ECOM541 E-Commerce
Marketing Management
E-Commerce Course
Project
Purpose
The purpose of the Course Project is to
demonstrate mastery of Terminal Course Objectives by developing a Marketing
Plan for an E-commerce website.
The E-commerce website your select for the
Marketing Plan can be a real company or one you create for the purpose of the
assignment. This can be a business-to-consumer company, or a
business-to-business company. You may select any industry of personal interest,
as long as the primary business of the company is selling products or services
online.
For an existing company or for one you
create, make the assumption you have a budget sufficient to recommend whatever
marketing programs you deem appropriate to reaching your target audience.
Remember that a Marketing Plan is not a business plan. You do not need to
explain how to create a company or an E-commerce website. You do not to raise capital or make sales
projections. Instead, assume you have a functioning E-commerce site that
requires an annual Marketing Plan to sustain your existing business and to
expand for the future.
The
E-Commerce Marketing Plan
The main focus of this plan is to describe how
you will market your E-commerce business to prospects and to customers. While certain principles apply to all E-commerce
marketing, tailor your marketing plan to your unique target audience. For
example, you would use different online marketing techniques to reach college
students than you would to reach older adults preparing for retirement. Your
Marketing Plan should provide specific examples of how you can reach your
target audience, by describing techniques you can use to achieve these key
strategic objectives:
·
Reach and acquire new customers
·
Provide superior service to
existing customers
·
Encourage regular site visits
and additional sales
·
Measure the results of your
marketing programs
·
Brand your company
Explain how your company might use many of
these or other specific online marketing techniques in order to accomplish the
key objectives listed above:
·
Search Engine Optimization
·
Paid Keyword Search Marketing
·
Affiliate Marketing
·
Reciprocal Links
·
Email Marketing
·
Online Advertising
·
Social Networking
·
Blogs
·
Widgets
Proposed
E-Commerce Marketing Plan Outline:
While the contents of an E-commerce
Marketing Plan are unique to each company, here is the suggested outlinefor your Course Project. Your
outline might differ slightly depending on your chosen company but should cover
these key areas (The %’s by each one show the relative importance of each
section.):
1.
Executive Summary – a brief description of your eBusiness with a short
summary of your marketing niche and Unique Selling Proposition. (5 %)
2.
Market Summary/Target Audience(s)
– a description of the main market you serve and the details of the target
markets that you plan to reach (demographics, psychographics, lifestyles,
unique characteristics, trends, etc.) (20
%)
3.
Competition – a detailed summary of who your chief
competitors are, what type of web sites they maintain, and how your strategy
will position your company and its products/services against them. (20 %)
4.
Specific Marketing Strategies – the heart of your plan, showing how you
will use specific online marketing techniques (as noted above) to successfully
market your E-Commerce business. (30 %)
5.
Measuring Success – what are the specific criteria you will use
to measure the results and success of your E-Commerce Marketing plan – such as
clickthroughs on certain pages, online transactions, number of email addresses
captured each day, etc. (15 %)
6.
Summary – finally, your plan
should incorporate a wrap-up of your ideas by summarizing key thoughts, goals,
strategy and implementation. How you plan to meet timing objectives
should also be summarized at this time. Also, recommendations as to future
enhancements and additions can be part of this last section. (10 %)
