Digital Marketing Strategy Report: Unilever Analysis (MKT 6800)

This report delves into Unilever's digital marketing strategy, providing a comprehensive analysis of its current practices and proposing recommendations for improvement. It begins with an introduction to digital marketing and an overview of Unilever's business operations, followed by a situation analysis of the Dove brand's digital campaigns. The main body of the report includes a SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis, and competitor analysis to assess Unilever's market position and identify opportunities and threats. The report then outlines the digital campaign creation process, detailing the objectives, action plan, budgeting, and measurement strategies for a proposed campaign. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of a well-defined digital marketing strategy for achieving Unilever's promotional and marketing goals. It also discusses how the company can leverage its strengths and address its weaknesses to enhance its digital presence and engagement with consumers. The report is based on the assignment brief for the Digital Marketing Strategy module MKT 6800 at Richmond University.

Digital
Marketing
Strategy

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Brief Overview of Company..................................................................................................3
Situation Analysis...................................................................................................................4
Digital Marketing Campaign..................................................................................................9
Digital Campaign creation process.......................................................................................10
Creating the Digital marketing Campaign............................................................................11
SWOT Analysis of Unilever's ....................................................................................11
PESTLE analysis.........................................................................................................13
Competitor analysis.....................................................................................................15
Objectives....................................................................................................................15
Action Plan..................................................................................................................15
Budgeting....................................................................................................................16
Measurement of Campaign.........................................................................................17
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................17
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................18

INTRODUCTION
The Digital marketing strategy is the use of web based and online technology to better
make the promotion and marketing effort. The digital campaigns are the stepping stones through
which we reach to our ultimate digital marketing goal. With the changed scenario, and increased
use of internet the digital marketing came into effect. The effective use of digital strategy gives
the company triple return on investment. The aim of this report is to highlight the effectiveness
of digital strategy thus, helping the organisation to achieve its promotion and marketing
objectives (Alavi, 2016). The organisation selected for this report is Unilever, founded in 1929
headquarters in UK. Unilever is an company which deals in Fast moving consumer goods. The
company's currently digital strategy being followed is analysed. Lastly, the digital campaign is
being created with motive to increase the company market presence.
MAIN BODY
Brief Overview of Company
The Unilever, is multinational consumer goods company which is headquartered in UK.
The company majorly trade in the Food & beverages, Home care, Beauty and personal care. The
company owns over 400 brands some of them are Axe, Dove, Lux, Lipton, Surf, Knorr, Magnum
etc. The company major brand has sales of over one billion euros. The company has subsidiaries
operating in various countries. The company stocks are traded on the London Stock exchange
and New York Stock exchange. The company has €51.980 billion revenue and employs 155000
employees, in year 2019.
The major competitors of Unilever are Nestle and Procter & Gamble. The company
currently operates through the retail store outlets. The company owns the strong network of the
distributors and wholesalers across the world which helps them in achieving the competitive
edge by bringing down the cost of distribution (Dasser, 2019). Unilever company spends huge
amount on building its brand awareness. The company owns the strong physical remembrance
through making its product available at leading retail stores. The company is using the digital
medium also to connect with the customers at fast pace which is being lacked in traditional
media promotion.

Illustration 1: Unilever Network
Situation Analysis
The Dove brand is one such major revenue generating to parent, Unilever brand. The
“Real Beauty” is one such campaign being launched by the company with intention to change
the definitions of women using the social media platform. The intention was to change the
stereotyping view of women. To start with it focused majorly on creating the societal impact
which indirectly increased revenue for the brands. The company used the video, tweets,
inspirational photos and airbrushed the use of bloggers and celebrity to endorse it. They gave the
chance to real women to be face of this campaign. The digital medium used to endorse this
digital campaign was the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and You Tube. The company focused on
creating conversational approach rather than brand awareness approach. The goal was to ignite
the audience to converse about their brand. The perfect mix of the images, videos and content
was used to engage the audience (Hess and et. al., 2016).
But with good and applause it faced the ugly reactions of the audiences. As, the
youngsters were in quest to get the exact meaning of the real beauty with this the issue of body
image and differences in colour started to ignite. The disable women were not part of the face of
campaign. On that time the company promoted the differential product as Fair and Lovely which
gone against this campaign image. The Real beauty is still running and proved yet effective for

the company as later on they changed the faced backlashes from the people. The Dove used the
right set of keywords and content which gave them many clicks.
The company even needs to restructure its website as it is lacking the attraction appeal.
The content and hashtags used to promote its campaign are commendable. The Unilever has
good social media followers and search engine rankings are also favourable. The company
always creates the positive buzz with its campaigns. Unilever asset is that it efficiently plans and
targets the campaign which favours and creates right balance between the strategy, target
audience and platform so selected. The company needs to build on an Omni-channel strategy in
order to be more efficient and increase more brand awareness (Jelfs and Thomson, 2016).
Illustration 2: Winning Over Female Beauty Consumers in India – A Lesson From Dove, 2021
Illustration 3: Dove Social media hashtags

Illustration 4: Red Label social media strategy

Illustration 5: Social Media Strategy Review: Surf Excel,2014

Illustration 6: Unilever breaking stereotypes

Illustration 7: Lipton Mobile video campaign, 2017
Digital Marketing Campaign
The Digital Marketing is the process in which the online and web based technologies is
combined to leverage the efforts the marketing and advertising. The marketing is based on using
the platforms such as the mobile and computers. The tools of the digital marketing are as
follows;
Websites and apps: The company owned launch of websites and interactive apps are also
part of the digital strategy.

Search engine optimisation (SEO): It is the process of the optimisation of the content
and reach of the website in order to improve the ranking of the website on Search engines.
Paid Search: The Paid search refers to the sponsored search which appears at the search
engine result page. The every click on ad is being paid by the company.
Content Marketing : The content marketing refers to the use of right set of keywords and
buzzwords to educate and inform the audience. The main impact is to attract the audience.
Social media marketing (SMM) : The Social media marketing refers to the use of social media
platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. to promote the product.
Email Marketing: The email marketing refers to the usage of emails to attract and target
the audience. It helps to the company to build relations with audience through sending of
personalise mails.
Mobile Marketing: The mobile marketing refers to the use of the mobile technologies
such as sending SMS, in-app marketing to promote the product.
These all tools work together and help an organisation to promote and market the
product. With the increased used of internet the digital marketing strategy gained more
accreditation (Leischnig, Woelfl and Ivens, 2016). The instant analysis of the consumer activity
is being present in an summarised from which helps in tracking the consumer preference and
activity more easily.
Digital Campaign creation process
The digital marketing process is the steps which are related to the link of the digital
campaign and strategy. The first step is researching about the target audience and the customer
needs and wants and how the organisation can use it to their advantage. Then comes the planning
stage in which the planning of the content and tools is identified in which the digital platforms to
be used is identified. Then comes the analysis stage in which the we analyse the plan so
implemented with the gaols so set. If the deviations are found the reworking is done in order to
optimise the work so that set goals can be achieved in best manner. The reworking in terms of
content and promotional platform is done (Perker, 2020).

Creating the Digital marketing Campaign
The digital marketing campaign creation is the step by step process which requires proper
dedication from the moment of crafting to its launch. After being, launch of digital plan the
efforts are directed to manage and track it. The following steps are taken in order to create the
digital marketing campaign;
SWOT Analysis of Unilever's
The situation analysis is the analysis of the market opportunities and threats before
launch of any campaign. The situation analysis in case of Unilever is as follows; Strength: The strength are the internal strategic factors which helps the organisation to
know its strategic competence internally. The Unilever owns the strong the economies of
scale in terms of operation and distribution network globally. The company has strong
and proficient workforce in its every subsidiary who are managing its operations with
excellence. The Unilever's main success lies in its diverse product portfolio (Yadav,
Illustration 8: Digital Marketing Process, 2020

2017). The sub brands so owned by company are competent enough which brings strong
revenue to Unilever. The company has strong research and innovation centres which are
linked with each other and brings increased prosperity for the company. The marketing
department team is very competent who has creative mindset which plans and lays out
the campaigns well in structure and contribute to the company’s success. The company in
advance understood the importance of digital platforms and started using it smartly which
gave them strong standing in market against their competitors. The digital campaign so
launching will be benefitted by the engagement on social media platforms. Weakness: The Unilever has weakness in its business operations. The product line of the
Unilever is similar to an extent. Such as, the different fragrances under same brand name.
The Unilever's diversification and innovation is being lacked in product lines. The
company owns the strong interdependence on the retailers. The main weakness possessed
by Unilever is the availability of the close substitutes. The easily imitable products are
available in market with results in decreased profitability. The company lacks the good
presence on social media platforms as compared to their competitor’s performance. The
related product line creates somewhere the replicality of the advertisement essence on all
social media platforms. This impacts negatively the Unilever’s presence. The major
drawback using digital strategy is that the culture and language may create the barrier in
communicating effectively with global consumers (Saura, Reyes-Menendez and Palos-
Sanchez, 2020). Opportunity: The Unilever's opportunity can be in identifying the different segment. The
company can even take advantage of the launching new products. As, the social trends
are changing and consumers preferences are also changing largely. So, Unilever can take
advantage of exploring new product innovation. The company can even harness the
power of digital tools by using it correctly. Unilever marketing team can use the social
media tools rightly to connect with the youngsters and can even use new technological
updates such as Big Data and AI to make their functioning more easier and to better
understand the consumers response. The launch of the apps will be beneficial in
connecting to consumers more closely. Threats: The Unilever is threatened greatly by emergence of the private label brands. The
private labels are the new entrants globally which makes the environment more