MKT6800 Digital Marketing Strategy Report: Sports Direct Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of a digital marketing strategy, focusing on Sports Direct PLC. It begins with an introduction to marketing and digital marketing, highlighting the importance of a well-defined strategy for achieving business objectives. The main body of the report covers the overview of digital marketing procedures, including research, creation, promotion, analysis, and optimization. It then delves into creating and analyzing a digital marketing campaign for Sports Direct, incorporating a situation analysis, SWOT, and PESTLE analysis to assess the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The report also explores linking digital business with digital marketing strategy, formulating objectives, framing implementation plans, budgeting, and measuring campaign effectiveness. The report concludes by emphasizing the significance of digital marketing in today's business landscape, providing valuable insights for students and professionals in the field. The report also contains detailed analysis on the campaign, objectives, implementation plans, and budgeting for the company. This report serves as a valuable resource for understanding the application of digital marketing strategies in a real-world context.

Digital Marketing
Strategy

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Overview of the Digital Marketing procedures......................................................................1
Create and analyse the Campaign in Digital Marketing.........................................................2
Link Digital Business with Digital marketing strategy..........................................................4
Formulate Objectives..............................................................................................................5
Frame implementation plan to reach the objectives...............................................................5
Budgeting...............................................................................................................................6
Measure the campaign............................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
References:.......................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Marketing refers to the activities of business which undertaking promote and selling
goods and services in market. Marketing strategy states that overall game plan of business
organisation to reach customer's expectation and needs. This carries various tools and techniques
to make effective marketing strategy. Digital marketing refers the promoting company's products
and services through various online or digital platforms or channels such as social media, search
engines, different websites and etc. digital marketing strategy states that series of actions which
with the help of online platforms to achieving different objective and goals of business. Digital
marketing is also a action plans that allow to create and launch marketing strategy. This report is
based on sports direct plc, it is British retail group based in England in United Kingdom and
founded in 1982 by Mike Ashley. It is UK's largest sports products retailer. They operate their
business model under the low margin. Company have 670 plus outlets in worldwide. The below
report include the digital marketing process, build and analysis of digital marketing campaign,
linking digital organisation to digital marketing strategy, formulations of objectives, structure of
implementation plans, budgeting and measure the campaign (Bala and Verma, 2018).
MAIN BODY
Overview of the Digital Marketing procedures
In present day the every business and organisation are adopting the digital marketing
because their effective advantages. It is more effective in compare the traditional marketing. In
digital marketing there are various channels and platforms such as different websites, search
engines, online applications, social media and etc. in current scenario the social media marketing
is very popular in market because it is budget friendly and through this company can reach more
people from different locations or areas. It also improve conversation rate in business and
organisation can easily track their plans or performance. In context of sports direct plc, they
effectively use digital marketing to promote their products and services in market, they focus on
provide better quality and under budget. Through digital marketing company perform in
effective manner and also achieve objective or goals of organisation. The digital marketing
become easy by using there various procedures and sport direct plc also follow all the process for
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effective promotional activities on online channels (Ghai and Rahman, 2018). The steps describe
as below;
 Research: At this stage company gather the informations and data which is required for
decision making process. Information and data includes about the raw material,
strategies, creation of content for digital marketing and etc. sports direct plc first they
research about the customer's needs, expectation and trends in market. As per these
aspects company make strategies and content for online channels. In this stage there are
four set of informations such as: about the business, search target customers for company,
what kind of product and its quality consumer want and understand online competition.
 Create: After research company creating and setting business objectives and goals,
making strategies for digital marketing and campaigns, making digital marketing plans
and building primary digital identities which includes application, websites and blogs.
Sports direct plc effectively create business strategies on digital platforms they have own
website and applications to provide services and products to customers.
 Promote: At this stage company promote their products and services through their
websites and application, they make strategies to promote their brand, also hey offer
various offers and discounts to customers get attract towards the brand (Hanlon, 2019).
 Analyse: At this stage they monitor performance and analyse the results of promoting
activities. Sports direct plc use Google analytics to monitor the performance, in this there
are four main part such as; Audience, Acquisition, behaviour and conversion.
 Optimize: At this stage they after analyse and observation company making changes as
per requirements.
Create and analyse the Campaign in Digital Marketing
Situation Analysis
It refers to target audience and target market, also is a reconsider of activities both
competitors as well as different things that are experience in the marketplace, such as
trends. A situational analysis brings a number of advantages (Hofacker, 2018).
.
SWOT Analysis
 Strength: Sports direct plc is largest retailer in UK and they have 470 plus outlets. It is
trusted brand in society and also have low staff turnover. Strong dealer community – It
has build a culture between distributor & dealers where the dealer not only promote
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organization’s products but also spend in training the sales group to describe to the
consumer how he/she can take out the maximum benefits out of the goods.
 Weakness: Industry of sports has highest competitive market that is why they have slow
growth in market share. Sports direct plc operate under less margin. Need more
investment in new technologies. Given the scale of development and different
geographies the industry is planning to increase into, Sports Direct International Plc
wants to put more capital in technology to combine the processes crossways the board. In
current scenario the investment in technologies is not at same level with the vision of the
industry (Katsikeas, Leonidou and Zeriti, 2019).
 Opportunity: organisation follows aggressive strategy and the new technology provides
an opportunity to Sports Direct International Plc to practices differentiated pricing
strategy in the new market. It will facilitate the company to maintain its loyal consumer
with great service and attract new users through other worth oriented propositions
 Threat: Increasing price of raw material affect the revenue of sports direct plc, company
also operate at less profit margin. Shortage of skilled employees in definite global market
represents a threat to stable growth of profits for Sports Direct International Plc in those
markets. shifting customer buying behaviour from online platforms could be a threat to
the active physical infrastructure focused supply chain model
PESTLE Analysis
 Political factor: it play a important role in formative the factors that can affect Sports
Direct International Plc's long term productivity in a assured country or marketplace.
Sports Direct International Plc is working in Retail in more than dozen countries and
description itself to various types of political environment and political system risk. The
reach success in such a vibrant Retail industry across different countries is to expand the
orderly risks of political environment. This company can strictly analyze the following
factors earlier than entering or investing in a definite market- Political stability and
significance of Retailing sector in the country's economy, Risk of military offensive,
Industrial safety rules in the customer Services sector and etc (Kocić, and Radaković,
2018).
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 Economical factor: The Macro environment factors such as – price rises rate, funds rate,
interest rate, foreign exchange rate and economic cycle decide the collective demand and
total investment of capital in an economy. While micro environment factors such as
competition norms affect the competitive benefit of the ind. Sports Direct International
Plc can use country’s monetary factor such as development rate, price rises & industry’s
economic indicators such as Retail organisation growth rate, customer spending etc to
forecast the success curve of not only --sector name-- sector but also that of the industry.
 Sociological factor: Society’s culture and mode of doing things affect the culture of an
company in an environment. Shared idea and attitudes of the people play a vast role in
how marketers at Sports Direct International Plc will recognize the consumers of a given
market and how they plan the marketing message for Retail organisation consumers
(Kotane, Znotina and Hushko, 2019).
 Technological factor: In current scenario technology play effective role in business and
sports direct plc provide their services and goods through digital platform. In modern or
digital marketing the technology factor is must it also provide different opportunity in
market to expand business more.
 Legal factor: It refers the rules and regulation framed by the government, In UK there
are strict rules and regulation for business such as consumer law, health and safety law
and etc. Sports direct strictly follow these rules and if they are not follow correctly then it
affect the business growth and also digital platforms.
 Environmental factor: It refers to the climatic condition in country, in UK there
environment situation are not stable that is why business cannot predict the future
condition in right manner, they only make strategies to avoid any unpredictable issues.
Link Digital Business with Digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing strategy states the actions of plans that use online marketing platforms
to achieve different objective and goals. In context the sports direct plc, they use various
strategies such as; Email marketing, pay per click marketing and etc. there are different steps
under the digital marketing strategy such as; crate consumer persona, identify tools and goals,
focus on content, evaluate marketing channels, auto mate marketing, nail mobile phones
optimization, make it easy for consumers so they reach brand easily, using effective technology,
confirming competitors and track company's performance (López García, Lizcano, Ramos and
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Matos, 2019). Sports direct plc use their own website and application to promote their brands
also helps in increasing productivity and profitability of business. Company use digital
marketing strategies to promote their brand in more in effective manner. Digital business is
totally based on digital marketing strategy because to establish business digitally company need
strategies as per various digital channels because on digital platform they need different content
and different strategies to reach customer's needs and achieving goals. Linking both it provide
various benefits to business such as competitive advantages, expand business and etc
(Kingsnorth, 2019).
Formulate Objectives
An objective is operational and measurable, in organisation objective should be clear. In
context of sports, their objectives are very specific. There are different objective of sports direct
plc that require in achieving with the support of digital marketing campaigns. Company have
objective to increase their sales and reaching more people from other countries. It helps in
generate more revenue and expand brand. Company focus on digital campaigns on different
channels, which includes effective contents, website layout so customers more attracted towards
the company products, they also want create job opportunities in market for people. Digital
marketing helps in achieving business objective in more effective manner. In current scenario the
adopting new technology is important (Kitsios and Kamariotou, 2019).
Frame implementation plan to reach the objectives
Implementation refers to execute the plans and after set objectives company implement
the plans of promoting their brand on digital channels such as their own websites and
application. Sports direct plc implement their plans as per market trends and demand of
customers. So this company it is must to understand the user’s needs and expectation. Effective
implementation helps in achieving objective or business in specific time frame. There are various
steps to implement plan through digital channels; firstly it is important to understand audience
very well, secondly company must identify goals and how to achieve them, after that
development of content strategy is essential for business to measure success in effective term,
understand digital platforms which channel is suitable for business, optimization of website, set
up consumer services outreach, show efficiency of business and bench mark check.
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Budgeting
It refers to the financial plan for specific time period, in business mostly for one year and
depends on business to business. Creating budget plan helps in the determining cost in advance.
Budgeting is internal activity of business organisation and it most essential for promotional
activities so company can achieve target within budget. Sports direct plc is largest retailer in UK
and they serve their good in worldwide so they have separate department for budgeting
procedure because they have to focus on different areas. A marketing budget outlines all the
capital a organisation intends to use on marketing-related projects or on promotional activity
over the district or year. Marketing budgets can contain costs such as paid promotion, sponsored
web content, new marketing workforce, a registered blog domain, and advertising automation
software (Minculete and Olar, 2018).
Measure the campaign
Measuring marketing campaign is important part of promotional activities. At this stage
sports direct plc can identify success rate also. Company promote their services and goods
on digital channels measuring the performance helps in achieving objective in effective
manner. Campaign marketing is very basic an approach to marketing whereby a brand,
goods or service is promoted via one – or a sequence of – clearly-explained and
framed marketing campaigns, each of which having one fair goal in mind. Sports direct plc
using various marketing campaign such as media marketing, email marketing, social media
marketing and etc. It is important to measure all marketing campaign in effective manner, it
simply helps in achieving targeted goals within time frame and expand their promotional
activities in different areas (Talmon and Faliszewski, 2019).
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CONCLUSION
It is concluded the above report, as per above report analysed the marketing play huge
role in promoting business in market. Marketing become easier through digital marketing and it
is more effective as compare to traditional marketing, now day’s social media is more popular
because of budget friendly and company can reach maximum people also target accordingly. It is
important to making strategies and effective content for digital channels for achieving success in
promotional activities. Through digital marketing procedure company can achieve target
objectives and goals in more effective manner. Making effective digital marketing campaigns
helps in meet the objectives and also save extra cost.
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References:
Books and Journals
Bala, M. and Verma, D., 2018. A critical review of digital marketing. M. Bala, D. Verma (2018).
A Critical Review of Digital Marketing. International Journal of Management, IT &
Engineering, 8(10), pp.321-339.
Ghai, S. and Rahman, O., 2018. Measuring effectiveness of campaigns using digital marketing &
its impact on youth. International Journal on Global Business Management &
Research, 7(3), pp.19-30.
Hanlon, A., 2019. Digital marketing: strategic planning & integration. SAGE Publications
Limited.
Hofacker, C.F., 2018. Digital marketing: communicating, selling and connecting. Edward Elgar
Publishing.
Katsikeas, C., Leonidou, L. and Zeriti, A., 2019. Revisiting international marketing strategy in a
digital era. International Marketing Review.
Kingsnorth, S., 2019. Digital marketing strategy: an integrated approach to online marketing.
Kogan Page Publishers.
Kitsios, F. and Kamariotou, M., 2019, September. Digital Business Strategy and Information
Systems Planning: Determinants of Success. In European Conference on Innovation
and Entrepreneurship (pp. 514-XX). Academic Conferences International Limited.
Kocić, M. and Radaković, K., 2018. The importance of digital marketing in the customer
relationship management process. Marketing, 49(1), pp.44-51.
Kotane, I., Znotina, D. and Hushko, S., 2019. Assessment of trends in the application of digital
marketing. Scientific Journal of Polonia University, 33(2), pp.28-35.
López García, J.J., Lizcano, D., Ramos, C.M. and Matos, N., 2019. Digital marketing actions
that achieve a better attraction and loyalty of users: An analytical study. Future
Internet, 11(6), p.130.
Minculete, G. and Olar, P., 2018, June. Approaches to the modern concept of digital marketing.
In International conference Knowledge-based organization (Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 63-69).
Sciendo.
Talmon, N. and Faliszewski, P., 2019, July. A framework for approval-based budgeting methods.
In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 33, pp. 2181-
2188).
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