BMP3006 Practical Digital Marketing Assignment Sample

Introduction Of Practical Digital Marketing

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Marketing is a very vital part of business, simply it is the process of attracting potential clients or customers or consumers towards a certain company's products or services. As it is a process, so it is obvious that it involves various stages or steps. Usually in any business marketing comprises steps like market research, promotion, pricing, and distribution. All of these steps are directly associated with the selling process (Liu, 2017). In recent times due to the volatile economy and extreme market competitiveness, marketing became an integral part of getting the edge within the respective industry market. Marketing is very important as it allows a certain company to maintain an ever-present and long-lasting relationship with its target population or potential customers. That is why marketing is one of the key elements for any kind of Business's growth strategy.

This report is going to focus on the marketing mix and promotional mix of a certain company and then critically analyse the relationship between them. Also, the report is going to critically define social media marketing and digital marketing and analyse the relationship in between. For the report, the chosen MNC is Coca-Cola Company, as it is a global company

Definition of Marketing Mix and Promotional Mix

The marketing mix is sort of a framework; it consists of sets of tactics or actions that a certain company uses in order to promote their products or services and their brand within their respective market. A traditional marketing mix comprises o 4Ps, these are; Price, product, promotion, and Place (Lahitnen et al. 2020). Although as mentioned before to cope up with the competition and volatile nature of the market, companies nowadays tend to add more components within their marketing mix, such as; positioning, people, packaging, even as the socio-political trends also have an impact on branding, so marketing mix can comprise of politics too as a mix element. The marketing mix for Coca-Cola is;

Mix Element	Strategy
Product	It has a vast product mix, which comprises 500 sparkling beverage brands and near about 3,900 options within it.
Price	As Pepsi is the closest rival so the pricing tends to stay similar to the price of Pepsi, also as it is a global company the pricing depends on the respective nation’s economy.
Place	It possesses a huge distribution network, as the business spread over 200 countries, although the process is simple, they manufacture their drink from their patented formula and sold within bottles.
Promotion	They promote through every medium, TV, digital platform, printed media also sponsor popular and important sports and entertainment programs, such as; NBA, NCAA, American Idol, etc.

Table 1: Marketing Mix of Coca-cola

(Source: Self-made)

To cope up with the extreme market competitiveness, it is vital to imply a promotional mix. It helps in conducting effective promotional campaigns, also helps in segmenting the target population (Qian et al. 2019). The main focus of it is to form an effective nexus with the consumers on the basis of communication thus helps in spreading information about the company's new products or services. In the case of Coca-cola the promotional matrix consists of;

Relationship between Marketing Mix and Promotional Mix

Both the promotional mix and marketing mix are very important for any business. Although they both correlate with each other, the usual promotional mix is the expanded version of the promotion strategies under the marketing mix of a certain company. Also, the promotional mix is comprised of myriad marketing methods and the strategies are usually a combination of these marketing strategies and they work collectively towards the sake of a common marketing goal (Thabit and Raewf, 2018). Promotion strategies under the marketing mix exist within the surface level, but the promotional mix presents the explicit details about their promotional ways, such as; Establishing the target population then segregating them in regards to potential customers, creating advertisements through different mediums also utilizing the sales promotion and public relations. It also includes direct selling.

Definition of Digital marketing and social media marketing

As is mentioned in the previous section, marketing is no longer a choice regardless of the business category; it is now an integral necessity. Although with the immense technology influences, a large portion of people's livelihood is now dependent on digital media or digital platforms, so marketing is also transitioning into digital medium (Maulani, 2017). Digital marketing is the most ideal choice of marketing for recent times, as consumers are heavily relied on digital means to find their preferred products. According to the "Google marketing" insights, about 48% of people begin their inquiries within the search engine and 33% look directly through brand websites, and near about 26% uses mobile applications. So digital marketing is the inevitable future of marketing and branding.

Social media marketing is also an extended part of digital marketing. It simply requires a certain company to promote their brands through popular social Media, also it will open up a social platform to communicate with the potential customers and often helps to solve their queries and form a direct nexus (Shareef et al. 2019). It includes activities such as; posting texts, videos, images or conduct live promotional campaigns. Through these activities, the company improves its branding and garner a copious amount of global attention from the potential target population.

Importance of the digital marketing and social media marketing

Digital marketing has an irreversible impact on the world. Also nowadays businesses are very much dependent on the consumer's preferences because people are sharing their preferences within digital platforms and they are becoming global trends. A company like Coca-Cola needs to utilize those trends to garner more profit from its global business (Chaffey and Smith, 2017). One of the major platforms for digital marketing is social media marketing, as the trends are being made and being spread over the social media platforms. Digital marketing is becoming more important as people's preferences are changing. Statistics show that more than seventy percent of people are more interested in browsing for new products through internet content than traditional advertisements. Also, social media covers 92% of the preferred internet content (MDG, 2014). Also in regards to Coca-Cola digital marketing and social marketing helps in;

• Increasing their “Website traffic”
• Helps in building conversions
• Raising adequate global brand awareness
• Improving the global brand identity with the positive and preferred new brand association or collaboration
• Enhancing communication through attracting social media posts and updates (marketo.com, 2018).

Conclusion

As it is mentioned before to cope up with the volatile nature of any market, Organisations are very attentive towards their digital marketing strategists specifically through their Social-media marketing approaches. It is helping them to stay relevant through the changes (Chen). Although Coca-Cola is an established company and has business over 200 countries, still this report is going to recommend few things such as;

• As it is a global company, every nation has its preferred choices, so the company should use social media more to mine relevant data.
• The company has a business within developing and underdeveloped nations, so it needs to continue "Tweaking and Adapting" within its branding and pricing.

Examples of “Social or Digital media contents” that have been successful for Coca-Cola

In 2018, to revamp their marketing strategy within the digital platform Coca-Cola started new campaigns; the most successful amongst them came on 12^th November, which is also the “World kindness day”. The Advertisement is based on the core value of their marketing, which includes three key factors, they are, uplift, optimism, and connection. This campaign consisted of hundred of original images of various kinds of street artists, during their act of art, and the arts were dedicated to kindness and the core values of Coca-Cola's branding (Vincent and Kolade, 2019). This garnered so much popularity within Facebook and Instagram, that they continued this in 2018 too, and in the following year the range of the campaign got wider, the campaign also included modern algorithm trends like Hashtags like "#WorldKindnessDay2019", and the company marketing team also promoted the social events the company sponsor through their advertisements. In the following years, they added more street artists and partnered with them in order to create "Original Coke inspired" images. These images garnered more focus towards the company's branding. Then in past years they integrated this very campaign and replaced the artist with the consumers, they started their “Share a Coke campaign” which is an expansion to their “world kindness day” campaign (Amodu et al. 2019). Their marketing list prepared a huge list of popular names across the world and then combined some popular celebrity names with them and then printed those names within the beverage bottle, such as "Share a drink with Wu". This campaign never stops though, every passing year they expand the list with popular and celebrity names from their various nation businesses, and also it became a part of their "Experimenting packaging" strategy in these years since 2018.

In 2019 they changed their sponsorship strategies too. Coca-Cola has a rich history in sponsorship; it sponsors popular entrainment programs like award functions, reality shows. Also, Coca-Cola over the years sponsored many sports programs too, like NBA, several Cricket world cups, and football championships. Also, it has a history of sponsoring big programs like the Olympics in past (Akingbade, 2020). Although these are helpful still, to reach more of the youth and a large proportion of social media-dependent people, Coca-Cola started to associate with the popular culture trends, in case of the entertainment industry, the contents are shifting more towards digital or OTT platforms, so Coca-Cola collaborated with popular platforms like Netflix to promote their shows and Coca-Cola branding too. The most successful campaign was their collaboration with stranger things, a popular web show from Netflix. Also when they were approached by the Olympics committee again Coca-Cola global marketing team was attentive to promote their branding through their social media platforms, their campaign under the hashtag of "#Thats_Gold_campaign" helped them in garnering grand attention during the 2016 Rio Olympics. Also during these events or new shows, Coca-cola influences people through attractive offers and updates to share their experience in form of photos, videos along with Coca-Cola props, memorabilia, and merchandise, so it will promote the show or sports event along with promoting the company too (econsultancy.com, 2020).

Justification for choosing the respective social media marketing examples

The key reason for the marketing is that it will impact the financial status of a certain company in an expected advantageous way. So in regards to the first example of the social media campaign, it was not a single promotional campaign; instead, it got extended over the years with some small changes within the basic idea. The financial benefits the camping brought were huge. It is still one of the biggest social media successes Coca-Cola ever have. Within six months after the campaign gets launched, Coca-Cola reported around 330 million impressions on Twitter. Also, the campaign received new tweets around 170,000 from 160,000 potential fans of Coca-Cola. Also, the campaign helped Coca-Cola in creating a sustainable brand reputation amongst many developing and developed nations. Also, the campaign was very heartfelt as it was based on kindness (Akingbade, 2020). The whole campaign was motivated to deliver social messaging too, which was also gravitates their consumer towards the key brand values of Coca-Cola, and prioritizing them, such as; optimism, connection on a human level, and uplifting. Also by tagging the street artists, Coca-Cola helped them to garner attention and it helps them in conveying a "feeling of Community" along with harking back towards the key focus towards the original purpose. This example is also very important as this was the beginning of their "New and Global Digital Branding".

Digital content like movies, web series are in trends in accordance with the ongoing pop culture, and also Coca-Cola was very successful in their past for sponsorship strategies, but in the near past they collaborated with Netflix for collaborative promotion programs, also through this they can launch new drinks or developed drinks like they launched their "New Coke" during their collaboration with "Stranger things". The new coke launch was a failure but with the stranger things theme and 80's western nostalgia, Coca-cola already garnered huge attention. Also, it brought them financial success, thus helped them to beat their "second-quarter earnings estimates" and also boosted their full-year revenue forecast in 2019 (econsultancy.com, 2020).

References

 Journals

Akingbade, O.E., 2020. Digital media marketing and the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in Africa: A reception analysis of the multi-channel marketing of Coca-Cola among young Africans from the University of Lagos, Nigeria and Rhodes University, South Africa (Doctoral dissertation, Rhodes University).

Amodu, L.O., Archibong, B., Aririguzoh, S.A. and Odiboh, O., Potentials of Social Media Engagement for Influencing Purchase Decision: A Study of Coca-Cola’s “Taste the Feeling” Campaign.

Bala, M. and Verma, D., 2018. A critical review of digital marketing. M. Bala, D. Verma (2018). A Critical Review of Digital Marketing. International Journal of Management, IT & Engineering, 8(10), pp.321-339.

Chaffey, D. and Smith, P.R., 2017. Digital marketing excellence: planning, optimizing and integrating online marketing. Routledge.

Chen, S.C. and Lin, C.P., 2019. Understanding the effect of social media marketing activities: The mediation of social identification, perceived value, and satisfaction. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 140, pp.22-32.

Lahtinen, V., Dietrich, T. and Rundle-Thiele, S., 2020. Long live the marketing mix. Testing the effectiveness of the commercial marketing mix in a social marketing context. Journal of Social Marketing.

Liu, R., 2017. A reappraisal on marketing definition and marketing theory. Journal of Eastern European and Central Asian Research, 4(2).

Maulani, T.S., 2017. The effectiveness of promotional mix toward image of the thematic day in bandung. International Journal of Business, Economics and Law, 12(2), pp.26-34.

Qian, C., Wu, C.F., Zhang, Z. and Huang, H.Y., 2019. A study on the promotional mix of pre-service in the view of service design. Industrial Management & Data Systems.

Shareef, M.A., Mukerji, B., Dwivedi, Y.K., Rana, N.P. and Islam, R., 2019. Social media marketing: Comparative effect of advertisement sources. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 46, pp.58-69.

Thabit, T. and Raewf, M., 2018. The evaluation of marketing mix elements: A case study. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies, 4(4).

Vincent, E. and Kolade, A., 2019. Persuasive Communication: Semiotic Analysis of “Share-a-coke” Advertising Campaign. World Journal of Innovative Research (WJIR) ISSN, pp.2454-8236.