e-marketing Techniques And Methods

市場實踐活動從石器時代便開始了，但是他從一種形式轉為另一種形式則取決于年代和環境。從人們最先互換商品和服務開始，無論他們當時如何交換，都是一種顯示市場已經存在的貿易形式。市場這一詞，便是過去說服人們參與商品服務交換的鈴聲。然而自從第一次貿易發生后世界變化巨大，市場已經從過去演進到現在的模式，貿易交易在看不到對方的情況下也能完成。到目前為止，這是一段非凡的旅程，正如現在市場存在于地球村一樣。(Sweeney, 2001).
 

近年來營銷技巧和方法發生改變并且在短時間內更有效地與眾人交易提升不少。因此，由于迎合當今通信發展和人們對傳統市場的概念，電子市場發展迅猛。
 

電子營銷的含義：電子營銷已經成為全球每一項業務的核心。通信科技的進步以及電腦、網絡的發明都使得電子營銷在數以百萬計的組織目標客戶交易中變得家喻戶曉。電子營銷使用電子裝置（尤其是網絡）來交易并把當前的營銷原則和技巧與更大的受眾連接。從以上定義，電子營銷包括一個組織通過網絡進行的所有商務活動，僅僅集中在引入，保持，發展新客戶和商業活動。

 

Marketing practices had been around since the cave man age, but it actually ranged from one form to another depending on the age and environment. From the time when people first began exchanging goods and services, whatever they did then was a form of trading which showed marketing had existed. The word marketing was the ring tone used to convince people to engage in exchange of goods and services. However the world have travel along way since the first trading took place, marketing has evolve from what it was in those days to what it is today where trade transactions can be done without seeing the people involve. It has been an incredible journey so far, as marketing is described today to exist in a global village. (Sweeney, 2001).

 

Marketing techniques and methods have change over the years and great improvement has set in making it more efficient in dealing with greater number of people within a short and fastest possible time. Therefore e-marketing erupted as a result of the meeting of present day development in communication and the ancient marketing concepts that people where practicing.

 

Meaning of e-marketing: The term e-marketing has come to stay in the heart of every business across the globe. The advancement in communication technology and the invention of computer and internet crown it all making e-marketing a household name for every business transactions embark by millions of organizations targeting customers. Thus e-marketing is the use of electronic device (specifically the internet) to transact and relate the current principle and techniques of marketing to a larger audience. From the above definition e-marketing will include all the business activities an organization undertakes through the web with the sole focus of bringing, retaining and developing new customers and business. E-marketing in every ramification on its return on investment has exceeded the traditional marketing that was practice years back.(Brad 2001)

 

For the purpose of this report e-marketing will link strategically and critically to the new restaurant business of Mr Musa who has just return to Kuala Lumpur city to set up the restaurant with little or no knowledge of e-marketing. Though e-marketing has been point pined to assist a lot of businesses achieve their sole aim but it is not without a setback, all will be analyse in the later part of this report. Therefore this report will focus mainly on how e-marketing strategy can be employed to improve the sales margin of ‘The Restaurant’. Different strategies will be look upon as the report progresses and recommendation will be given specifically for Musa’s restaurant. (Sweeney, 2001).

 

1.2 THE RESTAURANT
 

In the case study, Musa has been train as a chef of high standard and setting up a restaurant business in his own city will be more successful as he has been acquainted with the environmental problems that will be facing the new business. Apart from the competitive environment the business will face from other long standing restaurants operating in the city, incorporating e-marketing into the business will pose a threat as Musa and his wife are not equip with the knowledge of modern use of communication (internet/e-marketing) in business operations.

 

However the business environment in Kuala Lumpur has change dramatically over the years when Musa was aware and as a consultant much is expected to relate the modern concept of e-marketing to his wife who will be handling the promotion and advertising section of the business to give the restaurant a competitive age over others. In advancing for a better outreach to consumers and improve the profit margin, an organization driven e-marketing strategy is proposed (Hummerston, 2007).

 

1.3 STRATEGIC LOCATION
 

Kuala Lumpur has an approximate population of 1.4million people ranging from the locals to foreigners and is one of the fast growing city in Asia. Since the business is located in the strategic centre city carrying out a restaurant with such a high level experience will be an added advantage when e-marketing is implemented. Moreover, Musa has a vast idea in both local and intercontinental dishes owning to his experience as a world class chef.Targeting customers will involve a well coordinated website that can be assess anytime of the day, customers visiting the restaurant will be pleasantly ask for their email with permission and promising to keep their contact personal and regularly watching the conversation rate and response from mails sent to them. (Cohen, 2003).

 

2.0馬來西亞的互聯網時代(2008-2010)---2.0 INTERNET EXPLOSION IN MALAYSIA (2008-2010)
 

	Kuala Lumpur	Subang Jaya	Ampang	Klang	Shah Alam	Ipoh
POPULATION 2008-10	1,475,337	1,553,589	804,901	1,113,851	671,282	704,572
INTERNET USERS	8234.3 1,245.44	9345,89 1,448.32	5088.46 69875.10	79830.33 9538.48	35800.79 59832.56	43671.11 59684.56

 

Table1.0 Biggest cities in Malaysia and internet rate user between 2008 to 2010 (extracted from www.gov.com.my)
 

2.1 THE PROPOSE STRATEGIES FOR MUSA RESTAURANT
 

2.1.1 Introduction:
 

The aim of e-marketing for such a restaurant is the undisputed leader of cost effective marketing vehicle and have a high level of respond, which makes it easier to relate with customers anytime of the day about new incentives, promotions and menus for the day. Equally, the use of multi-media email that can open automatically with email solution provider that have auto preview feature without the need of sending attachments, this can help increase view rate and eliminate the scare of computer viruses that can be transmitted through attaching documents. Eventhough Musa will continue to make use of traditional marketing methods, such as advertising, direct mail and PR, e-marketing advertisement will inject a whole new element to the marketing mix employ.(Reedy, 2000)

 

However, looking at the environment of the business, the three most important e-marketing strategies propose to Musa will be to:

 

Build a brand image through the Web

 

Establish a good relationship with customer base

 

Improve business and online sales profit. All these will be done in stages through a careful observation of business as event progress.

 

2.2 DOMAIN NAME/HOSTING A WEDSITE
 

For Musa to successfully implement the e-marketing strategy in his new business the restaurant must own it own website with a name that can easily be known, recognise and log in at anytime to assess the business profile and what the business is really providing for the masses. Since Malaysia is a multicultural nation there will be need for the business to present itself as a non-racial and environment friendly to be able to gain acceptance from the three races of Malay, Chinese and Indian, while such site will be able to boost all kinds of food including catering for foreigners as the country is host to many tourist.(www.gov.com.my)

 

2.3 ONLINE ADVERTISING
 

Online advertisement is a promotional tool that makes use of the internet and the World Wide Web to relay advertisement to target clients or market. Musa restaurant can capitalise on this to reach the target customers and push ahead with the clear advertising messages. These mediums are social networking, subscribing to advertising network, Rich Media advertising, and online classified advertising.

 

The strategic outcome which Musa restaurant stands to gain instantly is the fastest publishing of content and information that does not have any limitation by time or place. An important benefit of this method of e-marketing strategy is that of efficiency of advertiser's investment. It will present Musa with new innovative challenges that will allow interactive advertising and thereby making the restaurant maximise profit. (Taylor, 2002)

 

Musa restaurant equally can customize it advertisements and this can go ahead to includes the actual content on the websites. Advertisement sense will be a very reliable online advertising strategy for Musa which will further enables advertisement to be related in clear sense on the right web pages or together with search results of linked keywords.

 

Employing ethical means when using online advertising as a number of websites use large numbers of advertisements, that includes banner flashing that captivates the customers looking at it, in some cases it may have wrong message purposely designed to appear like an error messages from the operators of the system, rather than advertisements. Many operators of Websites that morally use online advertising that are not intended to distract users. More importantly, the website owners directly deals with organization wishing to place advertisement, thus the website linked to by the advertisement is real. (Gay 2007)

 

3.0橫幅廣告---3.0 BANNER ADVERTISING
 

Banner advertisement involves placing ads on web pages with the sole aim of attracting visitors/users to click on the ad and visit the advertised site. Numerous standard banner ads exist, each with a different shapes and size, they include: Banners and Buttons - rectangular or square shaped ads that usually appear at the top or the bottom area of the webpage.

 

Rectangles and Pop-ups – This is a large rectangular ad that usually appears on the middle area of the webpage, or in a new window as pop-ups. Skyscrapers - Vertical ads that usually appear on the right-hand or left- hand area of the webpage. (Fall, 2004)

 

3.1 PAY PER CLICK
 

Pay per click (PPC): is a self-service, Web-based Search Engine Marketing tool which allows Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising affordable and simpler, it can only be paid by advertisers when a customer click on the advertisement. It is advisable to select the key words that should make their advertisement interesting for users and the highest amount they need to pay per click. (Bayne, 2000).

 

3.2 SEARCH ENGINE
 

According to (Rosser, 2002), search engines outperform all other e-marketing media in driving visitors to web sites. In addition, consumers are 80% times more likely to pay for products after seeing them in the top result of search list.

 

4.0搜索引擎優化---4.0 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
 

Being an e-marketing strategy, it is designed to search for information on World Wide Web. It investigates how search engines work and what users really want. This relates to keywords based search engine optimization and paid ads through pay per click (Nemes 2000). The three biggest sources are Bing Yahoo and Google. There exist numerous minor online search advertising options but the three above are the best and each one has a pay per click advertising interface that is easy to use. To achieve maximum profit by the restaurant, importance to specific keywords must be highlighted to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. As a result optimizing the company website will involve major editing to its content and HTML associated with the coding (Foster 2004). Promoting a website to boost the number of back links, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic, however the more a site which appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

 

4.1 Methods Used to Improve Search Engine Rankings
 

METHODS
 

PERCENTAGE
 

Changing metatags 1

61

Changing page titles

44

Reciprocal linking

32

Purchasing multiple domain names

28

Multiple home pages (doorways)

21

Hiding keywords in background

18

Paid linkslpay per click

13

None of the above

13
 

Table 2.0.Sources: E-Marketing by Judy Strauss, Adel El-Ansary, & Raymond Frost (2003). Prentice Hall. [Adapted from www.iconocast.com]

However, the restaurant website must be search engine friendly to get a fast respond as soon as possible. This will demand for the optimization of website designs, content, menus and images for the purpose of search engine exposure. The leading search engines as mentioned earlier, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo! use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results (Churchill 2005, Nemes 2000).

 

If implemented successfully e- marketing campaign will surely drive people across the globe to the restaurant website, made possible through optimization techniques.

 

4.2 VIRAL MARKETING
 

Determined by Musa as a major objective to make a good brand image, viral marketing and advertising are 2 different techniques which can be brought into use pre-existing social networking sites to create an increases in the restaurant awareness and increase sales margin through the ‘self-replicating viral processes’ commonly label word of mouth transmission of advertising messages (Priya 2010). The viral strategy guarantees that individuals are encouraged to pass on a marketing message to others, thereby creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. It takes the form of word-of-mouth shared or enhanced by the effectiveness of the internet (Howard 2005) to quickly forward messages to friends and the global nature of the advertisement not limited by geography and time. These viral promotions activities for the restaurant may take the form of interactive Flash games, video clips, eBooks, images, or even text messages using the firm’s own database acquired through the collection of customers particulars.

 

Fig 3.0. Stages in Viral advertisement (culled from bruceongame.com)
 

According to Howard, (2005) Musa’s restaurant should take into consideration that an effective viral marketing strategy should include:

 

Exploit common motivations and behaviors

 

Provides and ensure for effortless transfer to others

 

Make the most of existing communication networks

 

Presenting the products or services

 

Musa’s restaurant can implement these strategies to get competitive age and rapid increase to create awareness message to millions of people within a short period of time, more than what traditional marketing techniques. Online newsletters equally can be a very effective tool for Musa’s restaurant in Kuala Lumpur if perfectly done. This system of marketing however depends on the pass along rate from person to person. (Rayport, 2001).

 

4.3 EMAIL MARKETING
 

Email marketing is equally an effective way to target customers but not as fashionable compared to other strategies, it actually addresses potential customers directly and effectively. Email direct marketing targets and increase performance through personalization by means of additional information present and profiling and transparent results evaluation and qualified consulting and support. To enhance awareness the restaurant will launch an email campaign to individuals’ online users stating the different types of food available, price etc. People’s email maybe bought from legitimate brokers or obtains directly from customers who have visited the restaurant before.

 

5.0博客---5.0 BLOG
 

As a consultant, blogging will be consider the last e-marketing strategy, Blogging will represent a significant step for the company to devise and improve communication as well as address consumers interest on what the restaurant offers. Using this means to continually relay information to online users detailing them about the different types of food in the day’s menu. According to Carpenter (2007) blogs generally is a type of website or part of a website. Maintained by regular entries of commentary, descriptions of products and events and employing other material such as graphics or video (Normanci, 2005). Often times some blogs are made to be interactive, allowing users to drop their views on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites (Mutum, 2003).

 

Musa should take into consideration that when designing the blogs the ability of users to drop comments in an interactive format is very important to achieving the e-marketing goals and gain from return on investment. For the purpose of this report the restaurant blog cannot be consider to be private since it is for business transaction. It will be open to users to communicate their views and address loyal customers concern and how services can be improve in the restaurant. However this blog will serve as a public relation or marketing branding for the restaurant. (Reyhan, 2006).

 

5.1 SOCIAL NETWORK
 

Social networking has been considered the fastest growing aspect of web service in the past two decades (Paul, 2004). Communicating with customers on a real time avenue is one of the greatest avenues of e-marketing. Spreading the information on facebook, Myspace, twitter, Tagged, etc can as well attract users and bring in more customers. (Cohen, 2003).

 

5.2 LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS IN E-MARKETING
 

Musa’s restaurant needs to be aware that there are a number of regulations that relates specifically to e-marketing. Thus there is need to keep abreast of developments in the area to ensure that the restaurant comply with various rules governing the use of e-marketing.

 

5.3 BENEFITS THAT WILL BE GAIN BY THE RESTAURANT THROUGH E-MARKETING
 

E-marketing will gives the restaurant access to the mass market of kuala Lumpur and its environs at an affordable price and, unlike TV or print advertising, it allows truly personalized marketing. The restaurant will make available an online booking facility which will be link to the main booking software, enabling prompt timing in management. Some of the benefits includes global outreach, lower cost 24 hours marketing, personalization and tractable, measure result and building a good relationship with customers. (Straus, 2001)

 

6.0建議---6.0 RECOMMENDATION
 

From the report and considering the environment to which the restaurant is operating it should be recommended that developing and managing a VIP guest list is very crucial in this campaign. The development of this list of very important guest will enable the guest develop loyalty as he or she will consider self as being treated with high level of respect and dignity. Advertise menu changes, special themes, discounts and parties: Changes in menu and discount is necessary as customers expect some sort of incentive to make the loyal. Customize templates to reflect the aesthetic of your website. Distribution of newsletter to educate customers on the cuisine and menu choices. Tracking responses to mailings, responses from customers can be known from replies and orders can be made online and delivery make easy and prompt.(Richardson, 2000)

 

Online promotion for customers is another strategy which should be considers as a priority, family, couple discount on weekends will motivate and attract customers visiting the site and children can eat free when the parents buy food exceeding rm200 at a time. This are incentives that must be regularly posted online and send to customers email to create loyalty. By doing this loyal customers will be delighted to forward such emails to friends which will create awareness to people who never knew the restaurant. It will also be recommended that the restaurant should participate in the Malaysian yellow pages and the site should encourage customer’s feedback and take immediate action to build loyalty and good image.Lastly good public relation will give the restaurant brand building while online and offline strategies should be integrated into the system. (Richardson, 2000)

 

6.1 CONCLUSION
 

The report presents a proposed e-marketing strategy for Musa’s restaurant. It is undertaken to provide guidance on how Musa and Aisyah should utilize the rich potentials of the internet strategies in making the new restaurant an eye catching one. Outlined strategies above include important components of e-marketing that can uplift the restaurant amidst the competition as the city is crowded with many outstanding restaurant and may be difficult to penetrate as a new business with limited knowledge it e-marketing.

 

The restaurant ability to immediately embrace e-marketing concept of modern business strategies is a landmark movement into the future of the restaurant operations. The sooner the restaurant moves into harnessing the benefits of e-marketing the better the restaurant will have a competitive advantage over thousands of restaurants in Kuala Lumpur city. There exist much opportunities for the restaurant to project their marketing initiative and gain more awareness even beyond the shores of Malaysia through effective and efficient utilization of the web and its numerous strategies of captivating users. Coupley,E (2001)