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:
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |