E-Marketing Plan for eBay: Driving Traffic and Engagement

This report presents a comprehensive e-marketing plan tailored for eBay, focusing on various strategies to enhance its online presence and customer engagement. The plan begins with an implementation section, addressing website design and usability factors such as browser compatibility, social media integration, responsive web design, and reducing loading times. It includes a wireframe and graphic design overview, emphasizing persuasive calls to action, effective headlines, and the use of white space. The report then delves into strategies for driving traffic to the site through search engine optimization (SEO), listing the target search engines and directories, and outlining keyword research, content creation, and backlinking strategies. The plan further explores methods for capturing customer interest, desire, and action, using an integrated communications strategy model that incorporates linking strategies, banner advertising, and email marketing. Finally, the report addresses customer service, relationship, and loyalty plans, a timeline for promotion strategies, and a glimpse into eBay's future. The report utilizes tools like Alexa, Google Analytics, and Google Adwords to measure website effectiveness.

E-Marketing Plan
E-MARKETING PLAN FOR eBAY.
Student’s name
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Table of Contents
Cover Page……………………………………………………………………………………..1
Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………2
3.0 Implementation Plan………………………………………………………………………3
3.1 Strategies and Plans to Achieve Your Objectives…………………………………………3
3.1a. Design and Usability Factors…………………………………………………………….3
3.1b Getting Customers Attention ……………………………………………………………7
3.1c Getting Customers Interest, Desire and Action…………………………………………..10
3.1d Generating Revenue……………………………………………………………………...16
4.0 Customer Service, Relationship and Loyalty Plan………………….………………….....17
5.0 Time Line for Promotion Strategies……………………………………………………...18
6.0 The future…………………………………………………………………………………19
References……………………………………………………………………………………20

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Section 3: Implementation Plan
3.1 Strategies and Plans to Achieve Your Objectives
3.1a. Design and Usability Factors
Compatibility with different browsers
The number of internet browsers available for customers to use has grown steadily. It is therefore
important for eBay to ensure that the business website can load properly with clarity on all major
web browsers. This ensures that customers using the different browsers are not barred from
accessing the website (Bellamy-Royds & Cagle, 2015).
Incorporation with social media
With the advent of social media, integrating the business website with social media is of
critical importance. This is because social share buttons or links make sharing of information
more convenient and easy (Ananda, Hernandez-Garcia & Lamberti, 2016).
Responsive web design
A responsive website is able to change and adapt its layout in accordance to the screen it
is being viewed with. Website visitors now use others devices like tablets and mobile phones
besides the desktop which was the norm in the past. In fact, users nowadays use their mobile
phones to make online purchases, making a website responsive will take care of these users
(Groth & Haslwanter, 2015).

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Reducing loading time
Website visitors are impatient and usually bounce off a website if it does not load quickly
(Jiminez, 2019). If eBay makes the business website load in less time, the company will win and
retain visitors on their website.

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New website Wireframe

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Graphic Design of the Website
eBay is an ecommerce website that aims to be the world’s leading online shop where
people go to shop, sell and give. eBay is committed to creating great value and unique product
choices for their customers as well as making a difference to their lives by partnering with sellers
worldwide. These brand values are reflected on the company’s website design. The website logo
closely resembles that of Google, world’s leading search engine which creates the feel that
customers can find anything they want on the site. The placement of graphics and content is
simple and clear to ensure that customers navigate the site easily. Every button on the site is
clearly labeled and relevant information associated to products placed well to ensure that
customers are not misled. The site also uses a simple color code dominated by white. The color
theme is reflected on all pages to ensure a consistent feel for the user.
Content Features and Functionality for Website
Persuasive calls to action
A call to action will persuade visitors to take action when they visit the landing page of
eBay’s website. If eBay makes the call to action clear and active without having to click on the
product, many customers will be able to easily purchase product on the website (Davidson &
Books, 2017).
Well-crafted and attractive headlines
Headlines are the first thing that a user reads. A good headline creates curiosity and
sparks interest in the customer, thereby influencing them to purchase a product or taking the
intended action (Kolsaker, Gortz & Gilbert, 2016).

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Use of white space
Using white space on a business website is a key aspect in ensuring that content is more
readable. It also enhances clarity by ensuring that website content does not look too clumsy.
Implementing a web chat feature
eBay’s target audience is varied depending on the product a user wants to purchase. In
order to help influence the purchase decision to their advantage, introducing a web chat feature
to answer customer’s questions will help greatly (Wu & Brown, 2016).
Approach for measuring website effectiveness
Effectiveness of the website will be measured using the following tools:
Alexa. This is a tool developed by Amazon that can make site audits, keyword tools,
check SEO and monitor competitors. It will measure website traffic as well as check how SEO
friendly the site is.
Google analytics. A tool developed by Google to measure traffic on a particular page,
conversion rate on a page, provide user insights and give reports of the effective of campaigns.
Google adwords. This is a tool developed by Google to assist in the marketing of
products using Google Search engine. Using Google adwords, it is possible to measure the
effectiveness of the marketing strategy.
3.1b Getting Customers Attention – Driving Traffic to the Site: Search Engine Optimisation
List of Search Engines, Directories, Portals to Be Listed
eBay will target the most popular search engines, directories and portals to be listed since
they will be excellent sources of traffic. The search engines that this marketing plan targets are

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Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search. The three search engines are trusted by users. Moreover, they
have been integrated on most browsers.
On the other hand, the directories are dir.yahoo.com with a page rank of 8, ww.dmoz.org
with a page rank of 8, www.lii.org with a page rank of 8 and www.business.com with a page
rank of 7. With such high page rankings, these directories are trusted by Google and rank top in
web searches (Singhal & Srivastava, 2016). Submitting links to these directories will guarantee
traffic to eBay which can be converted to customers.
Search Engine Listing Monitoring and Optimisation Strategies
To improve search engine optimization (SEO), the following are the strategies that will be used:
Keyword search
A keyword is the word that a user uses to conduct a search online (Pehle, 2017 ). With
the right keywords, eBay will able to centre their campaigns and product description around
these keywords hence make them SEO friendly and increase the likelihood the website getting
top rankings on Google. The tools that will be used to conduct a keyword research will be
Google Adwords Keyword planner and Google Trends tool. With Google Adwords Keyword
Planner how many times a particular keyword is used and also discover related keywords.
Google Trends will help discover the most popular keywords and topics and a particular time
and in different countries.
Content
Content is the most important aspect in ensuring return visits and creating loyal readers
and probably customers (Forbes, 2012). Blogging will be the best way to approach this. The right

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content not only educates the customer but also creates a good user experience which makes
them more likely to make purchases. Google ranks most helpful content when a user searches for
a particular phrase. To help achieve this, eBay will have to outsource content creation to content
creators and ensure to post at least two articles in a month.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links on other websites that refer back to eBay’s website. This links are
more effective if they come from big sites. Google and other search engines use backlinks as a
metric of measuring a site’s popularity and hence increase the sites page rank ((Dean, 2019)).
eBay can get back links by submitting articles to the aforementioned directories and publishing
content that is worth linking to by bloggers and big sites.
Product images
eBay being an ecommerce website that publishes product descriptions and their images
can take advantage of this and use the images to rank on Google and other search engines. By
using quality images named with the right keywords, these images are likely to be ranked on top
in image searches and hence become sources of traffic to the site. Furthermore, users that have
searched for a particular product and their interest sparked by a particular are more likely to
purchase the product (Gudivada, Rao & Paris, 2015).
In order to monitor the effectiveness of these strategies, eBay will use Google Analytics.
Since this strategies take time to deliver the desired result, checking the website search engine
position once a in a month will be the most appropriate option.

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3.1c Getting Customers Interest, Desire and Action – Driving Traffic to the Site
The success of the marketing plan will depend on how eBay strikes customer’s interest,
elicit desire and action (Culotta, Kumar & Cutler, 2015). Hence, an integrated communications
strategy model will be used. The following are all the online promotional strategies that will be
used:
Linking strategies.
This is approach to marketing that involves generating links to the site. It will be divided
into three parts; linking to other sites related to eBay, getting links from other sites to eBay (back
linking) and linking to different pages within the site. By linking to other sites, it becomes easy
for eBay to ask for backlink from these sites (Dean, 2019). For instance, when a quality article is
published, it will include links to other websites as well links to other pages on the website like
product landing pages (internal linking). Request to the editors of popular sites like Forbes and
Fast Company will be made for them to link back to the article.
The media used in this strategy are both owned and earned. This is because internal
linking involves the website which is owned and earned because back linking involves earning
trust from other sites so that they can link back to eBay (Dean, 2019).
Linking strategy will help to generate traffic and also position eBay as a thought leader
and also improve search rankings. The approach will be done every time new content is being
published like, for instance, a new article (Dean, 2018 reference). Linking strategy will be
integrated with email marketing whereby links to products on eBay will be shared on the email
campaigns send to the subscribers.

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Banners and online advertising
The use of banners is a popular trend in creating awareness for a particular product. eBay
will design and place banners on top of the website to help market different products and create
awareness for new products (Anusha, 2016). The banners will be designed to match eBay’s
website design in order to increase brand awareness.
Banners are an owned marketing strategy since they are designed and published by eBay.
The advantage of banners is that they can create curiosity even for users buying different
products hence marketing the particular product. The other advantage of using banners is that it
is possible to insert a call to action hence making the banner more effective.
Banners will be used when a new product is being launched, or a new product offer is
available in order to create awareness amongst users. They will also be integrated with
sponsorship to create awareness of the brand. In addition, they will be used in email campaigns
to help connect with audience and help them familiarize with brand.
Email marketing
Email marketing is sending commercial emails to a group of potential buyers in order to
influence them to purchase a product (Wheeler, Navdeep & Chintagunta, 2016). In addition,
email will enable eBay to connect at deeper level with their customers.
Email marketing is possible with an email service provider. Aweber will be used since it
enables automation of messages from even with a small group of subscribers. A sign up page
will be set up where users can subscribe. A persuasive call to action will be used to persuade
users to subscribe. An email campaign will be set up that will be automatically send to the users

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once they subscribe. Email marketing media is paid for since a fee is paid to the email service
provider.
Email marketing allows for superior follow up in the event the user does act on an offer
(Wheeler, Navdeep & Chintagunta, 2016). In addition, Aweber will enable eBay to measure the
impact of their email campaigns. Banners and linking strategy will be integrated with email
marketing. Articles will link to the sign up page while banners will be placed in the emails. At
least one email every week will be sent to the subscribers to avoid spamming the subscribers.
Sponsorships
Sponsoring involves supporting an event like a product launch or a show by funding it.
eBay will sponsor online webinars and relevant offline shows in popular channels on Youtube.
eBay can also sponsor offline events like conference where the target audience is likely to be.
The benefit of sponsorship is that the organizers get to give credit to eBay hence reflecting well
on them (Wu, 2016).
This a paid strategy that involves investing sums of money in order to market the brand.
Sponsorship will be used together with banners and public relations to ensure that the banners
create brand awareness and public relations helps spread the good name of the company.
Affiliates
Affiliate marketing is one of the best strategies in ensuring that eBay sells more products.
It is an owned strategy that involves giving commissions to people who refer buyers to eBay.
Once a buyer makes a successful purchase, the referrer gets a small commission. eBay will have
to set up an affiliate marketing program to achieve this.