Digital Marketing Plan To Increase Sales Margin For Zara
- December 28, 2023/ Uncategorized
Situational Analysis of Digital Marketing Trends and Challenges for Zara
Over the past few years, Digital marketing has been a recent phenomenon in terms of marketing (Ryan, 2016). Thus the paper begins by conducting a situational analysis through which the digital marketing trends will be discussed in addition with the issues and challenges faced by the organization in terms of digital marketing. The situational analysis is done with a reference of SWOT analysis from the perspective of marketing. Meanwhile, the paper clearly states the objectives of the digital marketing plan while identifying the target audience for that. While discussing the target market, the study also mentions branding and positioning of the brand. The report gives suggestive measures in terms of target audience. At the same time the study also gives separate suggestive measures along with the digital marketing plan which includes different aspects like media strategies, search engine optimization suggestion and so on. The report concludes with the suggestive measure to monitor the process of digital marketing.
The Spanish fashion brand Zara is one of the leading brands in the fashion industry. Offering its services across the globe the company has its outlets in every metro city all over the world. Founded in the year of 1975, the company is the main brand of Inditex group. Since 1988, the company has started expanding its business over different parts of the world. Beside of retail outlets, the company also has taken initiative of making its products available over online in the year of 2010 (Zara – inditex.com., 2018). Initially the online website of the company was available only in the countries of Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany, France and Italy. Later on in the same year, it expanded the services over other major countries as well. The company has been named among the 30 fashion best brands across the globe. Offering both men’s, women’s and children’s clothing, Zara launches more than 12000 new designs every year (Zara – inditex.com., 2018). However, the company follows a unique strategy by opening new retail outlets instead of investing in advertisements.
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Strengths · Good reputation in the industry for quality, style and product availability. · Strong financial position of the company makes it able to invest in an adequate manner. · The company manufactures its own products and saves the cost of outsource manufacturing. · Strong delivery network of the company makes it business process smooth. · Through web portal the company reaches out to maximum customer base (Hammoudeh, 2014). |
Weakness · High price of the products is the major weakness of the company for which a very significant portion of customers can purchase its products. · The company does not compromise with the quality of the product for the sake increasing product sale. · The market share of the company is extremely low since the company do not do not market their products. · In case of marketing strategy is applied time and proper management will be required (Hammoudeh, 2014). |
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Opportunities · The company can extend its business in the Asian markets in a more extensive manner. · Innovations keeping the market trend in mind can be incorporated in order to attract wide range of customer base. · Adoption of technology in production can help the company in reducing the cost so that more customer base can be achieved. · More focus on customer service will make the brand more trustworthy. · Most importantly the company needs to invest on promotional strategies in order to increase its product sale (Hammoudeh, 2014). |
Threat · Threat of similar brands in the industry with low price strategy is likely to be high. · Low purchase power of the customer can impose immense threat on the company in the near future. · Non-availability of the raw materials seems to be major threat due high number of buyers. · Supplier’s can easily shift to other similar brands if they find more cost effective deals (Hammoudeh, 2014). |
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As observed there is a huge demand of online purchase. Customers nowadays prefer purchasing over online portals to get rid of the physical hassle of buying products from retail stores (Cortez et al., 2014). It has been observed that most of the companies focus more on digital marketing in order to reach maximum customer base. In order to do so, organizations use social media marketing sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and etc. Several ways are adopted in the marketing strategy over digital media (Okonkwo, 2016). For example, using engaging contents posts are shared over online portals in order to assure that customers are persuaded to buy the products that are being offered by the companies. In adiition, different photos, videos etc are posted to drive the customers to purchase products. Moreover, the companies use the digital marketing way in order to easily attract the target customer. Since these above mentioned social media sites allows the customers to give feedbacks and communicate directly with the company, the digital marketing especially over social media sites is considered extremely beneficial (Lea-Greenwood, 2013).
Strengths and Weaknesses of Zara
Thus in this regard, it needs to be mentioned that the global brand Zara does not market its products and branding in spite of having the reputation of providing quality product. The company rather invests in opening of new outlets. Thus it is observed as the issue since the rival companies like H&M, John Lewis and etc. use effective marketing strategy in order to promote its branding. As observed, the popular brands like H&M, John Lewis, and New Look etc focus more on digital media marketing with special use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (Hammoudeh, 2014). Therefore it is apt to state that the brand needs a digital marketing plan with special emphasis on the use of above mentioned social media platforms in order to increases competitiveness in the fashion industry (Khan & Siddiqui, 2013).
As per the identified current market trends and issues faced by the company, the primary aim of this digital plan would be increasing the company’s sales margin by 12% within the next 3 years (Hammoudeh, 2014). However, the secondary objectives of the digital marketing plan are:
- Maximizing the brand awareness using digital marketing strategy with specially focusing on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
- Achieving the target of 467000 likes against its Facebook page and 544000 likes on Instagram page of the company.
- Achieving the growth rate of the company to 6% to 8% within first year, 9% to 11% within second year and achieving 12% growth within third year with sustainability on the growth rate.
- Expanding more in the Asian markets in an integrating manner.
The existing customer base of the company is mainly the higher middle class to affluent class of the society. It has been obser
ved that in the middle class level customer base is little ignorant of the brand since the company do not use the marketing strategy (Okonkwo, 2016). Thus with the digital marketing plan the company will aim to increase its brand awareness within the customer base of middle class. On the other hand, the fashion lovers of Asian countries are the major target area of the digital marketing plan (Yasmin, Tasneem & Fatema, 2015). The common factor of the target customer of the company would be the ‘internet-savvy’ people mainly the teenage group.
For the purpose of positioning, the digital marketing plan will aim to change the perception of the customers towards the brand. As the digital marketing plan will be targeting the middle class customer base, the company will be using the social media like Facebook and Instagram in order to promote the products at lower price range than it currently offers (Mohr, 2013).
When a high priced brand offers its products at lower price, customers normally perceive that the company compromises with the product quality. According to Nagle & Müller, (2017), in order to retain the brand image, additional offers and discounts by 15% -50% might be introduced so that customers do not have any misconception regarding low quality products.
Opportunities and Threats for Zara
The main purpose of the digital marketing plan will be focusing on the Asian customers in order increase the sales margin in the Asian countries (Kim, Fiore & Kim, 2013). Since most of the Asian countries are developing countries, the major customer base of these countries has low purchasing power (Nagle & Müller, 2017). Thus in order to create the brand awareness as well as to promote the products within the teenage people, social media marketing will be highly beneficial.
The digital marketing plan will promote the different ranges products ranging from men’s clothing to women’s clothing and the children’s clothing (Okonkwo, 2016). Since the aim of the digital marketing will be increasing the brand awareness in the Asian countries, emphasis will be more on Asian trend of fashion while designing the products.
The company presently follows a higher pricing strategy. However, the Asian market demands products at lower price than the present pricing range of the company. Hence, the digital marketing strategy will focus on promoting lower pricing strategy in order to assure a 12% increasement in the sales margin within 3 years (Nagle & Müller, 2017).
Zara has many retail stores in the Asian market, but the major focus of the digital marketing plan would be promoting the product sale over the online portal of the company (Cao, & Li, 2015). Thus in order to do this, the company needs to organize the entire marketing plan mentioning the schedule of the offer or discounts to be provided.
As per Kant Hvass, (2014), in order to develop the digital marketing plan, it deserves mention that emphasis will be given on the social media networking sites Facebook and Instagram. In addition, strategies will be developed for other mediums as well.
- Company websites, social media profiles owned channels and blog contents are referred by owned Medias (Jutkowitz, 2014). Thus in order to promote offers and discounts, engaging contents will be posted over the networking sites (Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014). Persuasive videos, photos and text contents will be developed and shared in order to attract the customers. As part of the social media marketing plan, the customers will be allowed to give direct feedback and communicate.
- Direct engagement can be build by publishing company newsletters through official company emails will be effective to draw the attention of the employees (De Mooij, 2013).
- Content marketing over blogs on company websites is another way which will be the part of digital marketing plan (Halvorsen et al., 2013).
- Search Engine Optimizing contents will be developed so that customers can easily by reading the content get attracted to the brand (Moran & Hunt, 2014).
Third party owned media is generally referred by earned media (Tuten & Solomon, 2017). Thus the marketers need to communicate with the customers to make satisfied so that they give positive referrals, testimonials either on social media platforms and maintain their loyalty towards the brand.
Meanwhile, the paid media like publishing contents over web portals, online channels or paid social media posts will be included in the digital marketing plan of the fashion brand Zara (Harrison, 2013).
However, along with the above mentioned strategies, the website of the company and the official shopping portal of the company will be designed in a way that visually attract the customers to buy the products. Several technical tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Sublime Text, GitHub, etc can used to design web portals in an innovative manner (Tuten & Solomon, 2017).
Target Audience, Branding, and Positioning for Zara
The entire digital marketing plan needs to be monitored in an effective manner and thus a special marketing team comprising the technological experts will be appointed. Weekly follow up and necessary actions accordingly will be taken by them in order to ensure successful implementation of digital marketing plan.
Conclusion
Thus to conclude, it is apt to state that digital marketing plan will be extremely beneficial for Zara since the company do not market its products. Digital marketing plan is considered as the cost effective, easy and fast growing marketing way of marketing. Thus the company using digital marketing plan will be able to reach out to maximum number of customers within minimum time.
References
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