LEARNING FOR "E-BUSINESS MARKETING ISSUES"

In this piece of learning, we'll look at the necessary components involved in the creation of an e-Business Marketing Plan. We'll do this by:

What is the Context?

An e-Business might be thinking about an e-Business marketing plan if:

The scope of an e-Business marketing plan covers the marketing related activities, but the business might be involved in many other Internet projects - they may be covered by other aspects of the e-Business planning process.

It is likely that these activities will in some way be inter-related, or become so over time. The linkage between all of these Internet activities needs to be made in the e-Business's Internet strategy. The e-Business risks, by pursuing multiple unrelated projects, and by creating silos of data and business processes that cannot be leveraged across all of its activities. This must be avoided at all costs.

For many small e-Business ventures, which have a limited investment in the Internet, the e-Business marketing plan will effectively be their e-Business's Internet strategy.

What is an e-Business Marketing Plan?

The e-Business marketing plan tells us how we will use the Web to support and improve our marketing processes. It also clarifies where these answers come from, and covers marketing processes such as:

Not all marketing processes are included in all businesses.

Why do we need an e-Business Marketing Plan?

There are plenty of good reasons:

An e-Business marketing plan might differ from a traditional marketing plan in a number of ways:

Issues in e-Business Marketing Planning

There are some arguments to suggest that creating a separate e-Business marketing plan from the business' overall marketing plan is an unnecessary and potentially divisive action - using the Web should be a natural part of all marketing thinking.

It might be helpful within a traditional bricks-and-mortar business though, because it provides a single point of focus for the many new techniques and activities that they are often encountering for the first time. It must reflect the e-Business's overall strategy and in particular its marketing intentions.

A small e-Business is unlikely to have an elaborate hierarchy of plans and probably has a single business plan that incorporates all of the usual strategic elements.

The Ambitions of an e-Business 

The next consideration is to define the scope of ambition that the e-Business has for its use of the Web. It is essential that before the detailed planning takes place there is overall agreement within the e-Business about both the level of ambition and the mode of implementation. There is always a danger that expectations differ between different parts and levels of an e-Business. The factors that will influence "level of ambition" are the market conditions established by competitive actions, use of the Internet made by the e-Business' main audience, and the attitudes and vision of the company's senior management team.

To help understand ambition, we can use a matrix to measure how the e-Business sees the change in its business against the method by which the web capability will be delivered:

The lowest level of ambition is "wait and see" (i.e. do nothing). In increasing levels of ambition:

The lowest level of mode of implementing is "hands off" (i.e. get somebody else to worry about the Web for us). This is when an e-Business appoints an outside agency to take responsibility for deciding what and how the Web is to be used.

The following definitions represent, with increasing levels of involvement, the way the Web can be used within an e-Business:

This matrix is a good tool to use, because it allows you to seek a consensus on where the business is headed, and also to think about your competitors.