Evaluation Of Marketing Communications - Case Study Example

Internet Marketing Communication Name Institution Internet marketing communication Based on the data presented on the data matrix and the information gathered concerning the situation of San churros internet marketing communication as well as that of its other close four competitors, i.e. star bucks, Mac Donald, Koko black and café brunette, and later evaluate its effectiveness. San churro is a western Australian café that is well known for its tasty traditional churro and other chocolate delicacies. It apparently viewed as the place to be on a cold rainy morning or evenings. Effective internet marketing is a sure way that can help a firm improve its sales revenue, and therefore a firm needs should ensure that its strategies are well put in place. A well designed internet marketing communication strategies would enable the firm create a strong personal relationship with its customers. The qualities to be analyzed are as explained below. Homepage design and format This dictates the images, font and color of the homepage and is every firm’s first marketing point. These are the first features a potential consumer would relate to every time the business is mentioned and should therefore be carefully handled. San churros image of a chocolate eating monk might not be as good compared to star bucks chocolate covered page or KOKO blacks display of their chocolates. This is what ranks these two competitors ahead of san churro. San churros only competitor with a poorer image is café brunette with photos the customers would not easily relate to. Another important design and format feature that should be considered by every internet marketer is the firm’s coverage of the screen, its font size and how busy the format is. The firm’s display of its information should cover the screen in proportionate measures, i.e. well balanced and in a visible font and font size. San churros web design covers a good proportion of the screen and its details are written in large font sizes too, almost like calligraphy. Its font size enables catchy details to pop out and would also market the firm. San churros competitors Mac Donald, KOKO black and star bucks are however ranked ahead of it due to their exquisite display on the homepage. Mac Donald for example has a popping red as its homepage background and details in white font color. Café brunette’s poor font and non-proportionality on the screen is what gives it the poor 2point rank. A third design and format feature that must be taken into account that was immensely ignored by almost all the firms the letting the customers have fun while on the page by giving them a little virtual tour of their world. San churros videos of chocolate eating customers with poor sound system is want give it a poor ranking. Though compared to its competitors, san churro is fast ahead. Therefore, in homepage design and format, san churro would be ranked as average with a total 5.5 points beating all its competitors. Navigation/functionality Functionality would mostly refer to the ease of moving from one tab to another. It is evaluated on the basis of ease of use, scrolling to tabs or correcting a particular page. Navigating through san churros page is quite simple, which is facilitated its large font. It lacks the quick search icon on its homepage and therefore to locate san churros chocolate dip, a customer would be forced to first move to the menu icon, dessert and you are there. The homepage does not have the quick search icon and this makes locating the availability of any of its products quite tiresome. A second navigation feature which is the availability of appropriate tools such as the buy online or order would enable the firm get the income from impulse buyers and consumers who prefer that luxury of purchasing from home. It should therefore be very conspicuous on the menu page. San churros location of the buy option is quite hidden and would require a keen blogger to locate. This is why san churro is raked as poor behind its competitors. Mac Donald is on the lead for presenting the buy option with each food displayed. Sitemaps are very important directional tools for businesses looking towards increasing their customer base. A clear description of where to find the firm are a must have customer tools. The mere act of putting the map online without ease of access or visibility is pointless. Getting to san churros map would require the blogger to go to the about us icon, which would then indicate the various locations of san churro chain of café across the globe. It rate equally with Koko black but is beaten by McDonald which has a separate site map for its every café. To link to other site such as Facebook, twitter and urban spoon, would give the firm a boost in its advertising. This is because one update on the business would get a viral circulation and would in the end be viewed by more people. Linking to twitter and Facebook from san churros homepage is easy sine it has the social media tabs on its homepage, though not visible enough. Its competitors have better display of social media tabs which further makes navigation easy. Generally, as far as navigation and marketing are concerned, san churros performance is average with a total of 6.75 points. Interactivity This feature enables customers to interact and have that personal touch with their service providers. A customer has to sign up to become a member of the community and be able to chat. Once a member, one can post comments or raise issues for discussion with the other members as well as the management. San churros customer interaction on their page is rated as average. Based on our data matrix, and information gathered, member sign up procedure was an average. This is because of the multiple pages navigated to finally be a member. The form is however quite easy to fill in requiring just the basic information of name and e-mail and e-mail addresses. Its rating compared to its competitors is at 2.6 points. Product or service information The data displayed online used by the firm in its online marketing strategies should include the product and its features. With just one click, the customer should be able to see the delicacies and the ingredients that are in it, this way, the customer would be at ease purchasing a given product. For the fear of competition however, it’s advisable not to post a selling delicacy with all the ingredients and the procedure used to prepare it. San churro displays most if not all of its products online under the menu tab. The range of delicacy offered by the Australian café is all just a click away from the homepage. This is a good internet marketing strategy for the firm. However, the features in the range of products are quite hard to differentiate except for its free sacred blend coffee packaging that is distinctive from the others. This is why san churro is rated behind McDonald’s which has quite an impressive display of its products. The availability of san churros products is the expected and normal routine for every business. Customers complaints, for example on the unavailability of the coffee ordered is a clear indication of a shortage of some delicacies. Most consumers are driven by pricing rather than quality. The price of the churros, for example is at $10, which is quite expensive for the locals. Another expensively priced item is its takeaways which are valued at $8 in their WA café. These prices are quite expensive compared to those of its competitors. Another efficient online marketing strategy is to ensure that the firm’s website is up to date. This will in turn indicate how frequent the firm interacts with its customers. San churros last update about its activities is as of yesterday, and so are the updates of its competitors except for star bucks. All the firms have an out of five rates of 4points while star bucks have a total of three points. Notifying the customers in advance on the reconstruction of any of the business navigation pages should not be ignored as it increases the awareness of the consumers and saves them the time of accessing the page. The unavailability of any page without prior notice would certainly irritate consumers and threaten the firm’s ability online. Though through our survey, there are instants of blank pages or pages that load forever, as in the case of McDonald’s and café brunette. Most of the cafes do not have the information on the restructuring of its pages. This is why san churro has a zero rating under this tag. In overall therefore, under the product information analysis, san churro is rated as very poor together with star bucks and Koko black. McDonalds has a poor approach too and would get a total of two points out of five. Security and privacy One good internet marketing strategy is the assurance given to its e-community members that there information or data provided during their sign-up process will not be used for any other purpose other than the online interaction and communication with the firm. This way, bloggers would be able to leave their details with honesty and confidence. This would also enable the customers to interact freely with the firm. On the completion of san churros membership sign up form, the terms and policy guidelines read that, “the information registered herein will not be used outside our e-community world and is securely kept,”. This assurance is good enough for the consumers and san churro scored quite well for this. The data collected by the firm is majorly used to help it survey the market. The firms use the comments and the suggestions left on their websites to plan their marketing and promotional tactics, by knowing, for example that their customers feel the pinch of overpricing, san churro was able to organize some other strategies such as the formation of the san churro student society, which was a promotion that was set to offer students free coffee. This in turn offset the negativity that their targeted customer group, i.e. majorly students, had on their prices. Therefore compared to its competitors, the security on personal data is great. From these surveys, accessing the data required from san churros online page is at a greater standing in relation to its competitors. Information about its sales and management, for instance, are easily available and can also link to the other sites such as linked, though with a few blank pages. Compared to san churro which just has a score of one, McDonald’s links to other sites such as Forbes, urban spoon, face book and many others is good. As regards to security cards details in san churros space, the purchaser is required to enter a specific code to be able to access these information . No one can therefore transact other than the e-community member. This same case applies to McDonald’s and is a sure way of gaining customer confidence to transact. Consumers have a lot of doubt when it comes to security issues regarding their most valuable personal information and money matters, thus providing them with a forum that can help ease this tension would be a great way to successful internet marketing. One such forum is the availability of the frequently asked questions section which gives other social media users the chance to review questions and know what would happen under different security related instances. The FAQs on san churros privacy and security page are outdated. There is no issue of any issue raised by the consumers going unanswered, however, the method used by the firm in giving solutions to their consumers is quite vague and hence the two point rating given. In overall, based on the data matrix, under its security category, san churro attained 1.6points and is ranked as the second best compared to its competitors. Firm information For every successful business, the consumers would always want to know where it started from. It is therefore vital for the business to update their customers by letting them know the origin such tasteful delicacies. Knowing the history of the firm would enable the consumers have a more personal touch with the business and its products. San churro reveals just enough information about its history compared to KOKO black and café brunet. McDonald’s however has the quite an elaboration of its history, i.e. one that would be both entertaining and relatable to. San churros page quite brings out the firms image, one would always relate san churro to the best churro in WA, and having one of those desserts displayed in the firms information would be a sure way to test this, from the survey of the firms online page, I would fast relate it to chocolate delicacies and churros, while McDonald’s firms information page brings out its confectionery brand as well as it chocolate delicacies. This is why McDonald is rated ahead of san churro. As regards the information on its financial performance, all the firms stand at zero. This is because other than the details of the 20% increase in san churros sales, there is no detailed information about its financial status. This is the same case with the competitors too. The firm’s management details should be made available to the customers. This way, they are assured of their competencies and handling of various customer problems. All four firms give enough managerial details and their contacts. A chance is even give to their customers to connect to the management via linked. San churros gives precise details of its offices and headquarter locations, this enables the customers with customer relations issues regarding its employees to have a direct link to the head office. This however, does not give san churro a competitive advantage over its competitors since they provide these details too. The firm also scores equally when it comes to information on their business hours and frequency of updating their information which are all averagely rated. The last point of difference is on the FAQ about the firm’s information. KOKO black and star bucks do not have this option which indicates their unwillingness to share or display certain company issues. Though san churros FAQ about the firms info are not current, the fact is that it at least gives it some thought. After this critical scrutiny of the above data matrix, I would conclude, still based on the data that san churros internet marketing communication puts the business at a disadvantaged edge compared to its competitors and unless necessary steps are taken, its costs of operating the virtual market would soon outdo its costs. References Belch, E., & Belch, M. A. (2004). Advertising and promotion: An integrated marketing communications perspective (6th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Chitty, W., Barker, N. & Shimp, T. (2011). Integrated marketing communications. (3rd Ed). South Melbourne: Cengage Learning. Dann, S., & Dann, S. (2004). Australian and New Zealand supplement to accompany advertising and promotion: An Integrated marketing communications perspective (2nd ed.). Sydney, Australia: McGraw-Hill. De Pelsmacker, P., Geuens, M., & Van den Bergh, J. (2005). Foundations of marketing communications: A European perspective (1st ed.). Essex, England: FT Prentice Hall. Fill, C. (2005). Marketing communications: Engagement, strategies and practices (4th ed.). Harlow: England, FT Prentice Hall. Hill, S., & Lederer, C. (2001). The infinite asset: Managing brands to build new value. Boston: HBS Publishing Corporation. O’Guinn, T. C., Allen, C. T., & Semenik R. J. (2006). Advertising & integrated brand promotion (4th ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson South-Western. Rossiter, J. R., & Bellman, S. (2005). Marketing communications. French Forest, Australia: Pearson Education. Read More