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Part 2  Strategy and applications

Customer demand analysis

A key factor driving digital marketing and digital business strategy objectives is the current 

level and future projections of customer demand for e-commerce services in different mar-

ket segments (see Strategic analysis, Chapter 5, p. 192). This will influence the demand for 

products online and this, in turn, should govern the resources devoted to different online 

channels. 

Demand analysis

 examines current and projected customer use of each digital 

channel and different services within different target markets. It can be determined by asking 

for each market:

● 

What percentage of customer businesses have access to the Internet?

● 

What percentage of members of the buying unit in these businesses have access to the 

Internet?

● 

What percentage of customers are prepared to purchase your particular product 

online?

● 

What percentage of customers with access to the Internet are not prepared to purchase 

online, but are influenced by  web-  based information to buy products offline?

● 

What is the popularity of different online customer engagement devices such as Web 

2.0 features such as blogs, online communities and video?

● 

What are the barriers to adoption amongst customers of different channels and how can 

we encourage adoption?

Savvy digital marketers use tools provided by search engine services such as Google to evalu-

ate the demand for their products or services based on the volume of different search terms 

typed in by search engine users. Table 8.1 shows the volume of searches for these generic, 

broad keywords. Most users also narrow their searches using qualifiers like ‘free’, ‘cheap’ 

or ‘compare’ which gives opportunities for comparison sites to attract visitors and to gain 

commission through affiliate marketing. Online retailers can target their messages to con-

sumers looking for these products through advertising services such as Google AdWords 

and Bing.

Through evaluating the volume of phrases used to search for products in a given market it 

is possible to calculate the total potential opportunity and the current share of search terms 

for a company. ‘Share of search’ can be determined from web analytics reports from the 

company site which indicate the precise key phrases used by visitors to actually reach a site 

from different search engines.

Thus the situation analysis as part of digital marketing planning must determine levels 

of access to the Internet in the marketplace and propensity to be influenced by the Internet 

to buy either offline or online. In a marketing context, the propensity to buy is an aspect of 

buyer behaviour (The online buying process, Chapter 9).

Figure 8.10 summarises the type of picture the digital marketing planner needs to 

build up. For each geographic market the company intends to serve, research needs to 

establish: