Digital Marketing 1 - Simbound Simulation: Performance Analysis Report

This report analyzes a digital marketing assignment centered around the Simbound simulation, a game used to simulate online advertising practices. The report explores the experience of a group of students who used the simulation for six weeks to develop and analyze marketing campaigns for a virtual retailer. It delves into key metrics like Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) and Cost per Acquisition (CPA), and the use of analytics in digital marketing, including comments, forums, and e-marketing strategies. The report highlights the importance of keyword research and makes recommendations for product selection, keyword optimization, and landing page strategies to improve campaign performance. The Simbound simulation provided practical experience in digital marketing, helping students understand the complexities of online retail and make data-driven decisions. The report emphasizes the value of such simulations in providing a realistic understanding of the market and the impact of marketing efforts.

Digital Marketing
1

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
The Simbound simulation...........................................................................................................3
The use of analytics in digital marketing....................................................................................4
The experience of the Simbound game.......................................................................................5
Recommendation.........................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10
2

INTRODUCTION
The organisation have different employees that will help them to improve the
performance (Tardan, Shihab and Yudhoatmojo, 2017). The businesses are increasing the
performance by attracting customer online and digital marketing is helping the organisation to
analyse the needs of customers. The organisation are increasing the quality of products and e
commerce is helping them in increasing the needs of customers and giving them quality
products. The organisation are involving many resources and making the marketing campaigns
which they want to reach to stonecutters. The report includes the Simbound game which is the
simulation used by the students to help the retailers having online business. The organisation are
having resources which they want to increase the performance and the students will have to
make the plans that are realistic to analyse performance. The students have used Simbound for 6
weeks and they will give the experience of helping the organisation and the recommendations.
The Simbound simulation
The Simbound is the simulation game provided by the organisation for the advertising practices
in the online market. It computes the performance of the organisation and each students and then
give the analysis of the performance (Chaffey, 2019). Simbound is a game played with no real
money and they are using virtual cash for influencing the behaviour of the people when they are
purchasing online. The organisation is not having any financial risk and it will not affect the
brand image. Simbound helps the organisations to analyse the impact of the promotions on the
environment and it is helping the students to give the recommendations to the organisations. It is
realistic and made with the market research for hours but it cannot predict the 100% market
reaction of the campaign of the organisation.
The Return on advertising spend (ROAS)
The return on advertising spend is the cost involved by the organisation in the promotions
and they will get profits. The organisation is having cost/value method of analysing the
performance of the marketing campaign. The ratio is more than 1 means that the marketing
campaign is successful in giving the increasing profits to the organisation and giving good
products to customers. The ratio is less than 1 means that they are unsuccessful and increasing
the cost of the organisation. In long term the organisation is comparing the sales margin with the
financial plan of the organisation.
3

The Cost per acquisition (CPA)
The cost per acquisition is the cost involved by the organisation to acquire new
customers. The customers will go to the landing page of the organisation and will help them in
increasing the performance of the campaigns. The organisations are involving cots in acquiring
customers and it will help the in analysing the performance.
Profit and effective use of available budget
The entrepreneur want to use various digital ways in order to establish its business in the
marketplace and able to make high profits. As it is a startup where entrepreneur want to
established its name in marketplace by coming up with small electronics retail outlet. In this
changing business environment where main focus is on use of latest technology to get desire
results is with the use of various digital platform to establish business in online marketplace. The
entrepreneur know the importance of online marketing and want to enter in digital marketing
world but is having shortage of fund (Vien, 2015). So in order to know the effectiveness of
digital marketing in gaining the desire results and to increase the profits they want to gain
experience by participating in Simbound game in order to understand and get the proper
knowledge that it will provide desire profits. Furthermore with the use of Simbound game it has
been identified that the use of digital ways in order to expand the business is the most
appropriate and effective method within the available budget.
The use of analytics in digital marketing
Business owners of the small businesses who have entered in the retail industry are trying
to provide its marketing and sales department with latest technology in order to reach its
potential customers and able to influence them to buy their products and services. With the use
of various online tools such as cloud and many more it is helping business to improve the
operational skills and the decision making methods by providing effective training to its
marketers (Onyango, 2016). In current business scenario the cloud based technology is helping
in conducting the business operation in most effective and simple manner and by including the
gaming elements the activities are becoming quite simple to carry out. E-marketing is quite
complex but fast growing industry which is quite helpful and beneficial for retail sector
businesses as with the help of E-marketing they would be able to start its business on online
platforms. The various businesses are using Simbound technique in order to run the Adwords
simulations without investing real funds or leading business into risk. The simulation game is
4

widely used by the business organisations as it is active learning technique where with the help
of game one would able to know the competitive environment their periodic decisions so that
effective actions can be taken. The main advantage of using the business simulations is to
improve the entrepreneurship skills and able to understand the business environment in most
effective manner. Simulation is an exercise which is used by many business organisation in order
to in order to use online platforms and provides facility to handle and test out the different
marketing tactics and strategies (Muniesa and Giménez, 2020). This marketing simulation games
helps the entrepreneurs in understanding the strategies of competitors and provide exposure so
that they would be able to understand its clients in better way and focus on building better
products.
The organisations are having different methods to do the business. They are using
analytics to increase the performance. The digital marketing is the helping the small and medium
size organisation to analyse the performance of the marketing campaigns. The digital marketing
is the communication used by the organisation to give the products and services. They are
communicating to customers to increase the performance of the marketing campaigns. There are
different analytics in digital marketing that helps in analysing the performance (Saura, Palos-
Sanchez and Correia, 2019).
 Comments and forum- The organisations can have a good communication with the
customers with the help of the blogs. They are helping the customers in understanding
about the services provided by the organisations (Deiss and Henneberry, 2020). The
comments and forum will help the Simbound simulation in giving the buying decisions of
the customers by communicating with them and analysing the performance.
 E marketing- The organisation are having digital marketing to help the students with
Simbound simulation analyse the price per click and cost per acquisition and they are
helping in making the analysis that will help in the marketing campaign of the retail
outlets online.
The experience of the Simbound game
The Simbound game was played by a group of 5 students to make the campaign work
easily and they will give the recommendations to customers and the work is to make the
marketing campaign for the retailer who want to have the business online. The cost of the
promotions is 15000 Euros and they helped in improving the performance. Simbound simulation
5

is given for 6 weeks and the analysis will help in getting the impact of the campaign on the
organisation. The students are improving the learning from the digital marketing studies like
search engine marketing, cost per acquisition, analytics and they will help in reducing the cost of
the organisation. The teachers should help the students in deciding how many rounds will help
them in analysing the performance and the time spend by the students in making the plans for the
organisation. It helped me in increasing the communication with the students and making the
plans for the marketing campaigns which helps me in deciding the retailer should have the top
brand who are performing or all the brand that hey can have online.
The students are taking interest in the rounds because they are communicating with each
other and the virtual money is helping them in analysing performance and the financial risk of
the organisation. The digital marketing is helping the students in analysing the buying habits of
the customers and they are making the plans for increasing performance of the organisation
(Domazet and Neogradi, 2019).
According to my point of view Simbound is one of the widely used simulating activity
which provide e-marketing experience to various business unities. E-marketing is able to attain
high position in the marketplace so new businesses must focusing on expanding their business
with the help of E-marketing industry. Simbound is the quite simple and interesting activity that
is with the help of game game components one would be able to understand and design their e-
marketing and digital advertising campaigns (Oklander and Oklander, 2017). It is a virtual
business practices which helps businesses to identify their current real time position in the
marketplace. With the help of simbound one would be able to set the budget for its future
activities, can analysis cost, able to identify its potential customers and the areas which require
due attention. In my point of view before investing and entering in the digital marketing or
online marketing one should use Simbound in order to get the better understanding on the market
as there are main new factors and features which are new and changes according to different
platforms. Moreover use of this application allows performance tracking which help the business
professors to get the real time feedback on what activities they are currently working on and
what impact they get based on their decisions. In my view the game is highly customizable as it
allows business to examine the different content scenarios which adds flexibility to the learning
experience in this competitive and changing business environment.
6

Recommendation
 The organisation have to make the decision of the products they can have online. There
are many products of the organisation and they are performing in the market. The online
market is different and they have different factors affecting the performance. The
organisation is having products that are top brand and the customers want to purchase and
there are products who are giving profits to customers abut they are not purchased by the
customers of the organisation have to make the plan for having 25% of the products that
are non performing and 50% of the products that are purchased by customers and 25% of
the products should be on the needs of customers.
 Keyword research is one of the most important and effective tool which helps the
company website to rank up on various popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo
and Bing. The search engine marketing campaigns includes keyword research activities
as one need to focus on identifying various keywords which denotes their business before
starting SEM campaigns. The main objective of business organisation is with the help of
research the focus is on to develop effective plan which engage targeted audience and
also helps in budget allocation. With the help of various keyword research tools such as
Google keyword planner, etc one can get the idea about the words which would provide
effective results (Colleoni, Belk and Llamas, 2013).
 Simbound will help the students to analyse the performance of the organisation and the
landing page using the keywords that are attracting customers. The students have to
analyse the keywords and the performance of the brand using the landing pages used by
the students to increase the reach of the marketing campaigns. There are many factors
that are attracting customers to the landing pages and the performance of the keywords
are important for the improvement of the organisation (Arkhipova and Gurieva, 2018).
 The students will have to use the analytics to analyse the keywords that are helping the
organisation to attract customers. Simbound will help the students to reduce the cost per
click of the organisation and helping them to improve performance. The students will be
able to help the organisation in analysing the keyword that are helping them to increase
the performance of the products. The organisation should help the students in giving good
quality products to customers and this will help them in increasing the performance
(Saputra and et.al., 2020). The students are helping the organisations in analysing the
7

needs of the analytics and they will be ale to perform according to the needs of
customers. The organisation will reduce the organisation increases the quality of the work
and it will make it easy for them in give the quality products to customers.
 Key performance indicators with the use of Simbound method helps in providing range
of metrics which help in improving the digital marketing efforts and will provide better
results to the business. Moreover with the use of key performance indicator one would
able to improve their marketing campaigns.
 Competitor research is effective as it helps in knowing the current position of the
competitors in the marketplace and what strategies they are using to stay in the
marketplace. This help them in identifying the various method which they can use in
order to get the effective results (Muljono, 2018).
 Email marketing is one of the most effective way which helps in driving the great results
as by providing quality content with visual images helps in attracting large number of
customers. AB testing can be used in email marketing where campaign are prepared and
in two subset it has been sent to subscribers with the final objective of achieving best
results.
CONCLUSION
From the above study it has been concluded that in this changing business environment
where focus is on introducing and using latest technology in the business processes with the
motive to accomplish desire results. In current business scenario the focus of business unities is
to shift to online marketing as people are having less time to visit the place in order to purchase
product rather they prefer to buy online. With the use of digital marketing techniques the
business organisation would able to know their current position in the marketplace so that they
can take corrective measures in order to improve its position in the marketplace. With the use of
Simbound method the businesses which are new and are not familiar with the positive impact of
the use of digital platforms so they come to get proper knowledge and understanding of digital
marketing. In the form of game various factors of business are been evaluated so that they come
to know the places which need more attention and the areas which requires improvement. With
the use of SEO strategy the business organisation would be able to gain the traffic on various
popular search engines in organic manner and able to save its extra cost. It is one of the most
8

effective manner in which business would be able to reach to its targeted audience and provide
them essential information.
9

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Vien, C.L., 2015. The future of marketing: Thriving in a digital world. Journal of Accountancy.
219(5). p.50.
Onyango, K., 2016. Influence of Digital Marketing Strategies on Performance of Cutflowers
Exporting Firms in Kenya (Doctoral dissertation, University of Nairobi).
Muniesa, R.L. and Giménez, C.G., 2020. The Importance of the Loyalty of Fashion Brands
through Digital Marketing. Journal of Spatial and Organizational Dynamics. 8(3).
pp.230-243.
Oklander, M. and Oklander, T., 2017. Segmentation and communication in digital marketing.
Colleoni, E., Belk, R.W. and Llamas, R., 2013. New forms of digital marketing research. In The
Routledge companion to digital consumption (pp. 124-134). London: Routledge.
Muljono, R.K., 2018. Digital Marketing Concept. Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Tardan, P.P., Shihab, M.R. and Yudhoatmojo, S.B., 2017, October. Digital marketing strategy
for mobile commerce collaborative consumption startups. In 2017 International
Conference on Information Technology Systems and Innovation (ICITSI) (pp. 309-314).
IEEE.
Chaffey, D., 2019. Digital marketing. Pearson UK.
Deiss, R. and Henneberry, R., 2020. Digital marketing for dummies. John Wiley & Sons.
Saura, J.R., Palos-Sanchez, P.R. and Correia, M.B., 2019. Digital marketing strategies based on
the e-business model: Literature review and future directions. In Organizational
Transformation and Managing Innovation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (pp. 86-
103). IGI Global.
Domazet, I.S. and Neogradi, S., 2019. Digital Marketing and Service Industry: Digital Marketing
in the Banking Industry. In Managing Diversity, Innovation, and Infrastructure in
Digital Business (pp. 20-40). IGI Global.
Arkhipova, N.I. and Gurieva, M.T., 2018. Modern trends in the development of digital
marketing. RSUH/RGGU Bulletin. Series Economics. Management. Law.
Saputra, D.H. and et.al., 2020. Digital Marketing: Komunikasi Bisnis Menjadi Lebih Mudah.
Yayasan Kita Menulis.
10