E-marketing makes reference to one of the many methods of advertising your business (i.e. selling of goods and services), specifically through digital forms of communication. This may include email newsletters, websites and online advertising through search engines and/or banner/link advertising. E-marketing is a growth area with online social networks such as Facebook demonstrating targeted advertisements based on user’s personal information. You also see these ‘personal recommendations’ on websites such as Amazon, where user targeted marketing techniques are heavily put into practice. E-marketing eliminates the downtime in spreading your message to the consumer who is increasingly short of time. This means the consumer must have buying decisions made as easy as possible for them. In addition to your normal marketing techniques, e-marketing should be an enhancing supplement to your regular marketing strategies with the aim of reaching a larger target area.
In considering the benefits of e-marketing and whether you think it will be of benefit to you, it is important to sit down and develop a plan.
Characterising the Consumer
To begin with, if we think about the varying demographics of our customers, we can come to some immediate conclusions that certain generations are most likely going to be influenced by varying marketing techniques. Therefore, by characterising your consumers and determining what drives sales of that area, you will be able to see which methods of marketing are likely to be most effective for your nursery. How many people don’t have an email address that they check regularly? Most do, and as such there is huge potential for e-mail newsletters to be a regular cost effective form of regular communication with a vast number of potential customers. So, ask yourself – Is there potential to tap into a growing market (such as the Generation X with their love for home grown produce or the young families who want to enjoy their ‘outdoor room’)?
Planning for Positive Growth and Return
Addition of e-marketing to your existing marketing plan/budget will enable you to effectively develop a holistic approach to advertising that has a positive return to your business. There are a number of steps in developing an e-marketing plan:
1 – Ensure you have the expertise on hand. Basic email knowledge is bare minimum, with other specialised requirements such as construction of a web page easily contracted out.
2 – Define your objectives and ultimate goals. Here you will be specifically targeting the audience which you have determined will bring most value in return. In doing so, specifically defining your set objectives and outcomes will help you lay out your plan of attack. Do you want to increase your footfall? Or are you aiming to improve exposure? Are you looking at developing a loyalty program of sorts? Is the primary goal dissemination of information, with the aim of increasing professional profile? All of these objectives will no doubt need to have an effect on the bottom line, but you do need to think about it strategically to get the most out of your e-marketing campaign. Sending a clear consistent message is important.
3 - Include the costs of e-marketing into a budget – This includes the skills required and potential ongoing contracting costs of maintenance.
Monitoring the Method
Having the ability to monitor your methods of e-marketing will give you the ability to critically assess the return on investment. Realistically, you are making sure that the electronic form of marketing is worthwhile – is it working to your advantage? If not, is there potential for it to work to your advantage?
There are numerous ways in which people monitor such systems. For example, with an e-newsletter you might include a redeemable coupon in each mailout. This is a very simple form of monitoring, but will give you accurate results by determining the amount of repeat custom you are receiving.
So ask yourself – What techniques can I implement to monitor the effectiveness of the method? And how can I use these findings to my advantage?
Practical Application
It is a good idea that retail nurseries in Victoria have at least:
1 A basic website
- This will be a point of reference with photos of your business offerings and contact details as bare minimum. A sign up to your e-newsletter would also be of benefit.
- Don’t put unnecessary information online, it should send a clear message and not be weighed down with too much text.
2 An email newsletter
- As above, develop a set of objectives.
- Be consistent – make sure the content is clear and the message you are sending across is simple. Most people will flick their eye over an email, so don’t bog it down with too much fanciful text.
- Understanding technical issues such as bandwidth and the range of issues involved in sending an email to multiple people is important at set up. For example, each email is a particular size, and with the addition of images to an email, you will quickly eat up bandwidth which your service provider might not support, or at the least increase your costs substantially.
Combined, these two e-marketing methods offer the online consumer an insight into your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - and also a point of contact.
The Next Step
1 – Most importantly, do your research.
2 – You may have seen that the NGIV and the Garden Gurus have partnered together and have begun to build an online Virtual Tour database of independent retail garden centres. The idea behind this is to promote independent retailers by offering consumers an online experience.
In joining the programme, you will have your business’ virtual tour made available to you. Imagine a virtual tour (video) of your garden centre on the front page of your website. This would be an unrivalled experience for the consumer and the first step to opening your doors to their custom.
To view the Virtual Garden Centre Tours, logon to www.ngiv.com.au and click on the banner on the front page. For further information, contact Glenn Thomson (e - glenn@thegardengurus.com, m – 0438 584 816).
Resources:
There are many excellent resources online, but one of the best which I came across was this online tutorial by the Small Business Development Corporation
http://www.e-com.sbdc.com.au/e-marketing/one/index.htm
The second is a Training Module produced by Multimedia Victoria (Victorian Government)
http://www.mmv.vic.gov.au/Assets/220/1/eMarketing.pdf
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