642 The Marketing Book
customer wanting to buy a computer may see
a TV ad for a certain brand which raises
awareness of the brand and then sees an
advert in a print ad that directs him across to
the website for further information. However,
the customer does not want to buy on-line,
preferring the phone, but the site allows for
this by prompting with a phone number at the
right time. Here all the different
communications channels are mutually
supporting each other. Similarly, inbound
communications to a company needs to be
managed. Consider if the customer needs
support for an error with their system. They
may start by using the on-site diagnostics,
which do not solve the problem. They then
ring customer support. This process will be
much more effective if support can access the
details of the problem as previously typed in
by the customer to the diagnostics package.E-marketing planning
The e-marketing plan should be informed by,
and integrate with, the objectives and strategies
of the marketing plan. Plans should be inte-
grated such that developing the e-marketing
plan may give insights that result in the other
plans being updated. Smith and Chaffey (2001)
use the SOSTAC® framework to suggest an
approach to e-marketing planning, and a sim-
ilar approach will be adopted here. SOSTAC
stands for: Situation, Objectives and Strategy,
Tactics, Action and Control. As such, it has a
structure that is broadly consistent with other
models of the process of strategic marketing
planning as described, for example, by McDo-
nald in Chapter 5.
Situation analysis
Situation analysis is the first part of the
e-marketing plan. It explains ‘where are we
now?’ This includes analysis internally within
the organization and, externally, of the business
environment. These traditional analytical areas
should also be assessed from an e-marketing
perspective as follows: KPIs– Key Performance Indicators which
identify the business success criteria, results
and performance against targets and
benchmarks.
SWOT analysis– identifying e-marketing specific
internal Strengths, and Weaknesses, as well as
external Opportunities and Threats. For
instance, are resources adequate, what are the
SWOT elements for the current on-line
presence compared with competitors?
PEST– Political, Economic, Social and
Technological variables that shape your
marketplace. Legal constraints on e-marketing
are particularly significant in controlling use of
customer data for direct marketing, for
example through e-mail, and the introduction
of new laws should be carefully monitored.
Customers– how many are on-line, how many
prefer different platforms such as iTV and
mobile or wireless? Are there new channel
segments emerging?
Competitors– who are they? What is their
on-line proposition? How successful are they
on-line? Are there new on-line adversaries?
Distributors– are new, on-line, intermediaries
emerging while old off-line distributors are
being wiped out (disintermediation)? What are
the potential channel conflicts?External analysis
We will concentrate on the micro-environment
factors of customers (demand analysis), com-
petitors and distributors.Demand analysis
For customers, market research should identify
which customers are on-line – what are their
profiles in terms of geo-demographics and for
B2B their position in the decision-making unit.
To build demand estimates, we need to know
the proportion of customers in each market and
segment who: