Walmart Digital Marketing Paper
Introduction
Digital revolution has made the business world more competitive. Digital marketing involves the promotion of a company’s goods and services via the electronic media. The use of digital marketing channels such as company web, search engines, mobile apps, email, and social media promotes digital marketing (Gerdeman, 2011). Walmart, a US-based retail company has adopted the digital marketing tool in an endeavor to promote its products and services to the global target market. Most customers of Walmart follow the company’s promotional campaigns in the online platforms. Walmart is best known for e-commerce business, where customers order and buy goods online. Today, Walmart is among the world’s largest companies that have succeeded in digital marketing strategies for its goods and services (Ghemawat & Mark, 2006). The report will analyze Walmart’s digital marketing trends and SWOT, its digital marketing objectives, and target market. Further, the report will discuss Walmart digital marketing mix and management by demonstrating the value and use of customer data in developing the digital marketing strategy. A Plagiarized Student Sample: ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
Situation Analysis
Today, Walmart is the world’s largest retailer company in terms of revenues. The marketing management has been keen on promoting its products and brands in through digital marketing. The use of company’s website, social media platforms, and search engines are the main approaches (Huang & Sarigollu, 2012). However, the digital marketing strategies of Walmart are affected by both internal and external factors that are depicted through its SWOT analysis. These trends include:
Strengths
The marketing management of Walmart has been effective at promoting everyday products and services through its website, social media, and mobile apps to the target customers. The company creates value from its digital marketing strategies something which has enhanced e-commerce in the company and this minimizes costs of advertising through other promotional channels such as television Ads (Huang & Sarigollu, 2012). In its digital marketing, Walmart offers customers with huge discounts on supplies and this helps the customer save more funds; as a result, customer loyalty is enhanced. Further, the management markets its own manufactured and branded goods hence are sure about the reliability and quality of the product. As a result, the market for its goods and services has grown in over 12 countries worldwide.
Weaknesses
The marketing management of Walmart has failed in integrating its digital marketing services with its physical stores. For instance, Walmart aims at expanding its services by allowing consumers order groceries online for in-store delivery but this is still unreliable due to its lack of integrating digital services with physical stores. The company promotes its services at lower prices than competitors something which questioned and a concern to the customers on the quality of the goods and services it promotes in the electronic media. Further, there is little differentiation between Walmart’s digital marketing strategies to those of other major retailers in the industry. Also, negative publicity negatively affects Walmart’s digital marketing approaches.
Opportunities
Global market: Walmart can still market its products and services digitally in new markets hence enhance its global growth.
Growth in online shopping: There have been recent growths of online shopping in the retail industry. Walmart provides sophisticated online stores which offer the customers convenience from the comfort of their homes; this must be intensively marketing using social media platforms in all target market groups.
Home delivery services: Walmart needs to market its home delivery products and services through digital marketing to create an edge against the key competitors in the market.
Threats
There is a stiff competition from Walmart’s competitors for the market of its products. For example, Carrefour and ALDI use sophisticated technologies in marketing its products in the market, for Walmart to cope with this competition; the management has to incur most digital marketing costs. Also, being a successful company; Walmart is exposed to open attack on its ethical stance- environmental issues, poor working conditions, low pay, and supply of goods from poor and cheap labor nations. Also, the small retail companies hate Walmart’s continued digital marketing strategies for they consider this as a threat to their present and future business operations both locally and the overseas. A Plagiarized Student Sample: ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
Digital Marketing Strategies
Setting SMART digital objectives has been crucial in the success of Walmart’s digital marketing campaigns. The success of Walmart’s digital objectives is greatly attributed to its proper integration with strategic objectives. The digital marketing objectives of the company should include:
Specific: Increasing the company’s brand awareness by building the social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter followers to the maximum number possible.
Measurable: Lowering the cost of advertising through other promotional tools and saving customers funds while maximizing its revenue.
Achievable: Maintaining skilled, experienced, and innovative marketing team that can effectively promote the company’s products and services via digital marketing.
Relevant: To help customers save money so that they can live better.
Timely: Maintaining an average of 1000 inquiries per day over the annual period.
Identification of Target Market
There are numerous opportunities that Walmart has not exploited in the market.
Walmart Target Market
Every digital marketing strategy of a company starts from a well-defined target market. The success of any brand in the market is determined by its product, promotion, place, and price. Walmart’s target market can be classified into different aspects namely customer behavior, product, geography, customer attitudes, and demographics (Gerdeman, 2012). Walmart needs to target customers of all demography/ ages through its digital marketing messages in order to create an attention for both young and adult consumers. With this doing, Walmart will achieve consumers’ loyalty that will help the company in the long run. In its digital marketing campaigns, Walmart should promise the target market of cheaper prices; and this effective integration of social media and marketing communication strategies will increase the number of young customers. Today, Walmart should formulate digital marketing strategies to reach the middle-class people in the society who have been ignored in the past. Walmart needs to diversify its market segmentation target to even the poor in the society by offering them the same brands but with quantity sizes that they can afford. Geographical segmentation analysis will help the marketing team understand the needs and capabilities of different customer groups in the unmet locations. Depending on age differences, the company needs to identify a target market and its segmentation prior to its decision on what digital marketing tool to use to ensure that all classes of people are considered.
Branding and Positioning Strategies
Today, Walmart as a brand is strongly positioned in the market due to its excellent digital marketing strategies. The company has established various stores in different locations such as Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Costco as a strategy to sharing the cost of brand promotion as enhancement of its position in the market. Different brands suiting various age groups are manufactured and advertised on its website where customers can order and shop online through e-commerce (Gerdeman, 2012). The brand products of Walmart are categorized into groceries, clothing, stationery, electronics, and household goods among others. In all these segmentations, Walmart needs to advance its brand integration strategies to its overall goals. In particular, the market for the poor people in the market has not been favored by the digital marketing strategies adopted by Walmart. The marketing management should design an appropriate digital marketing strategy such as the use of a mobile app that does not charge customers for accessing the new brand offers in the market.
Summary of Recommendations for Product, Price, and Distribution Strategies
The market mix of Walmart rotates around its nature of retail business. The cost of leadership in the firm as well defines Walmart’s marketing mix. The global operations of Walmart are connected to its marketing strategies. These digital marketing mix strategies adopted by Walmart are:
Product strategy
The main product brand of Walmart is its global retail services. The use of convenient and reliable digital marketing tools by Walmart attracts more customers for efficiency in customer services is guaranteed (Rahmani, Emamisaleh, & Yadegari, 2015). For instance, the sales personnel of the company are trained to appropriately help shoppers in finding the products they require in the stores. Convenience is achieved through the provision of groceries, clothing, stationery, electronics, and household goods in its stores that are effectively marketed in the social media.
Pricing strategy
In its digital marketing strategies, Walmart employs the use of “Everyday Low Price (EDLP) pricing strategy. The EDLP pricing adverts by Walmart are frequently witnessed in its stores. The company enjoys large economies of scale. As a result, Walmart offers its products to customers at a 15 percent lower price than the other leading retailers in the market (Rahmani, Emamisaleh, & Yadegari, 2015). Further, more discounts are offered on its products and this motivates many customers to purchase from the company.
Place/ Distribution strategy
In the company’s digital marketing; the marketing management employs the use of intensive distribution channel design and strategies in delivering its products from their premise to the customers (Rahmani, Emamisaleh, & Yadegari, 2015). In this intensive distribution strategy, Walmart stores provide a variety of goods to the consumer with certain employees mandated to deliver the purchased commodities to customers’ premise.
Recommendations based on Walmart Marketing Mix
Walmart’s marketing mix has proved to be effective in supporting its overall success, growth, sustainability, and competitiveness in the market. However, the digital marketing strategies are yet to reach many locations where Walmart’s stores are difficult or absent to reach the customers. In particular, this is evident in the markets found in developing countries. Therefore, grounded on the attributes of its marketing mix, the following should be done:
- Walmart should improve on its place/distribution component by ensuring that the developing countries are reached in the same way the markets in the developed countries have been.
- The company should enter new markets in the foreign market through joint ventures and foreign direct investment (FDI) to promote their presence in all potential markets.
- Through this doing, Walmart will promote its distribution element of marketing mix hence gain a stronger support and customer based in all markets which would lead to increased competitive and sustained success in the global market.
Digital Marketing Communications Plans
Currently, Walmart’s digital marketing communication plan is centered on its owned, paid and earned media strategies (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 2015). The marketing management of Walmart needs to upgrade its digital marketing strategies by advancing the following product and services promotional tool in its communication plan:
Company website design recommendations: Walmart’s should improve its official company’s website features where new product offerings in the market are posted. The features of the web should be appealing and attractive to the target market.
Search engine optimization suggestions: Walmart needs to improve the features of its search engine optimization where customers search the newly advertised products for online purchasing.
Social media strategies: The marketing management of Walmart’s needs to create reliable Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts through which customers can access the newly advertised products with convenience.
Online advertising: Walmart’s needs to intensively advertise its new brands and products online in order to boost e-commerce sales.
Search marketing and online publicity: Online publicity through digital marketing is core to digital marketing excellence. The marketing team of Walmart should adopt online publicity in its digital marketing strategies so as to boost customer loyalty and retention.
Relevant Evaluation and Monitoring Approaches
More customers, reduction of advertising expenditure, increased customer satisfaction, and loyalty is the main approaches that will enable Walmart to evaluate the success of its digital marketing strategies (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2015). The possible evaluation and monitoring approaches that Walmart should use are:
Search engine traffic: The Company should understand that the amount of traffic referred to its website via search engines such as Bing and Google depicts how effective its marketing strategies are in the target market.
Page views: The cumulative rate at which customers view Walmart’s social media platforms and the web can enable the company evaluates and monitor the effectiveness of its digital marketing strategies.
Conversion rate: The rate at which visitors to the company’s site take a specific action of liking a newly advertised product or not enables the management to evaluate and monitor the number of audiences who have accessed it advertised product.
Inbound links: The number of external links to the company’s web provides a clear indication to the management that customers have found the product/ brand important enough to link to it.
Unique visitors: The surest indication about a company’s site overall traffic is measuring the number of unique visits who visit the webpage regularly from one period to another. This helps in evaluating and monitoring the effectiveness of digital marketing by a company.
Conclusion
Digital marketing, an emerging issue in the business world has been a major tool used by companies in the promotion of its products, brands, and services to the target market. Digital marketing enables a company to reach out markets from different locations on the same platform and time thus saving on the costs of regional advertisements. Companies using digital marketing must undertake a SWOT analysis on the market through which it will market its goods and services. A proper understanding of the target market, positioning, and segmentation help the marketing management in designing the most suitable marketing mix for the market. Customers demand high-quality goods and services through which they can access at their convenience at any place. It is the responsibility of the marketing management of a company to design appropriate digital marketing strategies that suit the target market in order to enhance efficiency, growth, competitiveness and sustainability in the market. A Plagiarized Student Sample: ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
References
Gerdeman, D. (2011). Getting the Marketing Mix Right. Harvard Business School.
Gerdeman, D. (2012). Location, Location, Location: The Strategy of Place. Harvard Business School.
Ghemawat, P., & Mark, K. A. (2006). The Real Wal-Mart Effect. Harvard Business School.
Huang, R., & Sarigollu, E. (2012). How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity, and the marketing mix. Journal of Business Research,65(1), 92-99.
Rahmani, K., Emamisaleh, K., & Yadegari, R. (2015). Quality Function Deployment and New Product Development with a focus on Marketing Mix 4P model. Asian Journal of Research in Marketing, 4(2), 98-108.
U.S. Department of Commerce (2015). The Retail Services Industry in the United States.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (2015). Walmart Form 10-K, 2015.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (2015). Walmart’s Official E-commerce Website.