Marketing Diary Entry: Strategies, Digital Marketing, and Ethics

This marketing diary entry explores the crucial role of marketing in business success, emphasizing brand awareness, customer understanding, and the relationship between marketing and innovation. It highlights the importance of ethical marketing practices, using the VW emission scandal as an example. The entry discusses the significance of creativity in marketing, including customer experience and the advantages of in-house marketing teams. It also covers digital marketing, including channels like social media and websites, and its cost-effectiveness. The report concludes by stressing the need for sustainable marketing, meeting consumer, business, and societal needs while considering responsible marketing actions, referencing key academic sources.

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Marketing Diary Entry

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Diary Entry – Marketing (MKT)
Marketing is one of the major competitive tools through which an organisation can maximise
their profits, gain significant awareness, persuasion and sales and ultimately add value factor
to the product or service being presented in the market (Taneja and Toombs, 2014). The
reason why marketing is crucial for the success of business and organisation as it helps in
informing the audience about its products and services offered by a firm resulting in brand
awareness and informative advertising. Marketing also leads to understanding the customers
more deeply through relevant market segmentation and then assessing target market variables
and positioning strategy. There is also a relevant relation between marketing and innovation
as innovation is as much about insights as ideas whereas insights evolve from customer
knowledge and users experience and this gives opportunities to meet identified needs and
also to recognise potentially unrealized ones. Here, marketing required to lead the search
together with colleagues in market research. As discussed in our lectures, marketers require
to carry on making a significant amount of investment as it will help in ensuring the product
to lead within the market like in question mark quadrant to the star segment under growth-
share matrix. Taking an example of Red Bull, the company can teach you various lessons
about marketing approach and strategies like Red Bull media house, the way in which
company inspire individuals to chase their dreams, Red Bull distinctiveness and content
marketing and leveraging influencer marketing as well (Katai, 2017). However, one needs to
pursue ethical marketing or it can be criticised for high-pressure selling, deceptive practices
and promotion of harmful products. Considering the case of VW emission scandal, the
company found to be guilty for the cheating emission tests in the US when they push selling
of diesel cars in the US, supported by a huge marketing campaign proclaiming its cars low
emission (Hotten, 2015).
Marketers need to deploy creativity against strategic opportunities and it is significant in all
aspects from how we understand and associate with people to form a sense of brand
challenges and generate new ideas to push the boundaries. Most top marketing campaigns are
not developed in one day, there is a way behind this form of creative genius and creativity in
marketing go beyond ad campaigns and deliver tangible values to the business. As discussed
in our lecture course how Sainsbury social team use their brand assets with fuzzy edges,
managed by the broader cultural imagination where the #Sainsbey phenom perceives to be a
new generation of Sainsbury colleagues fly the maroon flag. It also stuck with the picture –

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“I’ll be the face of the campaign?? #sainsbey #bakerygirl” (Kingston, 2020). For every
market, customer experience plays a greater role and creative marketers undertake wide
outlook while emphasizing to the whole customer experience from end to end.
Depending upon the same or different sector, the dissimilarities between how an agency and
in-house role are seen becomes more critical and changing. However, marketers will be
having several benefits if they opt for in-house as it allows them to manage their budgets,
make decisions and develop strategies as per the plans. The in-house team will be the best
choice and if we need to develop a whole, top-to-bottom marketing strategy. Marketers will
be having different role in both in-house and agency such as contacting to the clients,
advertising planning, preparing advertising and digital content, approval of client, selection of
media, researching and execution of advertisement and so forth. However, it is also found
that firms are taking more marketing functions in-house as it provides them greater control
over their advertising teams. Taking the example of Walmart, the company has decided to
take its digital advertising in-house in 2019 (Pereira, 2019).
From agile marketing to personalisation, the evolution of digital marketing offering
companies various benefits and majorly small firms to involve effectively with various
consumers, even to consumers from globally anywhere even if they do not have physical
presence in such places. Some of the top digital marketing channels for businesses include
social media, website, email, mobile application and content marketing. The importance of
digital marketing can be assessed in terms of cost-effectiveness and long extended reach. In
addition, digital marketing offers improved ROI to the marketing investments and the more
your business creates this kind of circulation, the faster you can apprehend your ROI. There
is also an increasing trend towards e-commerce and online business and digital marketing
helps in the survival of online business with allowing them to compete with a much smaller
advertising budget.
Ultimately, it is clear that the modern economy requires a business to embrace over effective
marketing strategies in order to achieve a competitive edge in the dynamic business
environment. However, Armstrong, Kotler and Opresnik (2017) also stated that business
needs to focus more on sustainable marketing implying meeting the needs of consumers,
society and business – now and in the future considering responsible marketing actions. It
will help in their positive brand reputation.

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References
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P. and Opresnik, M.O. (2017) Marketing: An Introduction. 13th
global edition. Pearson Education.
Hotten, R. (2015) Volkswagen: The scandal explained [ONLINE] Available from:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772 [Accessed 07/03/2020].
Katai, R. (2017) 10 Lessons Red Bull Can Teach You About Marketing [ONLINE] Available
from: https://robertkatai.com/red-bull-media-company/ [Accessed 07/03/2020].
Kingston, A. (2020) Sainsbury's vs the Beyhive: lessons from the front line of reactive
marketing [ONLINE] Available from: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/sainsburys-vs-
beyhive-lessons-front-line-reactive-marketing/1671864 [Accessed 07/03/2020].
Pereira, M. (2019) Walmart Goes In-House with Ad Sales: Implications for Marketers
[ONLINE] Available from: https://technology-signals.com/walmart-goes-in-house-with-ad-
sales-implications-for-marketers/ [Accessed 07/03/2020].
Taneja, S. and Toombs, L. (2014) Putting a face on small businesses: Visibility, viability, and
sustainability the impact of social media on small business marketing. Academy of marketing
studies journal, 18(1), p.249.