LMK 2010 – INTEGRATED AND DIGITAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION
TABLE CONTENT
INTEGRATED AND DIGITAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION.. 3
1.1 Amazon Brand Experience. 3
1.2 How Amazon Is Doing In and using Digital Marketing Tools Or Communication Channels 5
2.1 Digital Marketing tools or Communication channels not applied in Amazon brand. 7
2.2 Future Recommendations for tools to use in Amazon. 7
- OTHER BRANDS AND THEIR DIGITAL MARKETING ACTIVITIES. 8
- CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………8
INTEGRATED AND DIGITAL MARKETING COMMUNICATION
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Integrated digital marketing, as the word suggests means, integrating various approaches of marketing in your business through existing social media platforms (Valos et al., 2016). Integrated digital marketing involves incorporating all aspects of marketing communications and social media through their use of tactics, approaches, channels, media, and activities, all working together as one force. Digital marketing is the forum that business owners usually use to try and succeed in their business with their brands, products, and services. There is a need to apply digital marketing in your business to have a difference having in mind there is stiff competition in the business environment (Chaffey & Ellis, 2019). How you market and present your products determines the number of sales you can make in a given time. Therefore, it’s very advisable to leave the traditional way of marketing and to try and digitalize your business. In our current modern society, things have changed, and traditional marketing channels are no longer impactful in the business environment. This paper discusses the digital marketing tools or communicational channels applied by Amazon Brand and their impact, analyze the tools the company isn’t using, and give recommendation for future use (Karjaluoto et al., 2015).
1.1 Amazon Brand Experience
Amazon brand, initially referred to as Cadabra, was founded in 1964 by an American who is an industrialist, investor, and media proprietor known as Jeffrey Preston Bezos. It started as a book store but has grown to a sophisticated brand (Klaus, 2018). Amazon brands take care of sensations, customer feelings, cognitions, and behavioral responses through their mode of product promotions. Most of its brand labels are customer satisfaction hence attracting millions of people. In the business environment, Amazon offers different and various brand stores. Usually, the products are accessible through Amazon.com, Prime Pantry, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go, Prime Now, and Whole Foods Market (Royle & Laing, 2014). Also, its label where brands stored is under “Our Brand” and is separate from exclusive brands. Exclusive brand items are the third party items sold through Amazon. Notably, membership in Amazon Prime is crucial when purchasing some Amazon store brands.
Since Amazon sells a variety of products, it has continuously been coming up to new brands now and then. In 2005, Pinzon started as a private brand. In its trademark, the descriptions were that the brand was to applied in selling industrial goods, cooking utensils, and various domestic items. Amazon was registered in USPTO in 2016. AmazonBasics brand offers home-based items, tech accessories, and staff equipment. It is one of the brand successful in the market (Chitty et al., 2016). By 2020, it was aiming to have the online market of its AmazonBasics in India. Solimo is a private Amazon brand that sells cooking and essential domestic items. In this label, it sells phones and various electronics equipment looking to overtake AmazonBasics. Notably, India had heavily restricted selling of Solimo and AmzonBasics as a result of having antirust breaches in the year 2019.
Besides, in 2014, Amazon launched another brand, Amazon Elements, that deals with domestic products such as wipes and diapers. Also, in 2017 it started selling supplements and vitamins. Another brand in Amazon is Wag, which sells food for dogs. Its label, the logo and brand name is derived through wag.com initially owned by Amazon before closing. Mama Bear is another private label for Amazon that sells baby food, baby wipes, baby laundry detergent, and diaper pail refills. Also, in 2018 is started marketing infants diapers earlier sold by Amazon Elements brand before dismissal from the site. Amazon also has a Presto private brand that sells laundry detergents, household paper towels, and toilet papers. In addition, Amazon has private brands for food and beverages, which include Wickedly prime, 365, Amazon fresh, and Happy Belly. Amazon also sells Apparels (clothing), and it has several private brands to market and sell the items of clothing, that is, Mae, Goodthreads, 206 Collective, and Amazon Essentials (Corniani, 2016)
1.2 How Amazon Is Doing In and using Digital Marketing Tools Or Communication Channels
Amazon has really done very well in digital marketing communication on the social media platform. Amazon’s tangible success in its marketing has compelled many other known brands to like working with them. For instance, Nike announced to have a plan of opening their store brand on Amazon. Notably, the marketplace is normally a very competitive platform and requires a lot from its sellers if one wants to make an influence. Unless the company is one of the largest brands worldwide, it’s advisable to sell its products through the Amazon platform in order to rank higher in search results. To find your way in Amazon, they will have to do the analysis of your product and identify available optimization opportunities, implement optimizations through the launch of campaigns and monitoring results, and ensure your product dominates the marketplace (Landa, 2015).
Amazon has a unique social media marketing strategies that inspire the clients. On social media, Amazon has the upper hand in making more sales than other online merchants. This is because it uses various social networks for its promoting its products. Amazon is currently using the following social media platforms to market your products; Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Spark. Amazon has 28.7M and above likes on the Facebook wall. This is an astonishing number and thus makes it’s brand so popular (Kotler et al., 2019). Through its Facebook page, Amazon makes a wide range of staggering comments, polite replies to customers, provide useful linked information, and adds respect by addressing commenters through their first name. Also, in this platform, it describes its products, provides discounts during festive dates to motivate its customers. For instance, during Mothers’ Day, it fills its page with various goods and discounts that help win customers, hearts.
On its Twitter account, it has 2.7 million followers though this day is less active on promotions than it used to be on product promotions. It uses Prime videos to promote products on twitter. In addition, it uses its Amazon music as in helping promote its products. On twitter account, it has blog content where customers selling on Amazon are provided with small business ideas. Pinterest is another digital marketing tool used by Amazon. Pinterest is a site where users normally browse for buying ideas. Users are linked to the Pinterest platform via a pin from Amazon and through its website from which they make orders directly. Lastly, Amazon does it’s marketing through Spark. This platform was launched last year, and it’s likened to Instagram/Pinterest and can be seen as a shopping social network. Spark resided from the Amazon app and used to make a social engagement that aims to indirect product buying (Chaffey & Smith, 2017).
Amazon always has endeavored to thrive and have community engagement, even before launching social media platforms. Through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Spark Networks, Amazon’s objective aims at increasing sales via digital marketing tools, make engagement, guide interactions, and make discoveries for many of their customers worldwide (Macarthy, 2018).
2. TRENDS AND VARIOUS DIGITAL MARKETING TOOLS OR COMMUNICATION CHANNELS
Notably, direct marketing is important because it helps business, companies or organization; to optimize their marketing budget, upgrade customer loyalty strategies, creation of new business opportunities, helps test and analyze results, and it uses segmentation and is target-oriented tools in reaching the clients. Digital marketing through online communication channels such as Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as discussed in our lectures or seminars. The choice of these online channels is determined by the client on target and business or organization capacity. Every business or company has a marketing communication framework that basically assists in making the choices of channels to us (Mackay & Wilmshurst, 2017).
Critically, we shall analyze the importance of these four digital online communication channels. Instagram is among the effective marketing online channels we have. It has the capacity to fit any size of the business idea and can reach an unlimited number of the target group. Basically, one can use to promote the company or business brand or campaigning for his products. For instance, it is centered on storytelling, whereby one can upload a video to impart information on his brand products (De et al., 2017). It supports visual contents, e.g., pictures, photos, that are important in marketing strategies. In addition, it creates a platform where one can relate well with the global community; it has a great way to give feedback and insights to the clients and, most importantly, helps in keeping in touch with your competitors hence giving you the challenge to perform better.
Facebook is also an excellent and handy social media platform for digital marketing. It has emerged with a short span of time to become an effective medium for marketing and promoting business brands (Cengage et al., 2014). It has a massive exposure worldwide with over 1.2B and more than 1.37B clients every day. In addition, it’s cost-effective, thus reduces the cost of marketing, capable of attracting prospective clients, clients visit your website voluntarily, thus increasing your web traffic, and Facebook helps in giving insight and timely feedback to the follower (Treadaway & Smith., 2017). On the other hand, You-tube is helpful in marketing. It broadcasts over 3 billion new videos per day. You-tube is viral; video can reach a large number of people for a short time, thus making it useful in digital marketing. In addition, it has promoted the creation of channels where one can open an account and be using it to upload business information (Jarboe, 2016).
Twitter has about 1.6 billion visitors who see third party tweets per month, making it roughly 500M and 200B annually. Twitter can be used as a research tool where one can enter in detail such names of brands, topics, people, companies, or organizations intending to acquire information. Also, one can use it in posting videos or pictures of his brand, helps in selling your brand by creating a personality where people can click and follow you voluntarily and make orders (Bulearca & Bulearca, 2018).
2.1 Digital Marketing Tools Or Communication Channels Not Applied In Amazon Brand
As clearly discussed in topic 1.2 about the Amazon marking channels, it is evident that it uses only 2 out of the four discussed online channels in our lectures, which are Facebook and Twitter. Amazon does not use the other two, You-tube or Instagram, instead, it uses Pinterest and Spark (Mackay & Wilmshurst, 2017).
2.2 Future Recommendations for tools to use in Amazon
As future recommendations, it is advisable for this great brand to integrate more digital tools in their marketing. As it stands, Amazon, one of the leading business brands and does perfectly well in marketing. For example, despite using Pinterest, Spark, Facebook, and Twitter in marketing, it important to try other social media platforms discussed above (Macarthy, 2018). By using You-tube, Amazon will increase its number of clients reached out; having in mind You-tube has over 2 Billion users, Amazon will be done fairly well. Through the use of Youtube, Amazon will be able to upload videos and hence pass useful information about their brands. Another recommendation can be the use of Instagram. Instagram is a very impactful tool as well and has over 1 Billion monthly active users, over 500M stories per day, over 4.2 likes per day, and 100M photos and videos per day. This shows Instagram is a beneficial site to sell business brands and increase the sales of their products (Parsons et al., 2018).
3. OTHER BRANDS AND THEIR DIGITAL MARKETING ACTIVITIES
Other brands include Aldi, Nike, and Samsung. For instance, the Aldi brand is a German-based supermarket business that sells foodstuffs. Its digital activities include; print, electronic, and display media platforms. Also, it uses Email marketing and useful information on product promotions, especially when stock lasts reaches its customer. Nike, on the other hand, uses Youtube, Google, watercooler moments that glue consumers to their brand, Technology where it makes uniques brand stuff, teaming with best world athletes, and use of constant innovations. This has kept the Nike brand going for along. Samsung also uses various marketing activities, such as creative ads, projects that inspire, case studies, and social media platforms. In social media, Samsung is on Facebook, Youtube, Technology, Facebook, Tweeter, and Instagram, where visual and video contents are made viral in an effort to sell their products. It is one of the best reliable electronic selling companies for items like Phones though it is getting competition from the iPhone brand, which is taking the market with a shock (Macarthy, 2018).
4. CONCLUSION
The use of integrated and digital marketing communication may not be complicated, as many business owners think. Typically, digital marketing involves designing and developing a website for your business, selling business ideas, marketing on social media, administrating local listings, and advertising through social media. Through integrated digital marketing, a business owner is able to create an online presence where one can advertise, campaign for, and sell his products. This is why Amazon is doing very well in building meaningful relationships across all digital platforms. Since the introduction of digital marketing, Amazon has continuously realized expansion of their brand and have moved from national to the worldwide company (Mackay & Wilmshurst, 2017).
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