Digital Business Proposal: Enhancing M&S Online Presence

This digital business proposal analyzes the potential for Marks & Spencer (M&S) to enhance its online presence in a competitive market. It begins with an introduction to digital business and the context of M&S's expansion. The main body covers the business background of M&S, its product sales, and the identification of the target audience. It then explores online marketing channels, product distribution processes, customer discounts, and seasonal product strategies. A SWOT analysis is presented to assess M&S's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The proposal also includes an online visibility strategy using Porter's Five Forces model and concludes with an implementation plan. The document provides a comprehensive overview of the digital business proposal for M&S, focusing on strategies to improve online presence and market performance.

Digital Business proposal

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Business Background..................................................................................................................1
Sales of the product.....................................................................................................................1
Targeted audience.......................................................................................................................2
Online channel of marketing.......................................................................................................2
Process of distributing the products............................................................................................3
Customer Discounts and seasonal products................................................................................3
SWOT analysis............................................................................................................................4
Online visibility strategy.............................................................................................................5
Implementation Plan...................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Digital business is a process that helps the organisation in aiding new aspects in the form
of technology in order to transform the business towards digital world. The study will be based
on the digitisation of the Marks & Spencer in which company will be expanding to enhance the
online presence of M&S products. This report will help in analysing the sales and online
marketing of products. This report will create a clear understanding about the online strategies of
the business in order to establish a large online network of huge variety of M&S products. This
article will totally focus towards enhancing the online presence of the products in this
competitive world.
MAIN BODY
Business Background
Marks & Spencer plc is a British multinational retailer of UK. This company provides the
large range of products such as clothing, home products, luxury food etc. this organization was
founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick,
2019). This industry is one of the biggest competitor of all the retailing stores since it always
satisfies the needs of the customer by providing the good quality of desired products. M&S has
made uncompromising attitude towards the customer relation and also made a return policy in
which they accepted the return of unwanted items from consumer. Rapidly, M&S started
expanding their business in most of the other countries and established 1035 outlets at UK in
which 300 stores are set for the fashionable clothing and 700 simply food conveniences stores
and remaining for all the retailing items.
In this technology based world, M&S planning to expand the industry diversely by
providing online goods and services to customers. Being a growth manager of the company, one
need to identify various factors that help the company in enhancing online presence of M&S
products.
Sales of the product
Marks & Spencer is one of the leading retailer of the world and this company provides
wide variety of brands such as St Margaret and St Michael. Company showcase wide range of
products on website and customer chooses the goods and services according the individual
needs. All such products which the company have provided on the website for the selling
purpose are displayed through the third party website in the form of online digital marketing
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techniques. Company also asks for feedback and reviews, if customer wants to order the product
which is not available on the list then they may request to the company via review and comment
on a particular website to demand the required goods.
Targeted audience
Analyzing the correct buyers is the key to the successful online business (Heaton, 2019).
In order to derive the right traffic to online Marks and Spencer store, company have to determine
the correct audience for such products. Being the growth manager of M&S, one have to use
various tools to reach the correct targeting audience in order to increase the sales of the
company. Such tools are google analytic and search console that allows the manager in
identifying that how the people reach to the online stores and also determine the age group who
is the frequent buyer of the goods.
These tools also helps in obtaining the information about the constant searches made by
the customers. These tools also helps in taking the reviews and feedback about M&S services
from customers. Various tools that helps in knowing the supporters or targeted customers are Kit,
Sokrati shops, Facebook dynamic product ads, Instagram ads and re-targeting by yahoo etc. For
example M&S growth Manager is planning to introduce a campaign which consists of online
fashionable ladies marketing stalk. This marketing campaign mainly developed for targeting all
the females as this online store mostly provides women fashionable items (Jorge and et.al.,
2018). Also, M&S have provided wide range if latest trending footwear for girls so the main
target customers of M&S online marketing is mostly females of all age group.
Online channel of marketing
Online marketing websites helps in promoting and showcasing the goods and services
offered by Marks and Spencer. Various marketing channels that provides easy accessibility of
goods to large number of customers encourages the online sales of the product in the digital
market. Such mediums are SEO (Search engine Optimisation), Google, Facebook, Amazon etc.
SEO is the process of earning high rankings in organic result of major search engine.
This channel attracts large number of people towards the buying online products of M&S
(Priluck and Topol, 2018). Facebook is one of the most popular social media page that consists
of large of users therefore it attracts the people towards the goods and services. This social media
marketing is done to earn visibility and traffic. Amazon is one of the most popular e-commerce
website that promotes variety of online products to customers.
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Process of distributing the products
Online goods and services are provided to the customer via internet and various online
websites. So such products can be purchased via internet or different online stores. Online
marketing helps in presenting the images of desirable goods and services online and customer
order the product via internet. People generally selects the goods or services that one need to
consume and then provides the address to the particular website so that the company can deliver
such services to the customer's place. Steps of online delivery process of M&S organization are:
Step:1 Deciding to choose the courier company or customer's own delivery vehicle. So this step
provides various options such as Courier guy, fast way courier etc. this allows to choose the
parcel delivery option.
Step: 2 Make sure that the decision ties with M&S company (Rana and Dwivedi, 2018). This
helps in providing improved customer services.
Step:3 Investigation of various courier companies and determining the offers. It will allow
Company to choose deficient and more convenient way to deliver a parcel.
Step:4 Consider Surity of the item delivery. It allows the company to know that the parcel is
delivered to the client.
Step:4 after delivery, get the payment of the consumer in response to the goods and services of
M&S.
Customer Discounts and seasonal products
Digital marketing benefits the businesses of all types by giving access to large number of
people in the form of online goods and services. Digital marketing and online sales of the M&S
products at affordable prices increase the number of buyers. Also, Coupons and seasonal
discounts are promoted by the online businesses that allows the Marks and Spencer to sale its old
stock within discounted prices. These types of intended discounts for limited time will attract
people towards buying such items and it also derives the great customer value (Rohm, Stefl and
Saint Clair, 2019). This will influence the consumer and increase the customer loyalty towards
M&S goods and services.
As per the recent trends of Market, it is very important to change and update the online
stolk in order to attract more people towards the latest goods. So Marks and Spencer need to
provide discounts and large offers in order to clear the old fashioned stock from the online stores.
Keeping the updated goods and services allows the organization for the future sustainability into
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the digital marketing. So Benifits to the customer in the form of discounts helps in selling
seasonal products and these types of discounts are generally provided at the end of the season.
END OF THE SEASON SALE helps in determining the discounted online items which attracts
more possible customers and also this influences the buying behavior of consumers.
SWOT analysis
It helps in analyzing the internal business factors which influence the growth and
sustainability of M&S. Being a growth Manager, it is very important to analyze the strengths and
weakness of the firm in order to make effective strategic planning of the business (Sousa and
Rocha, 2019). SWOT helps the company to analyze the current situation and also responding it
with an effective strategy to give a tough competition to its competitors.
Strengths
 As the company is totally focused towards the quality so High recognition and brand
value is one of the biggest strength of M&S.
 This brand provides a range of products to the customer which offers multiple choices
to choose the best. One of the great strength also includes large number of M&S outlets which help
consumer to easily access the goods and services (Developing a Digital Marketing Plan,
2018).
Weaknesses
 M&S has a drawback in terms of non trendy store which allows them to assumes that
the store only provides clothing items for aged people and not for teenagers.
 This company still follows old working techniques and do not adopt the advanced
techniques to manufacture goods and services so this decreases the efficiency of the
company. Increased cost of products due to manual working.
Opportunities
 Internal values and set of norms will help the Marks & Spencer to expand more in the
future. Market segmentation is one of the greatest opportunity that enable M&S to split the
customers into different marketing zone in order to understand the needs of each age
group.
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Threats
 Advancement of technology has lead to the online marketing of thew goods and services
due to which the competition has increased as the entrepreneurs are constantly trying to
bring new concept for consumers.
 Exploitation of the old strategies and such marketing strategies are replaced with new
ideas and concepts in the world.
Online visibility strategy
In order to increase the online popularity of M&S products, Growth Manager of the
company have also developed various strategies that help in enhancing the digital presence of the
products. Being a growth manager of M&S, one have implemented porter's five forces model
that helps in making the marketing strategy to strengthen profitability of the firm (Sousa and
Rocha, 2019). To identify the strategies and analyze the Competitive industries, porter's model
allows to determine the weaknesses and future opportunities to sustain the Marks and Spencer
fore the longer time.
Competition in the industry: Hundreds of industries are aiding up and existing in the market on
daily basis so porter's five force first factor helps in identifying the number of competitions. This
model helps in identifying the competition along with the equivalent products and services. This
will be improved by maintaining social media updates.
Potential of new entrants: A company's power can be extremely affected with the new entrants
into the market. As it takes less time and money for any organization to enter into the
competition into the market but it ultimately affects various existing companies and significantly
weekend their sustainability.
Power of suppliers: This factor derives key aspects of supplier which helps in analyzing the
more unique option to entertain the customer. It also depends on the cost incurred as there are
limited number of suppliers and therefore the company have to relay on the power that supplier
holds.
Power of customers: Marks and Spencer mainly deals with the quality of product so providing
the best product at minimum prices is also one of the strategy that attracts large number of
customers. Purchasing power of the consumer is greatly influenced with the prices of the
product.
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Threat of new products: It is a great fact that competitors substitutes the old existing companies
from market. Porter's force will allow M&S to identify such threats for example, the company
who still follows the manual working technique can be easily substituted with another company
who adopts advanced tools with less cost.
Implementation Plan
Marks and Spencer is shifting its marketing approach to digital. This allows the company
to launch the campaigns online before it arrives on television. Being a growth Manager of M&S
business, new strategies are developed in order to enhance the online presence of the goods and
services within M&S. Digital marketing plan for the organization is as follows which consists of
various strategies and actions which result in sustainable development and higher profitability.
Digital marketing plan:
 Online Launching strategy of “Leading Ladies” campaign on social networking sites
which gains lot of publicity of all the Facebook users across the world (De Pelsmacker,
Van Tilburg and Holthof, 2018). This is one of the important strategy which takes almost
2 weeks of time.
 Taking customer feedback after the release of the campaign which takes almost 1 week
to collect the real time saying of consumers.
 Promoting the campaign ion multiple social media channels, it takes 1 day to do the
digital marketing of “Leading Ladies” Marks and Spencer products.
 Visual merchandising and paid search allows increasing CRM. Being a Growth manager
of the company marketing team is restructured with agile team members who operates
all the social media records and update the stock as well. It takes almost 3 to 5 weeks.
CONCLUSION
From the above study it has been concluded that digitisation is very important to enhance
the marketing and sales of the product in this technology based world. The study has helped in
creating the online marketing of Marks & Spencer products in order to sustain the company for
longer run. Also, this report has provided various channels of marketing the products online and
it has also been concluded that discounts and seasonal distribution of the latest product attracts
the large number of customers.
The report has also helped in analysing strengths and weaknesses of M&S. Growth
Manager of M&S has also various marketing channels that allows them to showcase their goods
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and services with the help of third party websites such as Facebook, Amazon, Mantra etc. Along
with this, this project has also developed a marketing plan with a specified time period to
Implement new strategies within business.
REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2019. Digital marketing. Pearson UK.
De Pelsmacker, P., Van Tilburg, S. and Holthof, C., 2018. Digital marketing strategies, online
reviews and hotel performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 72.
pp.47-55.
Heaton, R., 2019. Digital art pedagogy in the United Kingdom. The International Encyclopedia
of Art and Design Education. pp.1-19.
Jorge, F. and et.al., 2018, March. A Conceptual Research Model Proposal of Digital Marketing
Adoption and Impact on Low Density Tourism Regions. In World Conference on
Information Systems and Technologies (pp. 528-537). Springer, Cham.
Priluck, R. and Topol, M., 2018. Exploring Social Media Marketing Knowledge Among
Students and Professionals. International Journal of Marketing & Business
Communication. 7(2).
Rana, N.P. and Dwivedi, Y.K., 2018. An empirical examination of antecedents determining
students' usage of clickers in a digital marketing module. International Journal of
Business Information Systems. 27(1). pp.86-104.
Rohm, A.J., Stefl, M. and Saint Clair, J., 2019. Time for a marketing curriculum overhaul:
Developing a digital-first approach. Journal of Marketing Education.
p.0273475318798086.
Sousa, M.J. and Rocha, Á., 2019. Skills for disruptive digital business. Journal of Business
Research. 94. pp.257-263.
Online
Developing a Digital Marketing Plan. 2018. [online]. Available
through:<https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/benefits-digital-marketing>
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