The Importance of  ecommerce and Digital Marketing on the example of Lyca Mobile Inc.

Introduction

The access to internet is now evident everywhere in the modern world with a huge economic impact on the economies. Internet continues to contribute to the economic growth of a nation by raising living standards of its people. New research by McKinsey has demonstrated that internet is valuable for not only companies and individuals, but also provides considerable value to the national economies. It generates greater GDP in the sectors like energy, agriculture etc. Moreover, it is an essential element of economic growth in nations that embrace e-commerce and urge the usage of internet in all business transactions. Electronic business aims at improving the competitiveness of a firm by deploying innovative data and communications technology throughout a company (Kumar and Zahn, 2003).

It should be noted that e-business does not only comprises of the technology to start the business processes, but also demands the right process of transformation of the technology. According to Chaffey (2012), in order to succeed in running the businesses online, one requires a deep knowledge and insights of different processes of the business. It is the next big revolution in the field of technology for which all business organizations are willing to stake a claim. The uniqueness of this business enables customers to access web information through the wireless devices where ever they go with an emerging set of applications and services (Kumar and Zahn, 2003).

In this study, the researcher will initially describe the importance of  e-commerce and digital marketing to small entrepreneurial terms in general, and then talk of its importance specifically for the focused firm i.e. Lyca mobile Inc. The report will proceed with the means of digital marketing followed by the brand. The report will conclude with the suggestions and recommendations for the future strategies in this regard.

Importance of E-commerce and Digital Marketing

E-business and digital marketing strategies are being largely adopted by all online companies over the globe not only to boost up sales but also grasp the competitive advantage.  E-business has also become the significant job creator for youths and an important contributor to national GDP. Therefore the government must take measures to enhance penetration of internet to increase its effectiveness overall in the society (Atrostic BK, and Nguyen S, 2002).

E-business has proved beneficial for the various sectors like service and retail of the commerce industry.  Just like other sectors, users and customers of tele-communication sector can carry out services (online) such as booking of orders, hiring of carrier/courier services and paying of bills/dues etc. In addition, the e-marketers of the company consistently take steps for improvements in the user interface and implementation of the innovative web designs. Yet, there will be still a small chance that users may show reluctance to use these models of revenue genration (Coursaris and Hassanein, 2002).

Literature shows that contemporarily due to increased competition, it is difficult for organizations to sustain competitive advantage and increased profit margins. The companies operating online are paying special attention on rethinking of their e-business strategies. Digital marketing is also one of the important e-business strategies that need special attention as it has a dominant and a vital role in the drafting of future plans.  Therefore like other sectors, the telecommunication sector also seeks for innovative ways to measure and effectively utilize the market and intelligence information (McLeod and Schell, 2001).

The research signifies the importance by stating that the organizations which use effective ways of online marketing, they are likely to attract more and more opportunities by entering into the arena of innovation.  This not only helps strategists in deeply analyzing the problems and cases but also assist the top management in making wise decisions. Moreover, receiving accurate information in time may also minimize the probability of future problems and errors. Thus in this way, digital marketing becomes a strategic tool to obtain and use the required information (Hinshaw, 2004).

Digital Marketing involves the application of technologies like Web, databases, e-mail, mobile phones and digital TV for the marketing of the goods and services. The objectives of such a campaign include the supoort marketing activities. The intention of these strategies is to not only to attract but also retain the profitable customers (Oulton, 2001).

It is proved that effective usage of digital marketing opens paths for profitability by investing in research and development, and analyzing the potential opportunities and ever changing trends. Therefore the lyca mobile may also increase its profitability by taking similar initiatives.

Digital Marketing strategies of Lyca Mobile

Lyca Mobile is an example of successful Mobile Virtual Network operator venture founded in 2006 in Netherlands to address the communication problems of expatriate communities residing in Europe. This company is a web solution firm in the UK which has significantly invested in e-commerce, providing online markets to businesses. Managing one’s e-commerce business is not the only thing one needs to do. Companies must design their online stores to make it effective, attracting and designed well. Lyca Mobile is improving to become one of the best online markets for retailers and buyers. Many enterprise owners like the custom Lyca mobile etc. are flourishing leaps and bounds because of the appealing themes and unique templates of their online stores.

Custom template designs of the website give credibility of a firm and add the number of returning buyers due to its unique design. With such appealing online store layout, it easily manages to attract larger number of visitors. Organizing a product, listing well and then making it functional are the important starting points of running this website (Atrostic and Nguyen S, 2002).

Some of the additional features of the webportal includes the product upload and slide banners as special promotional efforts. For the same, the store designs and templates have become active sales tools for the businesses. This helps in the real marketing of its products by enabling customers to attain the right product at the right time in a right manner (Hempell, 2002).

Digital marketing using Social Crawlytics

Lyca mobile uses social crawlytics for analyzing the performance of the website. This web tool effectively tracks the social networks such as twitter, pin interest face book LinkedIn Google+ to present a detailed graphical analysis. This is called as sunburst tree map that displays a visual breakdown of how the search engines indexes the e-store website. Moreover it also entails the number of clicks that were only a page away from the website. The benefits of using social Crawly tics include that results and reports can easily be exported into friendly outputs such as pdf, excel, word which can also be downloaded as per need.   The company’s website also tracks the growth of sharing the posts using this tool (Criscuolo and Haskel, 2002).

Digital marketing using Quick Sprout

The digital marketing strategy of Lyca mobile also makes use of Quick Sprout which generates reports on the basis of domain address. These three types of reports include:

  1. Website Analyzer: it demonstrates the ranking of the website that how well it performs on SEO. It also measures the impact on social media, and back link counter.

  2. Social media analysis: this report gives a clear picture of the websites hold on the social networks like face book, pin interest twitter etc, identifying the market captured by the website.

  3. Competition analysis section: by reading this report the Lyca mobile can compare its e-commerce impact with the major players of the industry. However, it lacks in stating the competitor top shared posts (Barnes and Ralf, 2002).

Apart from above tools, the company’s performance is also accessed using the log-files. This evaluation of log-files is used to analyze intermediary web-sites from which visitors are referred. Log-files also explain the words typed in the search engines, when attempting to find product information.  Promotion is successful if traffic is created that satisfies objectives of volume and quality (Chaffey, 2014). The profitability of the channel can also be used to assess performance of a web-site (Centre for Economic Studies, 2002). Lyca mobile evaluates internet contribution targets to the profits.

Recommendations

The strategists must take thorough insight of the digital marketing tips to improve the web presence of the company online by getting novel ideas of marketing and sales. Keeping in view the current strategic position of the company, the strategists must get polished with the following top SEO tips for increasing your site’s appearance in the search results of new visitors.

  1. The company is advised to deeply analyze its web content using a combination of the digital marketing tools. This will help in the utilization of the maximum applications and then drafting accurate strategies in accordance with the results.

  2. The site must remain fully functional at all times so that the users can access it anytime and boost up the company’s performance with maximum visitors and conversions.

  3. The social marketing campaigns must be assessed on the regular basis and the marketers must try connecting with new influencers and social media platforms. This will let lyca mobile to connect with the right audience. 

  4. Another simple tip will be to include quality content on the official website/online portal of Lyca mobiles. This would not only prove beneficial for increasing traffic but also improve the ranking of the company. Therefore I advise the company’s management to put emphasis on the regular refreshing and updating of the site with most recent and quality content. The sites with old data normally don’t attract the viewers and create a bad image of the company.

  5. To ensure the exponential growth of the visitors of company’s website which are actually the potential customers, the marketers must create more and more internal and external linkages with social media. This will be helpful in attracting a pool of new visitors.

  6. Just like establishing relationships with different social networking sites Lyca Mobile can also increase traffic by a direct linkage with famous or web-reputed sites. This will benefit in a way that sharing the link with such websites will enormously increase the traffic of the company’s website as well.

  7. Avoid the use of flash and graphics as instead of increasing traffic, it creates hurdles between search engines and website Yes, this is one of the basic growth strategies to be remembered by all the web companies for optimum performance.

  8. For effective performance of the website of the company, along with novel URL unique IP address is also required as it may contribute twice to the worth of the company.

  9. Maximum search engine optimization is only possible when a quality and well reputed web host is selected for the establishment of the particular site. This is the obvious tip that web designers of Lyca mobile must not ignore to increase traffic for their links.

  10. Lyca Mobiles can gain competitive advantage with the combination of digital marketing tools and strategies like buzz-Somo and quick sprout into the e-business model. This will benefit in a way that Lyca mobile will be able to dig up data insights based on both websites address and influencers (Boulding et al, 2005).

Conclusion

It can be concluded that adopting innovative ways of digital marketing will help Lyca mobiles in improving the revenues of the company by attaining a strong customer base. It will also help in cutting the unnecessary costs (capital and operating) via more responsive and effective management. Keeping track record of customer wants and needs will help in achieving their customer loyalty that will prove to be a big booster for the profitability of the company. Therefore, Lyca mobile must emphasize on improving its marketing methods in order to sustain a competitive position in the market.

 

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