E-Marketing

Marketing Communications

Marketing Communications is the way that marketers communicate information about their product or service to their target audience. Marketing Communications, also called the Marketing Mix is usually described as the 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place and Promotion). David Pickton (2004) describes Marketing Communications as “all the promotional elements of the marketing mix which involve the communications between the organisation and its target audiences on all matters that affect marketing performance.”

Marketing communications is a management process through which an organisation enters into a dialog with its various audiences. To accomplish this, the organisation develops, presents and evaluates a series of messages to identified stakeholder groups. The objective of this process is to position the organisation or its service in the mind of the target audience. This seeks to encourage the target audience to perceive and experience that organisation and its services as solutions to their current and future dilemmas. (Fill, 1999)

Over the last 60 years the process of marketing has developed into a well defined discipline. In the 1950’s the launch of television developed mass marketing techniques. In the last decade organisations saw changes that caused a redefinition of the role and concept of marketing. Customer became more sophisticated and demanding, markets became global and payment and distribution channels became virtualised. (O’Connor, 1998)

In the case of a museum or heritage attraction such as PHD, marketing communications acts as a collection of marketing activities that they combine and put into action in order to produce the desired response from their target audience. Whilst talking about museum marketing Rebecca Leet (2006) explains that “what people want has a great deal to do with what they purchase - with their money, their time, their energy, or their attention. Whether you're selling a commercial product or a non-profit service, unless it meets the desires of people, most of them won't buy into it.” (www.museummarketingtips.com)

Fill (1999) continues to explain that marketing communications provide the means by which brands and organisations are presented to their target audience. In the case of PHD this interaction represents the exchange between PHD and each audience group and according to the quality and satisfaction of the exchange process, this interaction may or may not be repeated.

Non Profit Organisations

David Jobber (2004, Page 4) explains that the purpose of the business is to create and keep customers and the business has only two functions, marketing and innovation. The basic function of marketing is to attract and retain customers in order to make a profit. This description places marketing as a central role within an organisation to enable the organisation to gain success. PHD is a non profit organisation so the marketing strategy attempts to achieve other objectives and not making a profit. PHD has to produce an income to survive but their primary goal is not economic. For PHD their main objectives are to protect and maintain the historic artefacts on site, to provide education to local schools and visitors and to provide an exciting day out for visitors.

Marketing within a non profit organisation is essential to generate funds. Many non profit organizations rely on sponsorship and membership fees to make up donations which mean that marketing communications to those individuals and organisations is highly important.

Non profit marketing strategies often have a number of characteristics that can be different from profit orientated marketing organisations. PHD’s role is not just to meet the needs of their customers but to educate them about the site. PHD also has a very large target audience which includes loyal customers and members, individual visitors, trusts, companies and partners and beneficiaries. The needs of all of these separate audience groups must be met which complicates the marketing task. Non profit organisations have to be skilled at event marketing. (Jobber, 2004, Page 828) Events can be organised to raise funds or awareness of the brand.

E-Business

Communication is the way of getting this message to the target audience, with the introduction of technology new ways of communicating have developed. One method is Internet marketing; this is the application of the internet and related digital technologies to achieve marketing objectives. (Chaffey, 2000) This can be used as a very powerful communication method; it combines many types of communication and has huge marketing potential. It is low cost, very fast and can help museums reach a global audience. According to a recent survey by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, 11.5% of businesses are allocating more than 15% of their total budgets to online marketing. (Marketing Week, 2007). The UK’s most popular tourist attraction, The British Airways London Eye, communicates via their comprehensive website and has done since it opened in March 2000. The website allows visitors to find information on the site, buy tickets online and sign up to an email newsletter which they use as a type of flyer as part of their e-marketing campaign, by the end of 2003 90,000 visitors had signed up for this service. (www.creativematch.co.uk). More and more organisations are transferring to become e-businesses in order to cut costs and reach a larger audience.

Strauss (2006) describes an e-business as a continuous optimisation of firm’s business activities through digital technology. This digital technology could be things such as computers or the internet which allow the storage and transmission of data in digital formats. E-business also included e-marketing to attract and retain the right customers. It allows businesses processes to all be held in one place, these processes could include product buying, selling, communication or research. Most organisations now have a website and more and more are using this medium for e-commerce, buying and selling online. We can clearly see that the process of e-marketing is only one part of an organisations e-business activity.

E-Marketing

Strauss (2006) defines e-marketing as the use of information technology in the process of creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers, and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organisation and its stakeholders. More simply defined, e-marketing is the result of information technology applied to traditional