Digital Strategy Report: Analyzing Target's Marketing Approach

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the digital marketing strategies employed by the Australian brand Target. It begins with an executive summary outlining the report's purpose: to critically evaluate Target's digital marketing efforts and identify areas for improvement. The report investigates the reasons behind Target's digital marketing failures, focusing on the brand's underutilization of platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It identifies the target customer base and suggests effective implementation strategies for these social media platforms. The report emphasizes the importance of a customer-centric approach, suggesting a focus on website optimization, e-commerce, mobile apps, and social media advertising. Detailed recommendations include creating high-quality content, engaging with customers, and leveraging hashtags. The report concludes by underscoring the necessity of implementing digital marketing strategies for Target's continued success and growth in the competitive retail market. Appendices provide illustrative examples of social media posts.

Running head: DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
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1DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
Executive Summary
The purpose of this report is to show the critical thinking and analyze the digital marketing
strategies adapted by an Australian brand Target. The study has been conducted by
explaining the reasons of its failure in the digital marketing and identifying the target
customers for the brand ad how to implement face book, instagram and other social media
platform in the digital marketing strategy. The report will conclude with the necessity of the
implementation of the digital marketing strategy. It is recommended to implement those
strategies.

2DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Digital Marketing Strategy of Target.........................................................................................3
Digital Marketing and Facebook................................................................................................4
Digital Marketing and Instagram...............................................................................................5
Digital Marketing and Twitter...................................................................................................6
Recommendation........................................................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8
Appendices.................................................................................................................................9

3DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
Introduction
Digital marketing or the data-driven marketing is a process of selling or marketing the
services or the products using the digital medium or technologies (Chaffey and Bosomworth
2012). The digital marketing procedure is occurred based on the internet. The technique of
this marketing using the digital media includes search engine optimization, content
marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing and optimization, campaign
marketing. Strategies and marketing plans have been developed by the companies to sell their
products using the digital platform as people use more digital media than visiting physical
shops (Bång and Roos 2014).
The aim of this report is to design a digital marketing strategy for the Australian brand
Target. The report will also identify and describe the target audience of the brand and the
reasons of its failure in meeting the requirements of the targeted audience digitally. The
report will show the process of implementation of the Facebook, Instagram and other digital
media in its digital marketing strategies.
Digital Marketing Strategy of Target
Target is based on Australia and it is a mid-ranged departmental store chain and wide-
ranging retail services that include food, home ware, clothing and digital goods. The retail
service fulfils the daily needs of the local people. It has wide range of products and targeted
audiences from different cultural and geo-political background (Target.com.au 2017).
The brand Target should develop a digital marketing strategy that would help it to
gain customers from all ranges. Due overflowing waves of digital media and marketing, the
brand has started to loss its valuable customers, as it could not develop effective digital
marketing strategies. The organization, Target has its limitations in processing the services.

4DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
The brand, Target did not use the digital strategies in an effective way. It has limited social
media presence compare to other successful brands. The company needs to develop an
effective digital marketing strategy that would help to remove the barriers and explore
opportunities in the market.
However, it needs to develop a customer centric brand, which would help it to
organize its digital strategy. The company needs to discover the opportunities that digital
marketing can create. For fulfilling this purpose, the brand Target needs to establish a
customer-focused website, e-commerce, mobile app, and social media advertising and
reaching to the customers by using social media. The social media strategies should aim at
becoming the unique brand in the market (Ryan 2016). The brand needs digital media
campaigns for utilizing the digital media platform to reach its potential customers. It may
include sharing some of the best-performing content on Twitter or other social media sites.
The brand needs to define the purpose or goal of its business. Then, the brand needs to
analyze the targeted audiences’ persona, which includes analyzing their profiles, expectations
and needs. Now the company could develop digital marketing by using social media
platforms like website, blog, facebook, twitter, instagram, google Adwords, native
advertising, and paid social posts. However, the brand needs to develop plans to implement
its goal to the targeted audience by using these social media platforms. After the planning
program, the brand needs to execute those plans (Armstrong et al. 2015).
Digital Marketing and Facebook
Social media like Facebook is an important digital media tool that many brands have
used for business purpose. The companies need to construct concrete strategies that would
help them to achieve the business goals. The companies also need to identify the customers
and the object for the market competition.

5DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
Firstly, the brand needs to establish the goals and objectives, which the brand is
striving for to achieve by using Facebook as the digital media platform. The posts on the
facebook by the brand Target should add some values to the lives of the customers. The posts
should enrich with information and value-adding criteria simultaneously. The value adding
posts will be noticed more by the customers (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014).
The brand should provide frequent and consistent posting on the facebook wall as it is
necessary to notice the posts by the customers. However, if there is more posts there is more
chance to get noticed. The number of posts needs to be higher. The brand needs to post
multiple times per day in between hours. The brands need to involve its customers in the
posts and respond to the comments with insightful replies (Smith, Fischer and Yongjian
2012). For details information about the company, which has been used as an example for
digital marketing strategy please visit appendix.
Digital Marketing and Instagram
Like facebook, Instagram is also another digital media platform that has potential to
provide growth in any business. The SEO’s of the companies should look into some matters
that would help in online marketing strategy. The brand needs to create stylish and high-
quality images and continuously post on Instagram. The company needs to execute the brand
well on the Instagram and it should feature its products in each post (Chaffey 2016). The
images should have some creative values. The brand needs to use hash tags, which will help
the customers to discover the brand on Instagram. The brand can use its own campaign
specific hash tags or popular hash tags for maximum reach. The brand needs to be partner
with a non-profit organization, which would increase the brand value. The posts on the
Instagram should have entertaining, useful and inspirational values that would attract the
targeted audiences. The brand could promote others through its profile and in return it could

6DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
demand to promote its post on others profile. This will help in getting the audiences from the
others profile. Like Faccebook, the brand needs to engage its customers in Instagram as well.
The brand could look for bloggers, partners and industrial influencers to follow and needs to
engage them with their content. On Instagram, there is no advantage to bring all the posts in
one place, however, the brand needs to like the website and other information in the Bio
section of the Instagram. For details information about the company, which has been used as
an example for digital marketing strategy please visit appendix.
Digital Marketing and Twitter
The other digital media like twitter can be implemented in the digital marketing
strategy of the brand Target. Like facebook and Instagram the company needs to open a page
on the twitter and fill up the biographical information. However, the brand needs to tweet on
its Twitter profile whenever, the brand would launch any new product. Even, the brand needs
to tweet about the upcoming product and discount sale on its Twitter page. The brand should
engage its targeted customers and interact with them. Successful marketing on the twitter is
very powerful and it will help to unlock the new opportunities that would help to grow
business online. The ways that would be implemented on the Twitters are, sharing the
information with the potential customers on daily basis, driving the customers’ engagement
in promoting activities, networking and branding on Twitter, effective communication and
interaction with the customers and reputation management (Strauss 2016).
Recommendation
It is recommended to implement the digital marketing strategies well for the brand
Target. For this purpose, the company needs to have a search engine optimization technique.
The brand even needs a professional person who is well versed in digital marketing. It is

7DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
recommended to operate regularly the digital platforms and connect virtually with all related
matters on the digital media.
Conclusion
The Brand Terget, which is an Australian brand needs to develop a healthy and
efficient digital marketing strategies that would help in penetrating the market more
effectively. However, the brand could use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for implementing
the strategies as these are the major social media sites. The brand could utilize these
platforms for reaching to people easily.

8DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
References
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction.
Pearson Education.
Bång, A. and Roos, C., 2014. Digital Marketing Strategy.
Chaffey, D. and Bosomworth, D., 2012. Digital marketing strategy. Implementation and
Practice.
Chaffey, D., 2016. Global social media research summary 2016. Smart Insights, 8.
Ryan, D., 2016. Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the
digital generation. Kogan Page Publishers.
Smith, A.N., Fischer, E. and Yongjian, C., 2012. How does brand-related user-generated
content differ across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter?. Journal of Interactive
Marketing, 26(2), pp.102-113.
Strauss, J., 2016. E-marketing. Routledge.
Target.com.au (2017). Target Online Shopping | Target Australia. [online] Target Australia.
Available at: https://www.target.com.au/ [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017].
Tiago, M.T.P.M.B. and Veríssimo, J.M.C., 2014. Digital marketing and social media: Why
bother?. Business Horizons, 57(6), pp.703-708.

9DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
Appendices
Fig: Facebook Page of Target
(Source: Facebook.com, 2017)
Fig: Sample Facebook post
Source: Created by the author

10DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
Fig: Sample Facebook post
Source: Created by the author
Fig: Sample Facebook post
Source: Created by the author

11DIGITAL STRATEGY OF TARGET
Fig: Sample Instagram post
Source: Created by the author
Fig: Sample Instagram post
Source: Created by the author