Analyzing and Improving HMV's Digital Marketing Strategies Report

This report examines the digital marketing strategies applicable to HMV, a UK-based retail company. It begins by emphasizing the importance of digital marketing, highlighting its advantages over traditional methods, such as global reach, customer data management, and enhanced customer engagement through social media and easy online shopping. The report then delves into Search Engine Marketing (SEM), explaining its techniques like Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and link building, alongside the benefits such as cost-effectiveness and brand visibility. It discusses the importance of relevant content and easy website navigation to attract customers. Furthermore, the report explores the effectiveness of email marketing and social media marketing, emphasizing their role in reaching a vast customer base, maintaining brand awareness, and facilitating customer engagement. It concludes by summarizing key tasks for a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, ensuring legal compliance and customer data protection. The report provides insights into how HMV can leverage digital channels to improve its online presence and compete effectively in the market.

Margaret:Running head: EVENT MANAGEMENT
Event Management
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

1
EVENT MANAGEMENT
Table of contents
1. Importance of digital marketing for HMV.............................................................................1
2. Discussing the ways by which HMV can use Search Engine Marketing to improve its
website........................................................................................................................................1
3. Identifying effective use of Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing.........................1
4. Illustrating website optimisation technique...........................................................................1
5. Explaining ways to measure the success of digital strategy of HMV....................................1
6. Summarising key tasks that need to incorporated for digital marketing strategy..................1
Reference....................................................................................................................................1

2
EVENT MANAGEMENT
1. The Importance of digital marketing for HMV
In the modern day scenario, digital marketing has become one of the most important
aspects of the business contexts. The major reason behind the increasing popularity of this
medium is that it is based largely on the internet. This scenario is lacking in the traditional
form of marketing. There are many other advantages of the digital marketing over the
traditional form of marketing. Some of them are attracting the larger audience, improving the
brand loyalty and also for increasing the online traffic of the audiences. One good example is
HMV, the retail company of UK that operates in about 128 stores but it needs to focus on the
online marketing. If they have to give a strong competition to their competitors, then they
have to switch over to the modern method of marketing that is the digital marketing. They
will have to shift from the traditional marketing system and upgrade themselves to this digital
marketing (Crunchbase. 2018).
One of the greatest advantages of the digital form of marketing is to attract the
customers globally. They can easily emphasize on market expansion by tracking and spotting
a store outside the UK. This will help them to expand their customer base as they will be able
to promote their product in places beyond the UK. Moreover, they will be able to promote
their brand by undertaking a simple search through the online sites. HMV will be in the better
sense of the bargaining end if they switch onto the digital marketing. They will be able to use
many tools that will help them for tracking and maintaining the records of sales, transactions,
customer feedbacks and other such details. In other words, HMV will be able to attract the
customer responses in a quick, error free and easy manner. This feature is however absent in
the traditional form of marketing (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2016).
Digital marketing will also HMV to promote their brand across the social media
platforms. This will enable the customer to reach out to them very easily and vest greater

3
EVENT MANAGEMENT
faith within the company. This will be a boost to the goodwill of the company and the
customer loyalty will also increase. The company will be able to store all the customer data in
a systematic manner and they will be able to use those data and reach out to the customers as
and when needed (Tiago et al. 2014). They will be able to use these data and reach out to
these customers as and when needed. They will be able to maintain a systematic customer
profile with all the relevant data kept against the name of the respective customer (Ryan
2016). This will help the customers know that they are valued by the company
Last but not the least; the customers will be able to continue their shopping just with
the help of a click. It will be very easy and conformable for them thus avoiding the Hassel
associated with traditional marketing. This will enable HMV to not only increase the sales
and the social presence of the company but also get involved in many useful campaigns as
well. It will be an impetus to the conversion rates of the company as the buying and selling
process will become very easy and convenient.
2. Discussing the ways by which HMV can use Search Engine Marketing to improve its
website
Search engine marketing is a process of Internet marketing which makes use of promotion of
the websites for increasing the visibility in the SERPs (Search engine results pages) mainly
via paid advertising.
SEM Terminology:
SEM Terminology PPC (Pay Per Click) CPC (Cost per Click) Impression Google content
network Rank and position Quality score

4
EVENT MANAGEMENT
Why use SEM?:
Why use SEM?
Quickly wins the Good targeting market. It is Competitive Low wastage of the Google
analytics Branding Strong acquisition driver
Link Building:
Link Building
The process of Link building is the process of gaining external pages for linking to a page on
the websites. It is one among the various tactics that are used in the SEO (search engine
optimization).
Social Media :
Social Media Social media refers to the use of electronic and internet tools for discussing and
sharing the information and the experiences with online communities.
Social Media Sites:
Some examples of the Social Media Sites are LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Face book,
Blogging, YouTube, and Pinterest

5
EVENT MANAGEMENT
Pay Per Click:
Pay Per Click or say, PPC refers to a model of internet marketing where the advertiser pays a
fee for each of the time one of his advertisements is clicked. They are adverts from the
businesses.
Search Engine Optimization:
Search engine optimization refers tothe process of increasing the number of visitors of a
specific website by making sure that the particular site appears in high numbers on the list of
results that are returned by the search engine.
Advantages of SEM:
Advantages of SEM include:
They are Cost effective and More traffic. They has higher quality score as well as
Creditability. With the same, there is a Long term positioning and Brand visibility of the
SEM
For Example::
Examples include- Frank Lao Alhambra, a digital marketing expert that provides help in
several services including of Pay per click, blogging and search engine marketing.

6
EVENT MANAGEMENT
The PPC is used today for the online advertisements of the products and services.
HMV has the capacity to design effective PPC through ensuring that the business goals as
well as the target markets are been identified. With the same, it is important for estimating the
budget primarily before the implementation of the technique. In case of designing the SEM,
the HMV requires to make sure that it is made according to the customer’s convenience.
Customers usually look for the business which has both attractive as well as convenient
method of searching (Leeflanget al. 2014). Therefore, the designing of the SEM needs to be
done by keeping in mind the customer’s convenience.
Along with this, HMV must also ensure that online displays of products are
guaranteed for people to be familiar with the item types which are sold by the HMV.
Designing of online device needs to be in such a way that the customers could get to see their
products while they visit website. As said by Tiago and Veríssimo (2014), HMV could
develop the video advertising campaign through analysing customer’s reactions and making
sure that the video is not very long and it is reaching to the target market.
HMV could conduct thorough researches of market and point out the customers that it
wants to conduct its business with. Application of the SEM could help the HMV for
understanding that the customers are into the services and product. SEM could be
implemented through creating advertisements. Application of advertisement campaigns could
be based on reactions that are provided by customers. As stated by Charlesworth (2018), each
of the SEM differs in search engines and the customers can be targeted on the basis of the
responses that they provide in the market. The Search Engine Marketing could help the HMV
in identifying the customers’ site visiting rate and the rate of viewing the advertisements.
SEM is also useful in analysing the customers through social media networks. Advertisement
of the services and products could be displayed on the social media sites for assessing the
reaction of the customers.

7
EVENT MANAGEMENT
As discussed by Urban,Gosline and Lee (2017), content marketing is one of the many
forms of modern technique of marketing which can help attracting new customers. The other
ways in which SEM helps in attracting customers are as follows:
Create relevant content: Getting straight to the point is preferred by the customers
than beating about the bush (Moran and Hunt 2014). The contents of HMV must be short and
informative so that customers can understand the product at a glance.
Easier navigation of content: There are many customers who do not like continuing
to search the products and services after visiting a website. Complicated method of
conducting navigation can offer complications in the ways in which potential responses of
customers are made. Therefore, categorising the product and putting tags that provided by
HMV could help in attracting more customers.
Make the content shareable: In this modern society, word of mouth is regarded as
old-fashioned way of promotion of a product or business. Hence, HMV requires making
contents shareable as because it is easy for the customers to refer the product to others. Such
a method provides excellent opportunities for spreading awareness of the products and
services as well as ensuring that the HMV could enlarge its market beyond local boundaries.
Hence, to sum up and after keeping application of the SEM in mind, it could be said
that there are certain laws that need to be followed by the HMV. Those laws are linked to
legal guidelines that are promoted by the government of UK. From example- the Data
Protection Act of 1998. This law needs to be followed in order to ensure that HMV is not
leaking out any personal information of the customers.
3. Effectiveness of Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing

8
EVENT MANAGEMENT
Social marketing and email marketing has helped in the digitalization need of the
organizations based on the promotional needs of the business. Pan (2015) stated that the
social media marketing accounts to some 96% of the success in the business organizations
through the proper implementation of the promotional strategies to reach out to the target
customers. HMV, the company must take step to incorporate and implement the utilization
of the email and the social media marketing strategies to bring in changes in the functioning
of the business as per the market needs. The most important advantages in these kind of
marketing is based on the identification of the relative changes that they can potentially bring
to the enterprise through the engagement of the customers in the long term business goals. On
the other hand, the key aspects of the change in the market are based on the retention of the
customers in the market, which is facilitated through the utilization of the online marketing
campaigns.
Advantages of Email Marketing Advantages of Social Marketing
Yang, Shi and Wang (2015) stated that Email
marketing reaches out to a vast amount of the
customers, which helps in keeping the consumers
aware of the changes in the product that the
company is trying to undertake.
This form of marketing activity requires small
amount of time. Therefore, the company can
reach out to its customers in a very short notice,
which will be helping the same in focusing on the
different aspects of the change more deliberately.
The social media platforms helps in making the
people aware of the brand and thereby determine
the position of the business in the market. The
major aspects of the change are based on the
understanding of the varied needs of the
customers and thereby balance the offerings of
the organization.
The utilization of the social media platforms
helps in maintaining a proficient IT function of
the organization, HMV, and the manner in which
it helps in identifying the position of the business
in the international market scenario. It
additionally helps in the decision making

9
EVENT MANAGEMENT
functions of the customers while making a buy of
the products.
The email marketing of the organization helps the
same in gaining a better return on the
investments. It will also be helping the business
to reduce the operational costs of the business to
bring in changes in the marketing activities. The
reduction in the costs of the organization relating
to the marketing functions will be enabling the
organization to focus more on the products.
The understanding of the search engine rankings
helps in understanding the different aspect s of
the progress that is made by the organization
while functioning in the international markets.
Optimization of the search engine of the
organization helps in identifying the position of
the organization while a user types in the site of
the organization and receives the website of the
organization at the start up pages of the search
engines. It will be helping the organization in
bringing in changes based on the requirements of
the change that is planned by the business in the
market.
Email marketing has helped in identifying the
various aspects of the change that is planned by
HMV to make their progression in the
international markets. The improvements in the
brand awareness of the business are based on the
identification of the procedures that are
undertaken by the organization to reach out to the
customers in the market. On the other hand, the
feedbacks that are received by the business while
identifying the change in the market capabilities.
Social marketing will be helping the organization
to make an enhancement in the sales of the
business. It will be helping the organization in
maintaining a balanced position in the market. On
the other hand, the identification of the needs and
preferences of the customers is facilitated through
the implementation of the social media
marketing.
The implementation of the email marketing helps
in customizing the data that is presented by the
Social marketing helps in enhancing the customer
satisfaction through the detection of the

10
EVENT MANAGEMENT
organization. It helps in the identification of the
demand for the commodities and the manner in
which it will be helping the organization to bring
in changes in the performance of the business in
the market.
preferences of the customers, which will be
helping the business in making good use of the
customer feedbacks while developing the
products for the respective markets.
Table: Advantages of Email Marketing and Social Marketing for HMV
(Source: Created by author)
The promotional methods help in identifying the various needs of the customers and
thereby bring in changes in the functioning of the business. On the other hand, the utilization
of the social media and the email marketing campaigns has helped in identifying the different
changes as per the needs of the business to enhance their performance in the market.
4. SEO technique
The optimization of the websites helps in maintaining the proficiency of the business
in the markets. On the other hand, the optimization test of the websites undertaken by the
organizations has helped in identifying the position of the business in the market. The SEO
undertaken by the organizations helps in maintaining the proper functioning of the websites,
which helps the organization in connecting with the customers.
Image optimization: The biggest challenges that are faced by the customers while visiting a
site is based on searching an image in the webpage. The proper coding of the images helps
the customers in retrieving the proper images set by the companies. About 64% of the
HMV’s website is weighed by image (Hmv.com 2018). Therefore, the company must
undertake image optimization for facilitating the needs of the customers.

11
EVENT MANAGEMENT
Reduction of HTTP requests: The reduction of the respondent requests helps the
organization in enhancing the functioning of the websites in the market. The major aspects of
the change is based on the understanding of the different needs of the customers to align data
in the website.
Develop a critical path and render blocking of resources: In order to understand speed of
websites, it is important to know the materials that block it. Such blockages may cause delay
in the loading time of the pages. Render blocking resources such as CSS, HTML, and
JavaScript etc could be the reason behind software blockage. Hence, HMV must make use of
few techniques which could help the website in order to stay optimised. Like, for example,
appropriate use of the CSS file is needed so that the CSS resources could be rendered through
decreasing the CSS amount in the websites. Along with this, West, Ford and Ibrahim (2015)
have stated that Javascript can be used for synchronizing the level of files with the CSS as
well as prevent the foreign bodies from entering into the sites. Hence, by making use of these
methods, HMV could help in making sure that company website stay optimised as well as the
script are been executed in a proper manner for conducting proper customer satisfaction. The
HMV could also use the booster which helps in automatically speeding up the websites right
after detection of any potentially harming material.
Minimise the use of CSS and Javascript: Removing the unnecessary characters is very much
needed for optimising the websites. In case of the HMV, company can decrease the CSS and
Javascript usage which are not necessary. Loading of the scripts of CSS and Javascript could
also help it for speeding up the website. As stated by Sharma and Shah (2017), some
characters that are necessary to be deleted from website consists of new line characteristics,
block delimiters, white space characters and comments. Hence, the load times could be
decreased as well as the amount of codes that are necessary for achieving the request from
servers are analysed.

12
EVENT MANAGEMENT
5. Explaining ways to measure the success of digital strategy of HMV
One feature of digital marketing is it is a very fast mover (Reimers, Chao and Gorman
2016). Therefore, it is very important for the organisations for measuring the success of
digital market as well as the plans that are linked with it. In HMV, company is required to
apply different tools which could help it for analysing the success of digital strategies which
are been used. Tools that are important to help HMV for measuring the success of strategy
are:
Google analytics: It is a tool that is considered for helping in monitoring the software
more loosely. Business owners of the HMV could assist in designing of the analytics
software for the business owners to find it easy for using web analytics software. As stated by
Brocket al. (2016), the HMV can use the tool for analysing and reporting the data based on
the PPC responses. This is due to the fact that HMV directly relates its campaign of PPC with
AdWorld and it also uses the e-commerce for the sales performance.
Hootsuite:Hootsuite is used for managing multiple social media. HMV can use
various social media channels in order to understand the effectiveness of the digital
marketing strategy. Some of the social media figures that HMV uses include Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Apart from this, as observed by Todor (2016) Hootsuite
contains certain inbuilt reporting tools that can help HMV to continue monitoring its progress
in the society. One of the major capabilities of Hootsuite is that the software helps to analyse
different marketing segments that are discuss about the company.This information can be
useful for HMV to analyse the sentiments of the customers and focus on creating brand
awareness. This can be related to determine the success of the social media digital marketing
approach used by HMV.

13
EVENT MANAGEMENT
HubSpot: HubSpot is regarded as one of the all-in-one digital marketing plans. It
approaches the automation and inbound marketing. HMV can make use of this tool for
analysing the logistic processes that it undertakes and ensures a systematic monitoring and
campaigning of the process that takes place. Its feature is that it can monitor all the digital
strategies like that of social media channels’ performances, the performances of their pages as
well as that of the websites. It can also compare the results along with the competitors as well
as keeps a track of the entire process which highlights certain areas. It can also helps in
monitoring the rankings and amount of the traffic that it is receives through identifying
specific key words that are necessary for digital marketing.
Mixpanel: As discussed by Shaw and Hamilton (2016), application of the mix panel
understands the mobile devices that are used by the HMV. However, one of the major
drawbacks is that digital marketing has yet not caught up to mobile application. It is also one
of the simplest methods that could be used in carrying out tests in the applications and
websites. Therefore, HMV could identify new plans directly without bothering about the
outcomes that has taken place using the earlier plans.
6. Summarising key tasks that are required to incorporated for digital marketing
strategy
According to Theaker (2017) digital marketing strategy could be incorporate after
analysing variety of tools. In case of HMV, it is seen that application of various tools could
assist the organisation in understanding the requirements. Notwithstanding, it has been seen
that company does not have a proper task or plan that can help it to incorporate digital
marketing strategy.Wagner III and Hollenbeck(2014) also observed that about 46% of the
brands do not have proper digital marketing strategy, while 16% of the companies do not

14
EVENT MANAGEMENT
have an idea about implementing the strategy. HMV also need to incorporate certain plans so
that it can help in the effective conducting of business in the market.
The tasks that are required to be followed include:
Set and measure the KPIs: Watsonet al. (2015) is of the opinion that KPIs are
important as it helps in identifying the capabilities of an organisation. In the case of HMV,
the KPIs of the organisation are the sales figures that are held accountable for the growth or
decline of the country. In the modern era, the sale of the gramophones can be considered as a
huge loss however, switch in strategies by the company can help in measuring the digital
marketing activities. Comparison can be made that highlights the previous strategies as well
as the current marketing strategy adopted by the company.
Analysis of the past: Taking into account the past mistakes can help a company like
HMV to implement the digital marketing strategy effectively (Zablahet al. 2016). However,
arguments can be made that states that in the past the development of digital strategieswas
not as modern as in today's world (Zhao 2016). HMV can choose a time that can help the
company to analyse its past and compare it with the present strategies. This can help in its
growth and ensure that similar mistakes are not made. One such past mistake that HMV can
improve upon is the inability to adapt to the continuous changes in the business market.
Organisations need to know its objectives: HMV need to set defined objectives that
can help the company to make effective plans. According to Welch (2016), it is necessary to
define the overall objectives and mission of a company before incorporating it any type of
digital marketing strategy. The objectives need to be aligned with the digital marketing
strategy and the company need to form alliance in the online efforts made by the
organisations. The objective of HMV is to ensure that the company abides by the rules and
regulations set up by the British Government and help in the expansion of the company

15
EVENT MANAGEMENT
outside the colony of UK (Hmv.com 2018). Thus, knowledge of the objectives can help
HMV to align its digital marketing strategy in a proper manner.

16
EVENT MANAGEMENT
Reference
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction.
Pearson Education.
Aswani, R., Kar, A.K., Ilavarasan, P.V. and Dwivedi, Y.K., 2018. Search engine marketing is
not all gold: insights from Twitter and SEOClerks. International Journal of Information
Management, 38(1), pp.107-116.
Brock, B., Carlson, S.C., Moilanen, M. and Schillo, B.A., 2016. Reaching consumers: how
the industry uses email marketing. Preventive reports, 4, pp.103-106.
Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2016. Digital marketing. Prentice Hall.
Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2016. Digital marketing.Prentice Hall.
Charlesworth, A., 2018. Digital marketing: A practical approach. Routledge.
Crunchbase. 2018. HMV Group | Crunchbase. [online] Available at:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hmv-group [Accessed 25 Apr. 2018].
Hmv.com. (2018). HMV | Music, Films, & Games | hmv.com. [online] Available at:
http://www.hmv.com/ [Accessed 21 Apr. 2018].

17
EVENT MANAGEMENT
Kannan, P.K., 2017. Digital marketing: A framework, review and research
agenda. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(1), pp.22-45.
Ledford, J.L., 2015. Search engine optimization bible (Vol. 584). John Wiley & Sons.
Leeflang, P.S., Verhoef, P.C., Dahlström, P. and Freundt, T., 2014.Challenges and solutions
for marketing in a digital era. European management journal, 32(1), pp.1-12.
Mooney, M. and Slobodian, S., 2016.Seeing the wood for the trees: Fixing large undefined
problems in digital marketing. Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, 3(4), pp.294-
303.
Moran, M. and Hunt, B., 2014. Search engine marketing, Inc.: Driving search traffic to your
company's website. IBM Press.
Pan, B., 2015. The power of search engine ranking for tourist destinations. Tourism
Management, 47, pp.79-87.
Reimers, V., Chao, C.W. and Gorman, S., 2016. Permission email marketing and its
influence on online shopping. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 28(2),
pp.308-322.
Ryan, D. (2016). Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the
digital generation. Kogan Page Publishers.
Ryan, D., 2016. Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the
digital generation.Kogan Page Publishers.
Sharma, R. and Shah, M., 2017.Product/Brand Positioning and Interactive
Advertising. Journal of Commerce, Economics & Management, 1(3), pp.6-10.

18
EVENT MANAGEMENT
Shaw, C. and Hamilton, R., 2016. Imperative 7: Realize the Only Way to Build Customer
Loyalty Is through Customer Memories. In The Intuitive Customer (pp. 141-159). Palgrave
Macmillan, London.
Swirsky, E.S., Michaels, C., Stuefen, S. and Halasz, M., 2018.Hanging the digital shingle:
Dental ethics and search engine optimization. The Journal of the American Dental
Association, 149(2), pp.81-85.
Terrance, A.R., Shrivastava, S. and Kumari, A., 2017.Importance of Search Engine
Marketing in the Digital World.In Proceedings of the First International Conference on
Information Technology and Knowledge Management (ICITKM) (Vol. 14, pp. 155-158).
Theaker, A., 2017. What is public relations?.In The Public Relations Strategic Toolkit (pp.
17-27).Routledge.
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.
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.
Todor, R.D., 2016. Marketing automation. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of
Brasov.Economic Sciences. Series V, 9(2), p.87.
Urban, G.L., Gosline, R. and Lee, J., 2017.The Power of Consumer Stories in Digital
Marketing. MIT Sloan Management Review, 58(4).
Wagner III, J. A., and Hollenbeck, J. R. 2014. Organizational behavior: Securing competitive
advantage. Routledge.