Sample MBA631 Digital Marketing and Communication Assignment

MBA631 Digital Marketing and Communication Assignment Sample

Assessment Type: Individual written report

Length: 2500 words (+/- 10% allowable range)

Your task

Using the same company that you were assigned with in the first assessment, individually, you are required to prepare an Integrated Digital Marketing (IDM) plan and present it as a 2000 word report. Please note that If you focus on any other company than the one your workshop facilitator
provides at the beginning of this subject, your submission will receive a grade of zero.

Assessment Instructions

Using the findings from your first assessment, you are required to review the company’s digital marketing problems by developing an Integrated Digital Marketing (IDM) plan in an attempt to solve these problems with the use of digital marketing knowledge you have learned from this subject.

Your key objective is to integrate your subject knowledge by focusing on the set of digital marketing models and frameworks, strategies and tactics, to generate a personalised and successful IDM plan for your company. Your plan must attempt to raise awareness and generate interest in your company’s product/service to a target segment. You must include tools to monitor your campaign and to measure its digital impact, e.g., YouTube subscribers, Instagram likes, Facebook comments, Twitter retweets, blog mentions, and so on. The recommendations provided should showcase your creativity while still being feasible. Your digital marketing plan report should follow the format below:

1) Introduction (Approximately 400 words)

a. concisely describe your company’s current business mission, strategy and operations, the industry in which the company operates, industry trends, major competitions, client strengths and weaknesses in relation to major competitors, macro environmental threats and opportunities, and current digital presence.

b. Describe the company’s marketing strategy in terms of current product/service offerings, the target markets to which these are directed, customer segments and value propositions, and the product/service positioning strategies being used to deliver the value propositions to its customer segments.

2) Integrated (traditional + digital) Marketing Strategy (Approximately 400 words)

Based on 1a and 1b points above, identify the primary marketing challenges (justified by the audit from the first assessment) being faced by the company and any recommendations you may have about how these could be addressed.

Summarise your justification for changing your company’s marketing strategy to achieve digital integration by re-targeting marketing efforts, re-defining customer segments, re-positioning product/service offerings, and/or changing value propositions. Identify specific changes being proposed in product, price, channel and promotion strategies through digital transformation.

3) Digital Marketing Plan (Approximately 1200 words)

Describe your proposed digital marketing plan in detail. Then, for each item or activity listed, discuss how it will help the company achieve the recommended marketing strategy, address the marketing challenges you’ve identified, and capitalise on any new digital marketing opportunities related to these challenges.

In describing the digital assets/platforms, e.g., tools, you believe the company should implement in their strategy, please bear in mind that not all digital platforms discussed across the trimester need to be implemented. Therefore, only use the ones you believe are directly related to the company and the ones you see as the best tools to help the company to achieve its objectives and digital integration. Use your judgement in selecting the digital platforms and include making selections from items covered in the subject, including but not limited to:

- SEO/Analytics;
- Social Media Marketing, e.g., Facebook advertising;
- Social Media, e.g., creation of a Facebook fan page;
- Mobile Marketing;
- Email Marketing;
- Content Marketing; and
- Any of the trends highlighted in the second assessment.

4) Concluding statement (Approximately 500 words)

Use this section to summarise the highlights of your digital marketing plan.

5) Reference List (Not included in the word limit of your submission).

Solution

1. Introduction

The mission of World Of Music is to ensure that people in the market wherever they operate have access to appropriate musical equipment for their requirements and get the proper support thereafter. The organisation is focused on advertising the organisational offerings at the best price across Australia. The company expects that they do not charge more compared to its competitors in the music industry of the nation. The company is also committed to bit the competitors in terms of prices of the offerings (Worldofmusic.com.au, 2022). The staffs that are recruited and engaged by the organisation are all musicians and have hands-on experiences in performing live and touring, sound mixing, digital and analogue recording, designing systems and giving music tuition. Music stores across Australia are the sales points of the business. Apart from this, a range of other services including music lessons upstairs in the shops are also organised on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The company also gives music lessons on various instruments including guitar, piano, keyboard, drums, bass and vocals and others. Repairing music accessories is another service that is also offered by the company. World Of Music has also engaged technicians with the business who can facilitate customers with amplifier and electronics repairs. The building space of the business, which is located in Nepean Hwy In Brighton East is also shared with a recording studio upstairs. The name of the music studio is The Alamo (Worldofmusic.com.au,2022).

The pandemic of Covid-19 has had a significant impact on the music product industry of Australia. It has been found that throughout the pandemic, the music product industry of Australia has faced issues in the supply chain. However, an increased sales performance of guitars has been achieved by the industry in 2021, whereas a decrease in sales of school band instruments has been noticed (Australianmusic.asn.au, 2022). “bettermusic.com” and “belfieldmusic.com” are the major competitors of the business in Australia. Both companies have their own official website and stores across the nation. In addition, the offerings of these companies are almost similar to the offerings of the World Of Music. Based on all the discussed facts it can be stated that clients of music products in Australia have options to choose their required products from multiple service providers. However, to get a music product at lower costs, customers will definitely be attracted to interaction with the World Of Music. By launching a website that is oriented with attractive content that represents the details, accessibility, quality and attraction of the music equipment and other musical services and by using social media platforms that are Facebook and Instragam, World Of Music has established a strong digital presence.

In order to identify and analyse the macro-environmental threats and opportunities, a PEST framework can be used. Identification and analysis of those for management assignments -

PEST analysis

Table 1: Identification and analysis of the macro-environmental threats and opportunities for the World Of Music by performing a PEST analysis
(Source: Author)

The official website of the business and social media platforms that are Facebook and Instagram are digital platforms used for marketing purposes. In these digital platforms, the company consistently updates the new and fresh arrival of new musical products through written and multimedia posts. Attractive offers on the purchase of a range of products are given by the organisation at the end of every financial year. Young age people of Australia are the target customers of the business. Weekend sales are also organised by the company for the customers that mail the company directly for querying about the offerings (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). With an intention of increasing customer engagement, drives, where customers have to guess musical instruments are also organised. In these types of events, customers are rewarded and made attracted to become loyal to the business. The company is also involved in educating people regarding sourcing and utilising the offerings and gaining trust by posting the reviews and recommendations of the customers on the digital platforms it uses. Therefore, the company targets its potential customers in the Australian market based on age, which is a demographic variable of the Australian population. The company is committed to serving costumes at lower costs compared to the competitors.

2. Integrated marketing strategy

Based on the above discussion and the areas of improvement identified by performing an audit in assessment 1 it can be estimated the organisation faces challenges to go through the content about the offerings as the size of the webpage is high and users can face issues checking all the elements of the webpage thoroughly (Ellins,2014). There are chances that customers will be bored by visiting a slow website of the business and reject going through the content thoroughly. Due to the absence of an H1 header tag on the website, the marketers of the organisation cannot keep visitors to the website engaged. The H1 header tag can be described as an HTML heading. It is supposed to be used by the organisation to mark up the title of the web page to show what the content of the website is all about (Hollingsworth, 2020). Due to the absence of this, customers might lose interest at first glance after visiting the website of business. It has been analysed that the website the organisation uses for marketing and other purposes is not mobile compatible. Due to this, the organisation can fail to enhance marketing communication with potential customers in the market. The factor is that, in 2020, people using mobile globally have visited 68.1% of websites (Enge, 2021). The organisation is also expected to face challenges to make the customers feel safe as on the website of the business clear text email addresses are seen. As indicated in the study by Abd Aziz and Abd Wahid (2018), due to this, customers can be concerned about their personal data and refuse to interact with the organisation. Therefore, the marketers of the organisation can fail to communicate with potential customers in the market regarding their musical offerings.

For the mitigation of the discussed challenges, the marketers of World Of Music can initiate direct marketing to the customers to be enhanced that will show interest in the products. Considering an example, the website of the business can be modified in a way that will assist customers to put their email addresses to remain updated about new and fresh music products and different types of offers. As indicated in the study by Tran and Strutton (2020), thus, by collecting email addresses of slightly interested customers, by sending emails with convincing marketing content in the form of direct marketing, the marketers of the organisation can be able to convince customers to purchase the products. Along with young age people, the Australian population that is active on different social media platforms can be targeted to enhance marketing communication. Along with the website of the business, the organisation can also initiate positioning its products and services on the e-Commerce platforms such as Amazon. Apart from low-cost offerings, the marketers can offer the customers free education on the utilisation of the offered product once a customer purchases anything. There is no area of change in the product and pricing strategy of the business. However, marketers can initiate advertising the organisational musical products on more social media platforms such as Twitter (Zanini et al., 2019). This can increase the brand value of the business. As indicated in the study by Ganz et al. (2018), for effective promotion of musical offerings, online musical events on social media platforms can be organised. By doing so, the marketers of the World Of Music can show how effective their offerings are.

3. Digital Marketing Plan

In the implementation of a digital marketing strategy, the official website of the business can be used by the organisation to make people aware of the music products they can offer. Apart from this, social media platforms that are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter can be utilised by the organisation. All these social media platforms must be used by the organisation to make people aware of the different products and the offers that can be availed from the purchase of those products. The social media platform can mainly be used to post different types of promotional written and multimedia content that will complement the offerings of the business. The official website of the business must be modified in a way in which the customers have to give their personal details to be aware of the fresh and new music products and available offers for the purchase of those products (Tran and Strutton, 2020). On the official website, the customers are expected to be asked to give their email addresses mandatorily. By doing so, the marketers of the organisation can be able to gather the email addresses of customers to enhance direct marketing about the products by sending emails with attractive product complementing content. In the enhancement of the digital market, marketers must try to enhance communication about the offerings of the organisation not only with the young Australian population but also with the population that are active on social media platforms (Zanini et al., 2019). By doing so, the marketers can be able to establish an increased customer base for the business. Along with the official website, the organisation can also initiate positioning its products in eCommerce platforms such as Amazon, where the customers can see the details of those positioned products and order according to their needs. However, the availability of low-cost offerings to be ordered online is not enough for the company. At the initial stage, the organisation can also offer free education regarding the use of musical products from the purchase of the products online. This can also be proved as a viable promotional activity to generate increased sales of the products online. In addition, for effective promotion of the organisational offerings online, the organisation can initiate organising musical concerts online using social media platforms (Ganz et al., 2018).

The digital marketing plan that can be executed by the World Of Music has been made by utilising the 7Cs of the digital marketing framework. 7Cs of digital marketing is a replicable and scalable framework using which the landscapes of digital marketing can be assessed by the marketers of the organisation from both internal and external points of view of the business. The following are the selected elements of the framework that can be considered in the enhancement of digital marketing in the consideration of which suitable technologies from the listed can be recommended to be used by the organisation in the execution of its digital marketing efforts:

Figure 1: 7Cs of digital marketing
(Source: Devrix.com, 2021)

In the enhancement of digital marketing, it is necessary for the organisation to know the targeted customers thoroughly to increase the effectiveness of their digital marketing efforts. This process is expected to be started with the formation of a detailer customer persona. As an example, it has been found that since 2020, most of the visits to the websites are being done by people using mobile, therefore, to make the digital marketing efforts effective, the organisation should make the business websites mobile compatible.

To make the implementation of a digital marketing strategy effective, it is necessary for the organisation to create high-quality, unique and expert content. Therefore, the marketers of the business must be involved in creating creative content formats, updating outdated information about the offerings and complying with the latest search engine algorithms (Cannel et al., 2022). This should be done not only to make users easily reach the brand but also to make the website rank higher in web browsers.

For the enhancement of effective digital marketing, it is necessary for the organisation to be aware of the wider context of the targeted audience. Therefore, marketers must consider buyer intent, correlate those with the trends in the industry, and then produce, and promote content that can be proven relevant to the requirements of the targeted customers.

The marketers of the organisation to enhance community marketing to make the implementation of digital marketing strategy successful can use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. It is necessary for the marketers to be involved in marketing interaction with the customers in a transparent, non-intrusive and conversational way because customers can have a high extent of bargaining power due to the availability of multiple options from which they can purchase the musical products they need (Pongsuwan, 2021).

The implementation of this element of the model is related to customer experience and core principles that can be maintained by the organisation while applying digital marketing strategy for the promotion of the organisational offerings. By finalising the sales of the organisational offerings along with marketing of the organisational offerings through Ecommerce platform, the implementation of this element can be made by the World Of Music (Junaidi, 2020). The use of ecommerce platform can make the organisational offerings more convenient to the customers. Thus, the marketing of the organisational offerings can be more successful.

A cohesive digital marketing strategy can be applied by the marketers of the World Of Music by using all possible technological channels that can be used. Along with the use of company website, social media marketing, Ecommerce marketing, direct marketing and others, the use of affiliate marketing using internet can be finalised.

Conversion

Conversion can b achieved in the enhancement of digital marketing by setting suitable key performance indicators, which can indicate the success of the digital marketing efforts. At this stage, the amount of visitors in the website, social media and others platforms along with sales increments if occur can be finalised as the KPIs (Karmarkar, 2022).

4. Concluding statement

It can be concluded that the discussed political, technological and social factors can provide opportunities for the business. However, the discussed economic factor is threatening the digital marketing efforts and overall sales of the business online. The balance of the H1 header is a significant factor for which the organisation can lose potential customers in the market. Due to the absence of an H1 header on the website of the business, people that can visit the website of the business can lose interest in thoroughly checking the website. The factor is that they cannot understand what the website is all about at the first glance due to the absence of this element in the website. Along with the official website, Amazon.com which is an eCommerce platform can be used by the organisation to position its musical offerings. The discussed social media platforms can mainly be used by the organisation to promote its offerings online. The discussed social media platforms can be used to post written and multimedia content that will complement the offerings of the business. Apart from this, musical concerts online can be organised by the organisation using the discussed social media platforms. Along with low-cost offerings, by offering free educational sessions regarding the use of musical products, the World Of Music can initiate to change its business value proposition while applying the planned digital marketing strategy. The official website should be initiated to be modified in a way that will assist customers to give their personal addresses using email addresses. By doing so, the marketers of the organisation can be able to enhance direct marketing more efficiently by sending emails to customers that will show their interest in the products.

5. Reference list