Elements of The Internet Marketing Strategy

Internet marketing strategy is needed to provide constant direction for an organization’s e-marketing actions so that they mix with its other marketing activities and support its overall business objectives (Dave Chaffey, 2009).  A strategy defines how we will meet our objectives, sets distribution of resources to obtain goals, selects favoured strategic options to contend inside a market, and supplies a long-term plan for the expansion of the organization (Dave Chaffey, 2009).  It is a channel strategy that incorporates channel specific objectives to develop and communicate in ways that are consistent with the characteristics of the channel.  There are three important aspects of strategy, 1)  situation review, 2)  goal setting, and 3)  strategy formulation (Dave Chaffey, 2009).  

Internet marketing strategy requires a situation review of internal and external influences which include the company’s overall objectives and strategy.  This in turn influences the marketing strategy that includes the internet and online marketing strategy.  There are many internal influences that affect strategies including the market structure, demand, benchmarking (competitor’s strategies), opportunities, and threats. 

            

In order to incorporate situation review, you need to do a competitive analysis, intermediary analysis, and assess the opportunities and threats.  A competitive analysis includes a constant monitoring of the competitor to stay up to date on ways to retain your customer.  Intermediary analysis is the implementation of web-based intermediaries that drive traffic to your website (Dave Chaffey, 2009).  Assessing the opportunities and threats consists of completing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to give a summary of the external opportunities and threats.  In order to do this, an internal audit, an external analysis of the micro economic factors, and an external audit of the macro economic factors needs to be done.  An internal audit assesses the current internet marketing strategies, its business effectiveness and its marketing effectiveness.  Other tools used would be customer research, resource analysis, and stage models.

            

Strategic goal setting needs to have an internet marketing strategy that is in line with the business marketing objectives.  As such, it is now commonly integrated as one in the same.  An example of this would be incorporating a new product by the use of internet communication.  One tool to do this is a scenario-based analysis which analyzes the future of the organizations online environment. 

            

Strategy formulation involves identifying alternative strategies, and reviews them.  This is similar to strategic goal setting because it also involves integrating the internet marketing strategy with the business strategy.  The best tool to go about this is to create a table that shows the objectives, substantiation, strategies, and KPIs (key performance indicators). 

            

In sum, internet marketing strategy is key in providing a constant direction for an organization’s e-marketing actions so that they mix with its other marketing activities and support its overall business objectives (Dave Chaffey, 2009).  This channel strategy incorporates channel specific objectives to develop and communicate in ways that are consistent with the characteristics of the channel.  The three important aspects of strategy, are 1)  situation review, 2)  goal setting, and 3)  strategy formulation (Dave Chaffey, 2009) as described above. 

References

Dave Chaffey, F. E.-C. (2009). Internet Marketing Strategy, Implementation, and Practice.            Harlow: Prentice Hall.