DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIESmany companies were accused of a lack of strategic planning, which was ultimately said
to be the cause of their business failures (Porter, 2001). E-strategy has been discussed at
various levels from business re-engineering, new approaches to marketing planning to
analysing and measuring specifics of web-based activities.
From a strategicplanning perspective, Teo and Pian (2003) have found that the level
of Internet adoption has a significant positive relationship with an organisation’s com-
petitive advantage, which implies that organisations should seriously consider how to
engender positive support for online activities. Otherwise organisations that hesitate are
likely to be superseded by existing or new competitors. Whilst in the current climate this
sounds rather obvious, the business potential that can be derived from adopting Internet
technologies is not always immediately clear. This situation helps to reinforce the impor-
tance of digital marketing planning as it can help to ensure organisations reduce the risk
of losing their competitive edge by missing out on the benefits of new technology. On
the plus side, there are increasing opportunities to benefit from innovation, growth, cost
reduction, alliance, and differentiation advantages through planned adoption and devel-
opment of Internet and digital technologies as more trading partners become part of the
digital marketspace.
From a tacticalplanning perspective Teo and Pian (2003) suggest organisations aiming
to differentiate themselves via web sites should switch their focus to internal productiv-
ity improvement and developing external partner relationships. They should look for
opportunities to create productivity improvements through the use of a web site and to
streamline business processes.
According to Nicholls and Watson (2005), whether businesses are adopting strategic or
tactical approaches towards planning appears to be rather an ad hocprocess. They recom-
mend that in order to use Internet technologies effectively businesses need to analyse ‘a
variety of situational antecedents and then the degree to which the offline and online
management infrastructure, marketing and logistics functions should be integrated can be
better understood’. (See Figure 11.5 for their model of e-value creation.) The model in
Figure 11.5 shows three key areas, the organisation’s core strategic objectives, its business
characteristics and its internal resources and competencies. Different objectives are likely
to suggest a requirement for different structures and strategies. For example, the objectives
of pursuing efficiency and cost reduction are likely to benefit from organisation-wide inte-
gration of Internet technologies, whereas targeting very narrow niche markets online may
not require such investment. The characteristics of the organisation (e.g. size) is likely to
have a significant impact on Internet strategies. Smaller organisations will have to consider
carefully how to resource a fully transactional web site and handle the logistics.
Furthermore, the core resources and competencies will impact on the extent to which the
Internet represents an opportunity to create competitive advantage.
It is perhaps reasonable to suggest that organisations are reconsidering the e-commerce
proposition in the light of the boom-and-bust dot-com era. Indeed, there is a good deal of
emphasis currently being placed on the supply-side of e-commerce strategies. Streamlining
of procurement systems through the use of Internet technologies can make significant
cost reductions, which can produce useful financial benefits. Furthermore, organisations
operating in B2B sectors are better placed to implement such systems than the B2C
organisations because they are:
familiar with the use of the similar techniques of EDI (although this is beyond the
reach of many SMEs);
under pressure to trade using e-commerce as often major customers such as supermar-
kets may stipulate that their suppliers must use e-commerce for reasons of efficiency
and cost. Alternatively, if a company’s products are not available direct on the Internet
then the company may lose sales to other companies whose products are available;