E-Marketing Assignment: Social Media and Digital Promotion

This report delves into the realm of e-marketing, exploring the significant impact of social media on modern marketing practices. It examines the advantages and disadvantages of social media platforms, highlighting their role in brand awareness, customer engagement, and crisis management, while also addressing issues such as addiction and cyberbullying. The report then transitions to the digital promotional mix, explaining its application within the framework of marketing mix, and emphasizing the integration of paid, owned, and earned media. The analysis extends to a case study of eBay, illustrating the company's strategies for leveraging these media types to attract customers and boost sales. The report provides a detailed breakdown of each media type, its role, benefits, and challenges, concluding with recommendations for optimizing e-marketing strategies, particularly focusing on the importance of social media platforms and paid media to develop customer base.

E-MARKETING

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
TASK 1........................................................................................................................................1
TASK 2........................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
In present time, social media has emerged as an integral part of society due to its widen
scope ranging from sharing of individual thoughts to advanced marketing tactics. In this context,
this assignment will be going to assess the instant rise of internet and its tools with respect to
marketing and promotion of a product or brand.
MAIN BODY
TASK 1
1. E-marketing: It is the internet or online marketing where implementation of promoting,
advertising and marketing efforts for selling a product or service must be done via
electronic media to enhance the direct sales (Chaffey & Smith, 2013). This is done to
provide better customer services and is easier and convenient method to adopt. For e.g.
search engine optimization, email and more.
Figure 1. Statistics for usage of internet and social media platforms
(Source: Newberry, 2018)
2. Social media: This can be defined as an online platform between individuals, businesses,
groups etc. It is the collection of applications and websites that are designed to create a
brand name or its visibility in the market due to its easy accessibility towards information
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and for fostering growth. There are many examples such as Facebook, Instagram,
WhatsApp, Snapchat etc.
3.
Current Issues: Social media platforms are widely used these days with many benefits and
drawbacks as well.
Advantages: There are many benefits of social media as its reach has become widespread
and easier. Social media helps in creating brand awareness of any business by
establishing a connection with consumers. It can be done by posting images, videos and
blogs over different platform through which wide range of audience gets connected with
particular company. Moreover, by sharing posts or following subscriptions will give an
opportunity to engross customers so that they can be updated with products or services.
For example, Facebook was used by Renualt which provided a facility to book a test
drive directly with just one easy click. This is a huge platform to connect viably with
people and to make them aware about new products or events, especially promoting
movies or launching of a service is occurring by going LIVE on fb or YouTube. All the
social media platforms are user-friendly and keep innovating by adding features to attract
potential customers that boost sales and increase revenues (Kannan, 2017). Sometimes,
social media assists in crisis management by making the content viral. When Starbucks
store made an arrest of two black men, the hashtag #Boycott Starbucks went viral which
affected their image but also brought attention towards incidents on immediate basis. It
helps to keep a tab on the latest trends and offers prevailing in the market. With the help
of tracking tools such as Facebook Pixel, it helps companies to show same ads on news
feed of individual which were browsed by them on particular social media platform.
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Figure 2. Use of Social media channels for customers’ management
(Source: SOLARIS, 2018)

Disadvantages: As a coin has two faces, use of social media platforms have adverse
effects as well. People are getting addicted to the usage of these platforms and spend
hours on Amazon, Fb, twitter etc. which is indirectly affecting their sleep patterns as well
as mental health due to concepts of FOMO, body shaming by having perception of a
perfect image and more. Cyber bullying and crime rate has increased at an alarming rate.
There is also possibility of frauds or scams by making fake profiles, phishing bots etc.
Moreover, hacking led to the security issues and data privacy issues. Overall, being
visible on such platforms only let people feel vulnerable about themselves, affecting their
personal lives, social skills and brain development as they have turned into technology
slaves (Peters & et.al., 2013). Many companies or famous personalities also get affected
by involving into negative publicity either by trolling on twitter or making posts or videos
related to them on Fb or YouTube which might have gone viral.
Based on above discussion, it is evident that social media platforms are the most evident
aspect of our lives which has become a permanent features of modern life. It has become an
indispensable part of our cultural life as it laid the foundation to reconnect with our history and
tradition. It has not just a medium to stay updated about happenings of the world but also a link
to the people one has lost touch or desire to stay connected. Everything has pros and cons but
one must have sanity to choose which is better for their growth and progress.
TASK 2
Digital Promotional Mix can be considered on the grounds of marketing mix only. This
framework lays the introductory values of marketing together by taking it to the online world. It
is applied by company like EBay for mainly cost effective advertising practice to reach
customers proficiently in less time (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). With emergence of internet, along
with rise in popularity of social media platforms and online PR, the usual methods implemented
for budgeting, reporting and investing have been altered in order to employ the integration of
converged media, which consist of paid, owned and learned media. EBay is employing strategies
like PPC (Pay per Click), displaying ads on 3rd party websites, posting on social media, content
promotion through blog posts and Ad words which essentially aids in attracting more of
customers. Further, EBay is gaining data from “Customer DNA” which is single repository
enabled by Teradata’s Enterprise Data Warehouse. All these acts as paid media which assist in
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boosting the sales of EBay (Becker, 2018). Further, cited company has certain owned media such
as own websites, Facebook page, channels on YouTube, account on Twitter, blog sites and
mobile sites. All these helps EBay in targeting the customers that are active on different
platform. It helps in increasing the traffic of own website. Beside this, EBay is benefiting from
earned media as well. This includes social media account made by fans, reposting of original
content by customers, sharing post of companies on other media and related. This aids in
increasing the reach of EBay which essentially generating more revenue.
Here, customization can be done with high quality inventory and relevant with effective
advertising of a product or service. For example, users are more likely to click on those ads,
which they considered as useful. It is always better to show a relevant ad in the most relevant
space.
This powerful tool can help an enterprise by analyzing the marketplace to outline a
marketing strategy based on various factors like interest, demographics, geographic, behavior,
etc. It targets the loyal as well as new customers for the brand. These days, number of digital
platforms have been used for promotion such as animated banners, video banners, fallback
images and more which also beneficial in avoiding any fraudulent simulations by promoting
genuine interactivity between potential customers and company’s brand.
Figure 3: Paid + Owned + Earned = Converged media
(Source: Chaffey, 2012)
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With respect to build an understanding for Paid, Owned and Earned media the following
below table and image must be refereed for broad evaluation of the same with respect to EBay.
Media Meaning Role Benefits Examples Challenges
Earned
Media
Here, the
channel refers
to the
customers
Word of mouth as
meaning of earned
is something that
has been voluntary
given.
 Most credible
and transparent
 Leads to higher
sales
“Viral”, Buzz
etc.
 Unmeasurable
 Can have negative
impact
Owned
Media
Leveraging
owns created
channel, on
which no basic
pay can be
incurred for
usage.
Building on
longer-term
connections with
customers to earn
media.
 Niche
consumers.
 Versatility.
Website,
Mobile apps,
blog etc.
 No Trustable
communication.
 Time consuming.
Paid
Media
When company
pays to
leverage a
channel
Investment made
to pay for visitors
through channels
like affiliate
marketing ,search,
display ads etc.
 Simple
 Involves the
off-line
traditional
media methods
like TV and
print ads
Sponsorships,
display ads
etc.
 Poor credibility
 Decreased rate of
response.
Considering this, it is recommend that EBay must focus majorly on social media
platforms and marketing in the form of paid media so that its customer base can be developed
substantially. Through this measures, earned media aspect of company will even increase.
CONCLUSION
This is concluded that social media has become a permanent feature in our lives and
digital promotional mix has become the latest fad due to cost effectiveness, time-efficiency and
convenience factor.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Chaffey, D. & Smith, P.R. (2013). eMarketing eXcellence: Planning and optimizing your digital
marketing. Routledge.
Kannan, P.K. (2017). Digital marketing: A framework, review and research agenda.
International Journal of Research in Marketing. 34(1). pp.22-45.
Mangold, W.G. & Faulds, D.J. (2009). Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion
mix. Business horizons. 52(4). pp.357-365.
Peters, K. & et.al. (2013). Social media metrics—A framework and guidelines for managing
social media. Journal of interactive marketing. 27(4). pp.281-298.
Online
Becker, M. (2018). How eBay is Leading the E-commerce Marketing Revolution. [Online].
Available through: < https://www.relevance.com/how-ebay-is-leading-the-e-commerce-
marketing-revolution/>.
Chaffey (2012). Difference between paid, owned and earned media – 5 viewpoints. [Online].
Available through:< https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/customer-
acquisition-strategy/new-media-options/>.
Newberry, C. (2018). Benefits of social media for business. [Online]. Available through:
https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-for-business/.
SOLARIS, J. (2018). Social Media for Events (2018 Edition): A Complete Guide to Marketing
Your Events Using Social Media. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.eventmanagerblog.com/social-media-events>.
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