Strategic & Tactical Tools for Ebusiness

Online marketing can be more personalized, participatory, peer-to-peer, and communal than offline marketing -> most effective if all four features are included

5 main elements of a multi-channel marketing plan:

• website,
• traditional online marketing (SEM, display ads, e-mail, affiliate programs),
• social marketing,
• mobile marketing,
• and offline marketing

• Display Ad Marketing

  • Targeted ads that are embedded on websites, could be also non static such as videos (banner ads, rich media ads, video ads, sponsorships)

  • Cost per thousand: relatively cheap to raise brand awareness.

  • Cost per click: relatively ecpensive, but motivates ad platforms to increase trfffic to advertisers website.

  • Cost per action: Action could be everything. Pro: motivates advertiser to facilitate user activity

  • Issues:

    • Ad fraud: falsify web traffic to charge advertisers for clicks or impressions that never occurred -> big problem

    • Viewability: Served ads are not viewed due to bad positioning and ad fraud. Also, no measurement if a served ad had been seen. -> marketer still charged

    • Ad Blocking: Increase in use of software blocking ads

• Search Engine base avertising

  • SE baed marketing: Search engine based marketing refers to the use of search engines to build and sustain brands

  • SE based advertising: While search engine based advertising refers to the use of search engines to support direct sales to online consumers

    • sending messages to specific subgroups -> allows price discrimination

• Search Engine Optimisation

  • techniques to improve a website to get a higher ranking in search results (adapt page to search engine algorithm)

Web analytics: Tools that analyze the user’s website behavior

Where are the visitors coming from, What are they looking for (keyword they used to find your site), Duration of website visit,  What pages they visited

Examples along the customer journey:

• Unique visitors
• Page views, Duration, Content views
• Posts, likes, Tweets, Comments
• Enter cart page, Register, Purchase, Abandon
• Repeat customers, Social site buzz, Service request

• The answers depend on the goals of the campaign, the nature of the product, and the quality of the website you direct customers toward.
• Ultimately it’s the return on the investment (ROI) in the ad campaign that counts
  • Complicating matters is the difficulty of cross-platform attribution of sales
  • Not sufficient to look at the first channel a consumer interacted with and the last he signed up on
    • What happened in between in important

• Effectiveness of any marketing relies on the degree of accurate targeting
  • Permission e-mail click-through rates have been fairly consistent over the last five years, in the 3%–5% range.
  • The click-through rate for video ads may seem low, but it is twice as high as the rate for banner ads.
    • There are very poorly targeted
  • Search engine advertising has grown to be one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing communications
  • Direct opt-in e-mail is also very costeffective.
    • Form of targeting people who are already interested in receiving more information

• In general, the online channels (e-mail, search engine, display ads, video, and social, mobile, and local marketing) compare very favorably with traditional channels.
  • Television and print media still are most used way by consumers to find out about products
  • Good marketing will combine all kinds of medium and channels to direct multiple, harmonized messages
    • Consumers who have more touchpoints spend more

 Goal: encourage potential customers to become fans of your products and services, and engage with your business by entering into a conversation with it.

Further: encourage fans to share their enthusiasm with friends and create community of fans online —> strengthen brand and drive sales by increasing share of online conversation

brands lose substantial amount of control over what people say about their brands and where their ads appear

1. Fan acquisition: attracting people to your marketing messages

• Social ads: Social ads (Display ads on social media) encourage visitors to interact and do something social, such as participate in a contest, obtain a coupon, or obtain free services for attracting friends.

2.    Generate engagement: encouraging visitors to interact with your content and brand

• You can think of this as “starting the conversation” around your brand.

• Generate engagement through attractive photos, interesting text content, reports, etc

3.     Amplification: encouraging visitors to share their likes and comments with their friends

• Average user has 120 friends

• 20 mutual friends with which average user has two way communication

  • Amplification occurs if fans refer freinds, who do so as well, creating amplifying effects

4.     Community: stable group of fans engaged and communicating with one another over a substantial period of time about your brand

5.     Brand Strength/ Sales

• Measuring the exact numbers is difficult, but results indicate that social marketing campaigns drive sales

• Buy buttons on social media make conversion easier

Social media analytics enables companies to rapidly collect data from social media platforms and develop in-depth intelligence regarding the competitive environment

• Size of social media pages
• response time to complaints
• number of engagements (comments, likes, shares for each post)
• demographics of the people connected to a user
• Sentiment tone -  how positive, negative, or neutral the tone of the content is about the competitor.
• Relevance - how relevant or substantive the content is for the competitor.
• Keywords analysis - what and how many different keywords are used in the content about the competitor.
• Intensity analysis - how repetitively the keywords are used over time.

Social media metrics

• Brand awareness
  • number of tweets about the brand, number of followers, number of sign ups
• Brand engagement
  • conversation rate (number of comments, posts, responses)
• word of mouth
  • number of retweets, number of sharings

○

• banner ads,
• rich media,
• video,
• games,
• e-mail,
• text messaging,
• instore messaging,
• QuickResponse (QR) codes,
• and couponing. 

Understanding the behavior of users is very important

• 70% of mobile minutes occur in the home, not outside
• Smartphones are very personal, always on, always with us —> perceived as personal appendages and consumers are less tolerant of commercial intrusion. 24/7 on —> more screen time supply, decreases price. Precise location known to marketer —> location-based targeting

1. consumer-retailer interconnectedness

2. consumer empowerment

3. proximity-based consumer engagement

4. web-based consumer engagement

Richness grows exponentially on this two way flow because of nature and quantity of information shared

• Two-way flow of information

• Including in-store and out-store activities

• Tailored and personalized messages

• Proximity alerts

• Instant pricing information

Retailers and consumers can connect with each other on every step of the decision process -> exchange of information (data) leads to individualized shopping experiences on both sides

·      E.g. retailer can display personalized coupons based on previous purchases

Timing, context, relevancy and content of interactions is critical and those retailers who are good at it can differentiate themselves from competition

•Showrooming

•Price negotiation

•Role of consumer-generated ratings

Decrease in information asymmetry gives consumers more control

·      Consumer becomes more independent, demanding and informed

·      E.g. Consumers rather use their phone than getting info from a store associate

Consumers tend to want stuff “now and here” →  important to develop an omnichannel strategy

•Targeting of marketing messages

•From “seeker” to “cruiser” consumer

•Apps vs mobile websites

•Mobile websites

• Used in early stages of shopping
• Less intrusive

•Apps

• Faster
• More efficient

Develop a mobile website

1. Include social links for sharing on networks

 Develop a Facebook brand page

1. In order to integrate social and mobile marketing

Create new Google or facebook campaign

1. Resize ads for new screen format

Create Admob account to manage ad campaigns across devices

Develop marketing content with high lvls of interactivity

Measure and manage campaign through Google Adwords

1. Allows you to analyze ads that are effective on each platform
2. Adjust and readjust

Fan acquisition

Engagement

Amplification

Community

Brand Strength

And sales

• These are the SAME steps as in the Social marketing funnel.
• Shows that mobile and social are essentially the same in many aspects
  • Most popular apps on mobile are social for sharing pictures

1. Employee empowerment and Engagement

• Mobile point of sale (POS) transactions – Salespeople -> problem solvers

• These technological improvements causes a paradigm shift, salespeople with a POS transaction device can be kept accessible to become part of the problem solving human resources. The store is not only a marketing channel, but also a point to solve problems

2. Omni channel marketing

Deliver seamless shopping experience to customers across all channels by synchronizing technologies, services and processes in a centralized and interoperable way

Solutions:

• Marketing can happen with seamlessly integrated channels
• Cross-channel inventory visibility
• In-store pickup 

Challenges:

• Siloed technology
• Inventory intelligence
• Fragmented fulfillment
• Customer identification
• lot of organisational work to achieve omni-channel strategy

3. Customer analytics

• Consumer in-store location through beacons that direct customers to aisle

Location-based marketing targets marketing messages to users based on their location.

Two general techniques to local marketing

• Geo-aware techniques identify the location of a user’s device and then target marketing to the device, recommending actions within reach
  • may target smartphones within several square city blocks to alert them to available offers from participating merchants
• Proximity marketing identifies a perimeter around a physical location, and then target ads to users within that perimeter, recommending actions possible within the fenced-in area.
  • For instance if users walk into perimeter of a store, they receive ads

Tools

• iBeacons - are in-store devices that send messages to customers nearby
  • Uses Bluetooth Low Energy to connect to devices
  • Special offers can be sent, general areas can be marked with different areas, and get help if stuck in a section too long
  • Beacons can stimulate loyalty programs by being noticed when walking into stores
  • Beacons can give sudden sales or discounts
  • Can also silently gather data on points in store where people buy most or get stuck
  • Downside: only 20% of users have bluetooth on
    • Privacy concerns
    • Pushing notices in store ca make people stop using app
      • If more than 1 message sent in store, 300% less usage noticed

• Facebook PlaceTips - Facebook messaging to news feed about offers nearby
• NFC technology - Scanning of location based bar codes to get more info on products

1. the client side, within the customers hardware and software
2. at the server side, within the merchants information systems
3. within the communications pipeline, that is the various internet communications channels enabling the transaction to take place and be fulfilled

For example at the client side web beacons or malicious spyware might be installed on the consumer's computer and this might be used to obtain credit card information through recording the user's keystrokes.

On the merchant server side the database of customer details (including credit cards) might be hacked - this is known as a customer list hack this might be done through an SQL injection where SQL database statements are inserted into a database entry field for execution resulting in the contents of the database being dumped to the attacker.

Throughout the communications process the internet communications channels might be monitored

Major technical security attacks:

• Malware: code that has gotten into our device without our knowledge that is hurting it
• Unauthorized access: someone taking the customer data, for example
• Denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks: hurtful events that can stop the service
  • Involves the hijacking fo several computers in a botnet and sending Get requests to a server repeatedly, overloading its CPU
• Spam and spyware
• Trojans
• Hijacking
• Botnets

From the social side:

• Social engineering
  • psychological manipulation of people
    into performing actions or divulging confidential information
• Social phishing attacks
  • most common type of attacks leveraging social engineering techniques. Attackers use emails, social media, instant messaging and SMS to trick victims into providing sensitive information or visiting malicious URLs in the attempt to compromise their systems
• Fraud and scams on the Internet
• Data breach (leak)

1. Integrity

• It refers to the ability to ensure that information being displayed on a website or transmitted or received over the internet has not been altered in any way by an unauthorized party. 

2. Nonrepudiation

• the ability to ensure that e-commerce participants do not deny or repudiate their online actions

3. Authenticity

• the ability to identify a person or entity with who one is transacting with on the internet

4. Confidentiality

• the ability to ensure that messages and data are only available to those who are authorised to view them

5. Privacy

• the ability to control the use of information about oneself

6. Availability

• the ability to ensure that an e-commerce site continues to function as intended and is available to provide service

• Malware
• Malvertising
• Drive-by download
• virus
• worm
• ransomware
• trojan
• backdoor
• Dos
• DDos
• Identity fraud
• SQL injection attack
• etc.
• Credit card fraud / theft

• Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr provide a rich and rewarding environment for hackers
• Viruses, site takeovers, identity fraud, malware-loaded apps, click hijacking, phishing, and spam are all found on social networks
• Common types of scam on social networks include manual sharing scams, where victims unwittingly share videos, stories and pictures that include links to malicious sites, with “free” gift cards, for example
• Another technique is a fake reaction button: when clicked, it installs malware and post updates to the user’s newsfeed, further spreading the attack
• SN firms have by far been relatively poor policeman because they have failed to aggressively weed out accounts that send visitors to malware sites (unlike Google, that maintains a list of known malware sites).

• The existence of mobile devices has broadened opportunities for hackers
• Mobile users are filling their devices with personal and financial information and using them to conduct transactions, from retail purchases to mobile banking
• Mobile devices face the same risk as any other Internet device, as well as some risks associated with wireless network security
• Public Wi-fi networks that are not secured are very susceptible to hacking
• Malicious mobile apps (MMAs, malware for cell phones) was developed early 2004
• The majority of mobile malware still targets the Android platform

• The move of so many Internet services into the cloud also raises security risks
• DDoS attacks threaten the availability of cloud services, on which more and more companies are relying
• Companies with hybrid networks, with their applications scattered among public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises systems, are more at risk

• Encryption
• Symmetric key cryptography
• Advanced encryption standard
• Public key cryptography
• Digital envelops
• VPN
• Firewalls
• Proxy servers

customer relationship management, demand management, order fulfillment, manufacturing management, procurement, product development, returns, logistics/transportation, and inventory management

E-Commerce: describes specifically that portion of B2B commerce that is enabled by the Internet (including mobile apps). It is the sale of goods or services between businesses via an online sales portal. In general, it is used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a company's sales efforts. Instead of receiving orders using human assets (sales reps) manually – by telephone or e-mail – orders are received digitally, reducing overhead costs

• Lower administrative costs
• Lower search costs for buyers
• Reduce inventory costs by increasing competition among suppliers (increasing price transparency) and reducing inventory to the bare minimum
• Lower transaction costs by eliminating paperwork and automating parts of the procurement process
• Increase production flexibility by ensuring delivery of parts just at the right time (known as just-in-time production)
• Improve quality of products by increasing cooperation among buyers and sellers and reducing quality issues
• Decrease product cycle time by sharing designs and production schedules with suppliers
• Increase opportunities for collaborating with suppliers and distributors
• Create greater price transparency—the ability to see the actual buy and sell prices in a market
• Increase the visibility and real-time information sharing among all participants in the supply chain network.

• Often Lack of real-time demand, production and logistic data.
  • Result of this is unexpected supplier failure
• Environmental impacts
• Natural disasters
• Labor concerns (strikes etc.)
• Impacts of economic, financial and political instability

The sensitivity in the supply is a difficult challenge to manage (Bullwhip effect)

The bullwhip effect is, how a change in the user demand can echo all the way down in the supply chain with an increasing effect between each link in the supply chain and is commonly visualized with the waves a bullwhip makes, and thus the name.

Information systems can help avoid this bullwhip effect, as they make companies able to be more transparent about their expected demand, and thus the following links in the supply chain have better odds of matching the precise demand. However, this require companies to share information with each other, which is not always wanted.

Examples:

• Blockchain
• EDI (Electronic data interchange)
• Cloud

A coordination of various organisations that are related in the process of producing value

Ad:

• Transparency
• Real-time information
• Security
• Immutability

Dis:

• Hard to build network
• Information loss (e.g. blackouts)
• Loss of sovereignty 
• Carbon footprint / Energy consumption