Influences of Online Marketing on Integrated Marketing Communication

The way people communicate was always a fundamental driver for our evolution. Technological advancement in last years is changing how we get, evaluate and use information. For marketers, this doesn’t bring only new possibilities, but also new challenges how to use and control these technologies. There are more than 2 billion people using the internet and it caused that marketing is online and new forms of it are being created faster than ever. For many people, even professionals, it is nearly impossible to keep track of all these new online marketing terms. Online marketing is about delivering a message via the Internet to real people and make them do something - in most cases it is to make them spend money. According to Shama Kabani, successful online marketing basically works on a simple framework called ACT Methodology that can be broken down into 3 three distinct components:

• A - Attract

• C - Convert

• T - Transform

Attract - To attract means to get attention or stand out. The goal of this phase is to get traffic to the website by standing out from others. This happens mostly by using Social media and Search Engine Marketing. Convert - Converting strangers into consumers or customers. Primary focusing on attracted users who are ideal fit. These people are more likely to buy your product and spend money. There two types of conversion:  Stranger to Consumer - Consumer is a person who is consuming your information for example from your Blog, Twitter or Facebook. they can attract their friends and acquaintances to the brand. Social media are suited to this kind of conversion.

• Stranger to Customer - Converting people become paying customers. This happens via the company website.

Transform - Transforming company’s successes into attraction tools. It has two key parts: 1. Doing a good job and provide a perfect service and customer support. 2. Spread the word about success with clients. Share their stories of what they achieved through service or product. To better understand how the basic theories and parts of online marketing come together, I have created an info graphic where on the top there is the new mental model with the critical Zero Moment of Truth. Then there are approximate boundaries indicated between the model and the online marketing types and techniques. And on the bottom there are the ACT methodology phases to show how these are connected to the ZMOT model and online marketing techniques.

Also, consumers are purchasing more and growers are selling more produce using their own websites and other online applications, allowing access to a larger customer base (Thilmany et al., 2006). This new trend has encouraged other farmers to consider new marketing strategies including electronic technology such as websites, social media and emails for improving marketing practices and expanding market access through online. Use of web-based marketing is one of the new trends in direct marketing for farm products that can be utilized in a variety of marketing strategies. Growers or producers can sell their produces online through e-commerce, simply by using a website to advertise their operations (Briggeman and Whitacre, 2005). Direct-to-consumer sales include sales made through email or Internet orders; and local sales made in local sales outlets such as farmers markets, farm stands, on-farm sales and community-supported agriculture. As a direct marketing tool, the Internet is becoming an increasingly important management tool in production agriculture (Mishra et al., 2009). Most farmers in United States who use direct marketing have begun to promote their businesses using websites to make a connection with larger amount of customer base. Commonly used web applications for selling and buying were ebay.com, Amazon.com, National Food Industry Market Maker, Google, Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Food Industry Market Maker is a website that helps small- and mid-sized producers and customers to connect with each other for their buying and selling process online as a direct marketing tool (Cho et al., 2010). Besides, being a new platform for buying and selling, internet has also become a new intermediary for companies to promote their businesses. Because of its characteristics and the high numbers of users, internet has become as powerful as traditional communication channels, such as TV, magazine, and radio. There is no common term to describe marketing through online medium and terms such as hypermedia marketing, digital marketing, online marketing and e-marketing, are used by different researchers. The term “online marketing” will be used in our research. Elley and Tilley described online marketing as online communication activity which can be in different forms and can include different online techniques, such as Search Engine Marketing, online partnership, social media, online advertising, email marketing. These online marketing techniques have become vital communication tools for the marketing department of a company to promote its websites, services and products in the online environment. Internet offers many opportunities for companies and it can be a useful platform for their marketing activities, such as to spread information, attract new customers, retain existing ones and even to improve relationship with existing customers by online customer relationship management. Online Marketing: Principles to use in Internet marketing - The principles used in mass marketing are ineffective, when transferred to Internet mar-kiting. To get the best results, it is essential, as pointed out, to

strategic process of distributing, promoting, pricing products, and discovering the desires of customers using digital media and digital marketing. E-marketing goes beyond the Internet and also includes mobile phones, banner ads, digital outdoor marketing, and social networks (Pride & Ferrell, 2012.) Because of the fierce competition on the Web for the attention of the potential buyers, it takes enormous marketing expenditures from the E-marketers to set them-selves out from the crowd, get visitors to their sites and get them actually make a purchase (Hoffman & Novak, 2000). Figure 3 presents the conceptual model by Trusov et al. (2009) for capturing the complete set of effects of WOM and traditional marketing actions in social network site set-ting. The user action that Trusov and colleagues measured was the new member acquisition (new sign-ups) to the social networking service. Presumably though, it is relatively safe to assume that the same direct and indirect effects between marketing, WOM and user made action exists also when thinking the effects of WOM and traditional marketing in other situations, where user action is needed (e.g., purchase). We know that marketing affects to purchase decisions, as well as, that WOM affects to decision to buy or not to buy. In fact, as already mentioned, WOM is one of the most influential marketing strategies.

Online Marketing Communication Channels: With the emergence of new communication channels via the Internet, we have seen an emergence of new ways that marketing promotions can be launched and new ways that marketing attacks can be initiated. As a U.S. presidential candidate, Barack Obama began using “viral marketing” techniques early in his campaign for the 2008 elections through extensive use of Internet social networking. Obama’s Democratic Party opponent, Hilary Clinton, was the victim of a damaging chain email campaign, in which she is falsely identified as having an involvement with the defense of Black models in the marketing discipline were formulated around promotional media, modes of service delivery, ethical considerations, and such that were common before the Internet existed. Our thoughts on integrated marketing communications (IMC) and corporate reputation management are based on tactics such as traditional press releases to paper news media, whether that is to promote a new product or to react to a negative event such as an oil spill. Traditional marketing models aren't especially helpful in formulating corporate communication strategies in an era when a competitor or a single disgruntled customer can post negative comments on websites that become indexed on search engines, or when a competing politician reaches a younger demographic of campaign donors via non-traditional online media. Virtual Variations of Online Marketing: In today’s ever‐changing world small businesses need to adapt if they want to compete within the market. According to a recent survey conducted by Zoomerang and GrowBiz Media the top five areas that small businesses plan to increase their advertising budgets in the year 2011 are websites, email marketing, direct mail, social media and print design Out of the individuals that took the survey hosted by Zoomerang and GrowBiz Media, 17% of business owners plan to increase their marketing budget for website design, 15% plan on increasing their email marketing budgets and 13% plan on increasing their social networking budget. Overall the survey concluded that small businesses in 2011 plan to increase their overall online marketing budgets by 54% in comparison to offline forms that ranked at 46% overall. From these results it is safe to conclude that if a small business wants to stay competitive they will undoubtedly need to start gearing their marketing dollars toward the online form of advertising.

Social media and generally online marketing is getting more and more budget allocated from the companies. Small companies, startups and individual entrepreneurs are jumping into the waters of social media marketing without a proper preparation or strategy. For many it is a waste of their time and money, not because online marketing is not working, but their using it wrong. Likes, followers, shares don’t pay the bills, what is, are the goals when being accomplished. One of the most important things about online marketing that I have learned when writing this thesis is: to use the common sense. Build on this I would like to shortly conclude the best practices for doing effective social media and content marketing: 2. Develop strategy and after think about the tactics and tools. It doesn’t necessarily mean that if the competition is using a particular social platform, you have to use it too. The more platforms are used ineffectively the more energy, money and time you are wasting. Is important to choose the right strategy for the goals and then choose which social media and content will help you to achieve it. Many of these practices are often unconsciously adhered and applying others to build a whole concept will help companies become successful in the online marketing area. This thesis gave me a deeper understanding of social media and content marketing that I have immediately applied in praxis. I don’t have solid results now, to prove that all the steps done in Video lot will guarantee their success; nonetheless it is a good starting point to apply all the knowledge from the thesis and help Video lot to become an effective social business. This study has tried to look into the effectiveness of the internet as a communication channel and also into the effectiveness to attract customers with means of numerous online marketing tools.

Briggeman, B. and B. Whitacre (2008). “Farming and the Internet: Factors Affecting Input Purchases Online and Reasons for Non-Adoption.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, Dallas. Cho, K. and D. Tobias (2010). “Improving Market Access for Small and Mid-Sized Producers through Food Industry Electronically Infrastructure Market Maker.” Paper presented at Southern Agricultural Economics Association Annual meeting, Orlando. Fox, J. L. (2009). “Exploring and Improving Marketing Practices and Regional Market Access for Ohio’s Food Producing Farmers.” Paper presented at the National MarketMaker Annual Partnership Meeting, Broomfield, CO, November, 2009. Hoffman, D. & Novak, T. (2000). How to acquire customers on the Web. Harvard Business Review. May-June 2000. pp. 179-188. Mishra, A., R. Williams and J. Detre (2009). “Internet Access and Internet Purchasing Patterns of Farm Households.” Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 38(2, 2009): pp. 240-257. Thilmany, D., J. Bond, and C. Bond. (2006). “Direct Marketing of Fresh Produce: Understanding Consumer Interest in Product and Process Based Attributes.” Paper presented at the American Agricultural Economics Association Annual meeting, Long Beach, July, 2006. Trusov, M., Bucklin, R. E. & Pauwels, K. (2009). Effects of Word-of-Mouth versus Traditional Marketing: Findings from an Internet Social NetworkingSite. Journal of Marketing, 73(5), pp. 90-102.

Research Scholar, OPJS University, Rajasthan