainly
internet so that the products and services of the organisation can be marketed. Digital
marketing is the need of the hour because it helps in bringing growth to the business and
helps in interacting with the audiences in real time. With the advent of modern
technologies, the businesses of all the sizes have changed their business models and
attempting to target the audiences through the online marketing strategies (Holliman and
Rowley, 2014).
The assignment focuses on the case of Clinton Cards which was founded in the years 1968
by late Don Lewin. The company was a well-known brand for greeting cards and gift
products. With the increased use of Internet, the business of Clinton Cards saw a deep
downfall. The company had a mantra that ‘birthdays and anniversaries never go out of
fashion’ but the late realisation of the adoption of Internet gave huge losses to the
company. But after 2012, the market for greeting cards again gained considerable market
size and growth. The company owned more than 1000 stores when it was in its peak and
had more than 25% market share in the greeting card market. The company is at present in
the hands of American Greetings which is his world’s greatest greeting cards firm.
The assignment will address the differences between the traditional and digital marketing
and the need to invest in the digital marketing for the company. It would also discuss the
use of Search Engine Optimisation and Pay per click advertising for improving the visibility
for the Clintons. In the market. The use of content and email marketing will also be
discussed in its digital marketing techniques. As a recently appointed Digital marketing
manager, I would investigate new strategies to strengthen and reinforce the digital
marketing expertise for the company.

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Differences between Traditional and Digital Marketing
Marketing has evolved a lot over the past many years and this has given rise to the digital
media. Digital media is a lot more than social media which includes social media, digital
analytics, blogging and much more. It is a paradigm shift of marketing and it can be defined
as the advertising delivered through the digital channels like websites, social media, emails
or mobile applications. Marketing has evolved a much from the conventional tools of
marketing to the modern tools of marketing which is used nowadays primarily for
promoting the new and existing products and services of the company (McGuire & Sarner,
2015).
Traditional marketing can be understood as the use of tools like newspapers and magazines
to advertise the product or services of the company. It also includes the use of televisions,
flyers, billboards and radios. The various differences between traditional and digital
marketing can be explained below:
Traditional marketing Digital marketing
Traditional media includes Print media,
broadcast media, direct mails and Tele
marketing.
Digital marketing includes Websites,
social networking sites, content
marketing, Google advertisement and
video marketing
It has a more personal approach and personal
relationship can also be formed with the public.
There is no need to give physical
presence in case of digital marketing.
It is cost effective and provides better returns
of the investments made
This form of marketing involves high
costs and the success is not defined
(Leeflang, et. al., 2014).
It is performed with an idea of focussing on the It is a mass communication technique

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set target of people where a particular set of customers is
hard to target.
It is not easy to measure the results of
traditional marketing
The results are easily measured
because data is easily recorded and can
be analysed. This helps in creating
better content for marketing.
The advertiser or marketer has the control
over the information and audience to which
message need to be advertised. Also, there is
a limited time when this information can be
accessed (Smith, 2011).
No such information control is there
with the marketer. This information
can be accessed anytime and at any
place.
It is a top down model of advertising where
most of the control is in the hands of the
marketers
It is the bottom up approach where the
customers are understood and have an
active role in the design of the message
which is to be advertised.
(Mercer, 2017).
Traditional media still has a very strong role in the world of marketing. The big brands have
over emphasis on digital marketing nowadays but the blend of both is suggested to have a
stronger platform and to have a strong impact on people (Madden, 2012).
Importance of investing in Digital marketing for Clintons
The UK market of greeting cards has gained a strong growth in the inline market as the
consumers are nowadays search for cheaper deals and also prefer to buy it online for better
convenience. The annual growth of the industry is 6.2% which creates a need for Clintons to
invest in digital marketing in UK. Clinton should focus on creating the digital platform of its
card business because of the increase in the popularity of the digital card business by

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competitors. It is also because the population of UK has high digital literacy which helps
increasing the brand awareness and growth in sales of greeting cards (IBIS World, 2018).
Digital marketing will create many advantages for the brand. It will help the brand in
creating the customers across the world (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). It will also help
in engaging the customers. As it is a digital era now, some companies are still reluctant to
accept that digital marketing is important for the business. Clintons should invest in digital
methods because the internet will continue to expand and it is an extraordinary platform to
spread the information. It has more reach and visibility than any other media form in the
present times (Narkiniemi, 2013).
Internet is present in most of the parts of the world which increases its accessibility for the
brand and increase the experience of most of the users. Digital marketing will also allow
Clintons to boost its productivity which was not possible with the traditional methods of
marketing. The company will be able engage with its customers and will be able to provide
them more customised messages and designs because internet is very interactive in nature
(Tiago and Veríssimo, 2014).

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How Clintons could utilise website optimisation
techniques to improve performance?
Web optimisation is the process where controlled experiments are used to improve the
ability of the website to perform and drive goals of the business. It enhances the chances of
the website accessibility on the search engines (Schwarzl and Grabowska, 2015). A website
has to be fast, performing and easy to navigate in order to be more useful for the users.
There are various techniques which are used to improve the performance of the website of
Clinton and can improve its digital marketing accessibility (Fierro, Arbelaez and Gavilanez,
2017). Some of them are discussed over here:
Database Optimization
Clinton Cards is advised to reduce the data which is of no use or are of least use so that the
website can be free of heavier loads which hampers its speed and performance (Akram, et
al., 2010).
Infrastructure
Fast and rapid web host is the backbone of the website. It is very important to have a fast
web host by Clinton. Cheap shared hosting should be ignored completely.
Hotlink protection
This saves the bandwidth by blocking the sites which are displaying the data of the
company’s data without any permission. It saves the data copy by other users.
Reduce the number of HTTP request
HTTP is a protocol which is used by the web browser in order to get files from the web
server. To prevent the bottlenecks, the number of elements are reduced from the web page
and smaller files and bundled and accumulated into a single file. It reduces the HTTP
requests and lesser time is taken for loading a web page (Kumar and Kumar, 2014).

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Using Cloud based monitoring of website
Website monitoring can be done by using cloud based monitoring. It brings advantages such
as cost efficiency, scalability and many more and helps the business to have more focus on
its growth. There are services provided which allows the organisations to monitor their work
and it can be done from anywhere and anytime. Clintons can have an advantage of getting
timely notifications and clearing the traffic issues created on the website. Speed is the most
important factor which is required on a website. Glossy and high quality images enhance the
attention of the users but it’s of no use when a site does not load even in 10 seconds
(Enaceanu, 2007).
File compression
Java scripts and other code files like HTML is used for constructing web pages. Web pages
are complex because of the coding and other processes. File compression can be used to
reduce the code files by 80% so that the responsiveness of the site can be increased.
Cache
Caching is a mechanism in which a temporary storage is made for web pages so that the
performance can be improved of the website. The visitor get to see the cache version until
and unless the last cache is changed. This helps in saving the time of the server and also help
in making things work faster (Al-Badi, et al, 2011).

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How Clintons can use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
and Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC), to improve its
website visibility amongst its competitors?
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation can be understood as the practice of increasing the
traffic on the website through search engines. This term has big meaning. This attracts the
quality visitors across the world because those people are directed towards the website. It
helps in getting the customers attracted to the business who are genuinely interested. This
creates an organic result for the website and higher the organic results of the search,
greater will be the chance of visit by the user (Miller, 2012).
Steps taken to design effective SEO campaign for Clintons
To build a successful SEO campaign, one need to consider many factors. The main purpose
of it is to drive traffic to the website from the number of sources. The below discussed steps
are taken in order to give satisfactory results to the website of Clinton Cards by designing
the effective SEO campaign.
Analysis of the current website
Through this, the basic information about the website of Clintons is extracted. The platform
of the website need to be analysed and if it is outdated and requires a shift, modern
platform can be adopted. The website of Clintons should be user friendly, only then the SEO
campaign will deliver good effects in future (Castronovo and Huang, 2012.).
Key word search
The company need to identify some keywords which will be made highlight during the
campaign. This can be done through brainstorming session. The keywords can be the type of
cards and services the company is offering or the occasions for which cards are offered.
Variety of tools like Moz and Google Ad word are used in order to optimise the keywords
with the website.
Establish a content strategy

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Once the keywords are chosen for the website, it is important to form the content strategy.
The tools like Google Algorithm is used to create content strategy. Content strategy creation
means that a long piece of content is created which helps in engaging the people with the
content and website as a result. This helps in ranking the website higher and it attracts more
traffic.
SEO Audit
An Audit of SEO is performed to know the improvements needed and to get the strengths of
the website. It can be done with the help of SEMRush, Moz or ahrefs. ON site optimisation
and technical evaluation is done. SEO audit will present results to Clinton Cards which will
be the action plan for the campaign. It will present an idea to develop the website in a much
better way than it was before (Yalçın and Köse, 2010).
Define and Track goals
Before implementing the strategy, the goals should be defined and tracked. Tools like
Google analytics can help in tacking the success of the methods used.
On site optimization
It is the implementation process where Meta titles and descriptions are made. The errors
occurring in SEO are being fixed up and the site is made 100% ready for the search results.
Link building
Links are built in order to focus on the quality of links and to make it relevant when people
search about the website. Links can be built by using tools like SEMRush (Killoran, 2013).
Analysis and evaluation
The company need to ensure the performance of the campaign for which SEO optimization
strategy can be adopted.
It is very important for Clintons to have truly effective SEO campaign so that the best
possible results can be derived.

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10
PPC Campaign by Clinton cards
PPC refers to Pay per Click which is a model of internet marketing and the advertiser have to
pay on each click on their advertisement (Kapoor, Dwivedi and Piercy, 2016). It is the
process which helps in assessing the traffic on the website. Nowadays, companies are
spending a huge amount of money in PPC because it helps in increasing the brand visibility
and awareness. Clinton Cards need to drive a PPC campaign to drive traffic on its website.
Steps taken for effective PPC campaign
Identify objective of the campaign
The objective of the campaign need to be identified so that the campaign could get
direction. Clinton need to drive more traffic to its website for increasing the sales and meet
competition. It also have to determine its target audience which is the ultimate retail
customers of all ages.
Keyword management
PPC advertising is based on the keyword which is flashed and used for driving attention of
the audience. Keyword management can be done by Keyword search, keyword grouping
and the campaign setting at the last (King, Abrahams and Ragsdale, 2015).
Creation of campaign or ad groups

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PPC campaign needs to create ad groups which are the folders or sub folders for the ads. A
single paid campaign or single ad group might be created which depends on the keywords.
Effective Ad copy
An effective ad copy can be created for a successful campaign. It must be informative and
engaging and should be relevant. It involves keywords and focus on the value proposition
(Hu, Shin and Tang, 2015).
Like this SEO and PPC could help Clinton Cards to increase the visibility of the business and
to generate awareness for the brand among its target audience.
SEO and PPC are the game changers for the business. The modern marketers need to use
the full set of social media and online marketing tools in order to reach their target audience
and engage with them. This can be done with the help of Google Ad words which helps in
reaching and selecting the target audience demographically. Content flashed should also be
relevant to your target audience otherwise no good impact will be seen (Stokes, 2014).
Relevant Laws and guidelines
The main motive of laws and guidelines on digital marketing is protecting the sentiments of
the target audience. Digital advertising has to go through various laws and range of
guidelines which protects the audiences form the harmful practices of advertising. Digital
Marketing has to follow the codes of advertising given by Advertising Standard Authority
(ASA). The main aim of regulations is to treat the customers in fair manner, to save them
from misleading advertisements a practices and to ensure the benefits of the ultimate
consumers (Zhu, et. al., 2017).
The company will have to follow the CAP code which is the code of practice established by
Advertising Standards Authority. Some of the practices are banned in B2C advertising in
order to ensure customer safety and security. These practices includes false endorsement,
misleading advertisement, free offers which involves costs and more.