Digital Marketing Plan Recommendation For IKEA

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Table of Contents

TOC o “1-3” h z u 1.Introduction PAGEREF _Toc41947930 h 32.Situational Analysis PAGEREF _Toc41947931 h 32.1.SWOT Analysis PAGEREF _Toc41947932 h 32.1.1.Strengths PAGEREF _Toc41947933 h 42.1.2.Weaknesses PAGEREF _Toc41947934 h 42.1.3.Opportunities PAGEREF _Toc41947935 h 42.1.4.Threats PAGEREF _Toc41947936 h 43.Target Audience Identification PAGEREF _Toc41947937 h 54.SEO Digital Marketing Strategy PAGEREF _Toc41947938 h 64.1.Content PAGEREF _Toc41947939 h 64.2.Tactics PAGEREF _Toc41947940 h 74.3.Channels And Tools PAGEREF _Toc41947941 h 84.4.Content Marketing Schedule PAGEREF _Toc41947942 h 94.5.Cost and Time Estimation PAGEREF _Toc41947943 h 94.6.Measuring Results And KPI’s PAGEREF _Toc41947944 h 105.Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc41947945 h 106.References PAGEREF _Toc41947946 h 11

Digital Marketing Plan Recommendation For IKEA

IntroductionIKEA is a Swedish organization that was founded in 1943, 433 stores are operating in 52 countries, becoming the top furniture dealer in the globe. The name IKEA is generated from the initials of founder Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd, the farm on which he was raised and Agunnaeyd, the neighboring village. The company’s website contains over 12,000 products comprising of household accessories, ready-to-use furniture, kitchen devices and other accessories. Besides, IKEA has café and hotels that offers typical Swedish cusines and also sell Swedish groceries. The vision of IKEA is “to create a better everyday life for many people” (IKEA, 2020), and expects to serve different customers around the world with various accessories and products that meet the customers’ needs. The business objective of IKEA illuminates how the company realizes the vision, IKEA applies five dimensions: function, low price, quality, form and sustainability (IKEA, 2020). The company provide functional, useful and well- developed home furnishing products at a relatively cheap price. Also, with the eco-friendly concern rising rapidly, IKEA implements sustainability on its stores, communications, suppliers and products range. It inspires the organization to approach its green goals and keep the positive effect on the environment. The objective of IKEA is to become the most sustainable choice for kiwi furniture buyers. It should therefore use an effective approach of developing an SEO strategy using a website that is responsive and able to adapt to different devices used by the target audience.

Situational AnalysisSituation analysis implies the analysis of the orgamization’s position in terms of the opportunities and challenges faced by the company. It entails the application of SWOT analysis which evaluates the position of the company in terms of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. SWOT analysis enables the marketer to strategically position the company in the industry by identifying the strengths and hence the areas which require improvement.

SWOT AnalysisThe SWOT analysis is a useful technique that can help the company to do better strategic planning, minimize the negative impacts and evaluate the greatest advantages to achieve the business objectives that includes Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (IKEA, 2018). Strengths and weaknesses may relate to financing, organization, or marketing aspects, opportunities and threats may refer to the environment, technological advance, economic or social change.

Strengths

IKEA is a strong international brand that offers the same quality in the world with an extensive range of well established, functional and useful commodities. Moreover, IKEA stands for ” democratic design” which means they try their best to reach the balance in a proper design, quality, functions and price, that aim to attract as much as customers. IKEA has increased the utilization of renewable resources from 71% in 2007 to 75% in 2009, this is a response for sustainability and the company plans to achieve a climate positive by 2030. On the other hand, in the supplier’s aspects, IKEA wants to create permanent relationships with the suppliers to reach volume commitments. The method is to order a large number of volumes from the suppliers for years and negotiate for the lower prices, also the supplier can get the guaranteed order, this is a win-win situation. 

WeaknessesThis helps companies to figure out what should be improved and also play an important role in objective planning or develop a new strategy. The scale and size of IKEA’s international business may be the weakness. It is hard to manage quality and standard, some of the factories do not follow the legislation to maintain the working condition. The IWAY code is support by the instructors who visit the factory to ensure the supplier and the products have reached the standard.

OpportunitiesIKEA provides effective strategies that allows consumers to lead sustainable lives at home, they develop recyclable and reusing products continuously. IKEA also aims to reduce the carbon footprint that includes reducing packaging and using more renewable energy. They believe that the business focus on the environmental issues would have positive return even in a price-sensitive market, the huge targets are no products that end up in landfill and the recycling products can be developed as new IKEA products (IKEA, 2019). The awareness of the environmental issue is rising, so the demand for green products would be increased.

Threats company can against the threat by using their strategy to overcome it or create new ideas. In IKEA’s case, the threat could be the pressures from the market. Many competitors are joining this cheap home furnishing market. IKEA is required to strengthen its distinct brand image and the products’ quality. Furthermore, economic factors may change customers’ spending habits due to the reduction of disposable income.

Target Audience IdentificationThe target audience is identified through market segmentation, which is the process of classifying the potential clients into different groups in terms their preference and characteristics. (Keane, 2019). Audience identification involves choosing or identified specific groups as a result of segmentation for the brand. IKEA has a very broad target market and market segmentation due to their products are a variety that they target the middle class of consumers worldwide. Included university students, young married couples and middle-class income families…etc. New Zealand is going to be the new launching destination with different characteristics and preference which IKEA needs to segment and consider (IKEA, 2018). IKEA employs behavior segmentation to identify the consumers when they going to launch their brand to New Zealand as consumers in different countries have different characteristics. For example, people in New Zealand are more outdoor and like to use the products which are greener and nature and that is one of the segmentation that base on consumers in New Zealand’s behaviour to make the decisions on what kind of products and marketing way to satisfy the consumers in New Zealand. The other segmentation that IKEA use is demographic segmentation that bases on age, gender, income…etc. As we mentioned before, IKEA target the middle-class consumers as one of their main target market which they use demographic segmentation in New Zealand base on consumers’ income. Another target market for IKEA will be people who love unique and design features as there are variable products that IKEA have and are produce and design by their design team. For example, some consumers in New Zealand already heard about IKEA and are fans with IKEA’s products or like the design of the IKEA products will be another target market that IKEA will conduct. 

IKEA also uses the audience’s digital lifestyles to identify potential customers. The company is probably one of the worldwide brands which sell furniture and its catalogues are full of striking visuals that attract almost 2.8 billion people via social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, twitter, among others (Clifford, 2019). According to research, Seventy-five per cent of smartphone owners use social media seven days a week, and 60 per cent use their phones to take photos and videos, more than listening to music, playing games or watching movies (NewZealand, 2015). For example, Ikea transmits the latest product information through Facebook. Attracting fans to the official websites, so that they can further understand the product information. Hence, Ikea uses Instagram to interact with its followers, and through photos or videos. It immerses products into people’s lives. Ikea will also share how customers create their unique lifestyle with their products, and both sides will exchange positive feedback. Pinterest is like the brand museum of Ikea, which is used to record history and products. It also conveys the brand value, concept, and unique style of Ikea. Apart from traditional social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram. They began to focus on AR technology. Through this platforms, it enables the users to preview the information of furniture goods on the website, and also directly keep the furniture in the true surroundings by adopting AR technique.  Besides, there are interior design competitions IKEA corporate with third parties such as UGC (user-generated content). Users can participate in the competition to share their decoration, interior design by posting on social media platform i.e. Instagram. The winner’s prize is the furniture on which they post the image.

SEO Digital Marketing StrategyThe Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is a digital marketing strategy which is employed to enable the internet users to efficiently find the information they require, through the use of search engines instead of using random websites. Search engines aim at providing the best internet services for users and also helps marketing companies to reach the target customers in a convenient way (Patrutiu-Baltes, 2016). It implies providing the results on the pages of the search engine that are not just high quality but is also specific to what the internet user is looking for. The search engine achieves this by crawling various websites to understand what the site entails. Therefore, it helps the engines to provide more precise results to internet users who are looking for a particular topic or keywords. Additionally, the search engines will scan different websites to evaluate the efficiency of internet crawling and reading as well as rewarding effective sites with high rankings on the search engine results page. SEO is a digital strategy that enables organizations to ensure that their website have a high ranking in the search engines by utilizing specific keywords and terms.

Content

Google employs “robots” in an attempt to interpret the website and therefore it is essential to develop informative content for the website. The content that should be posted on the website for IKEA should provide a brief and precise description of the home accessories and restaurant services that the company deals with. It is referred to as functional content and it is an essential requirement in content marketing (Heinze et al., 2020). The company should develop and unique type of content that is engaging to acquire the attention of the target audience whenever they are roaming online. The content should be relevant and it must provide information about the brand. The content should use the relevant keywords and the content created should be outstanding. It is also essential to produce content frequently. Despite the fact that online content cannot disappear without deleting, Google encourages the use of fresh content and hence making sure a frequent production of content is significant (Mandal & Joshi, 2017). Besides, IKEA should post the content on its website. The engaging content produced should be live on the official website so that Google will be able to identify the origin and also to encourage other websites to connect back to IKEA’s website. Since the IKEA has established marketing pages in social media channels like, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, it should consider the production of unique content for SEO to boost its performance. IKEA should also consider developing its content on YouTube as is an important tool for digital marketing.

TacticsOne of the tactics that this SEO strategy will employ is the use of voice search whose application in digital marketing is expected to increase in the coming years. Most people are beginning to realize the convenience associated with the use of voice-assisted machines rather than the cumbersome process of typing queries. IKEA should apply this tactic because of the expected increase in the number of voice users. Besides, voice users have unique habits as compared to text users and the machines they use to obtain data from SERPs to repeat the voice message from the featured snippet box as the response (Adams, 2014). The second tactic is the incorporation of video with YouTube SEO. It is an important tactic as YouTube video are classified as the top 10 of the Google search as compared to any other type of video. According to research, YouTube is the second most famous search engine with searches exceeding 3 billion in a month. IKEA should develop engaging videos and invest enough time into optimizing every video for YouTube SEO. YouTube videos have the capacity of increasing the audience on the company’s platform due to an increase in the number of individuals who can identify with the company. The third tactic is the establishment of different backlinks which are important aspects of the SEO strategy. Backlinks are provided by Google and they are essential in evaluating the search rank since, without these links, it becomes a challenge to rank the search engine. However, it is necessary to establish the difference between high quality and low-quality links (Lara, 2014). Low-quality links are easily spammed with paid links, blog comments among others and can easily destroy the website. Links that are acquired through high-quality content, influencer marketing and outreach are safer and highly effective in boosting the impacts of SEO marketing.

Channels And ToolsSeveral channels can be incorporated into SEO strategy. The first channel is writing articles for blog comments and posting on the company’s social media pages. The information should be relevant and precise to increase the efficiency of the search engines. The channel is the best as IKEA already has pages in social media platforms (Clarke & Clarke, 2014). The second channel is the pay per click (PPC) which enhances the company name recognition and significance, particularly when used alongside organic search results (Key, 2017). It is an important channel as it works best for SEO strategy and improves recognition by the search engine. The third channel is youtube, which allows the company to post engaging videos that are crucial in enhancing the visibility of the organisation in the search engine. It is important to note that quality YouTube videos make people view the advert for more than three seconds, and the channel can identify the length of time that people spend on the videos and hence ranking them accordingly. One of the tools to use in ensuring that the tactics work is the Google Search Console which helps in optimizing the search results on the applied channel (Erdemir, 2015). A Google Analytics property owner achieves automatic verification on the company’s site where the Search Console gives information that is crucial to the performance of the Google Search. It is the best tool since it is free and helps the user to understand how the site is working, which includes sustaining and optimizing the prevailing rankings; and monitoring traffic. It can also recognize the type of machine that a visitor to the site is using.

The second tool is the Ubersuggest, which is a keyword technique which identifies the keywords that a potential client is likely to type in the search engine. Keywords that are hidden in the mind of an ideal customer are the most important in content marketing. UberSuggest is a keyword identification tool that provides a suggestion for possible keywords and long-tail terms that an internet user is looking for, based on the previous searches. It also rates the volume, difficulty and trends of the keywords (Kaufman & Horton, 2014).  The third tool is SEMRush which is a tool that houses all other tools including pay-per-click, social media, competitive analysis and keyword search. However, with all these robust abilities, it requires a payment for its subscription. It enables the user to pull information about domains and keywords and apply the information to conduct research on the online operations of the competitors for the purpose of enhancing the company’s campaigns (Baltes, 2015). In order to realize success in the use of SEMRush, it is essential to employ the tool to transfer a list of the opportunities to optimize the existing websites. The tool is the best since it is an all-in-one digital tool and it is also a form of the competitor analysis tool.

Content Marketing ScheduleThe content marketing schedule is a weekly schedule that entails the execution of SEO tactics for maximum efficiency and timely accomplishment of SEO goals (Kannan, 2017). Once the company has implemented a tactic within a particular week of the month, then the relevant box is ticked to show that the tactic was implemented.

Important Dates

Blog post YouTube Videos Voice-assisted Devices

Week 1 of June 2020 Week 2 of June 2020 Week 3 of June 2020 Week 4 of June 2020 Cost and Time EstimationThe estimated cost required to run an SEO strategy is about $500 in a month, especially if the company decides to hire a top-level SEO company to launch and operate the project. For a regional or international SEO implementation campaign, a range of $ 2,500 to $5,000 per month is required (Kingsnorth, 2019). For a well-established and international company like IKEA, such a budget is considered to be within its means of implementing an effective digital marketing plan. However, it is good to consider that some firms provide a testing package at a lower cost, without entering into a contract and hence allows the prospective customers to try their service. It, therefore, minimizes the chances of risks. The estimated time taken to implement SEO marketing strategy is one month, considering the technical complexities associated with internet services. However, this timeline can be minimize by choosing a dedicated and experience team to implement the strategy.

Measuring Results And KPI’sMeasuring results and KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) is achieved by use of varors strategies. The first strategy is analyzing the total number of visits to the website in terms of increase in unique visitors, views on the page and frequency of visitors to the site (Saura, Palos-Sánchez & Cerdá Suárez, 2017). It makes the company to recognize how the search engine is performing in terms of company recognition. The second strategy is by establishing the quality of the bounce rate, pages viewed by visit and length of time spent on the site. It determines the internet users’ interest to interact with the site. The third strategy keyword ranking whereby the company’s specific keywords are located in established search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The higher ranking of the company’s website implies a high number of keywords that are frequently searched. The fourth strategy is the conversions strategy which imply activities that internet users do when they land on the website. It determines the level of contact with a potential client and therefore conversions can be converted into sales. The fifth strategy is the page load time. If the load time is long, it makes the potential client visiting the website to return to the search results page. A website that takes long to load frustrates internet users and reduces their interaction with the site.

ConclusionThe most surprising thing about organizations and digital marketing is that it is usually overlooked and not adopted simply because of its complexity and poor organizational structure. To make sure that the SEO strategy is fully adopted it requires buy-in and ownership right from the top management to the bottom. Once the organizational directors have acquired the level of understanding of the SEO strategy offers, then there is a likelihood of other departments replicating the same. Digital marketing strategies are an improvement from the conventional marketing techniques and IKEA’s shift to digital marketing implies profound market opportunities for improved performance. The discussed digital marketing strategy is considered effective since it has proved to be successful for companies that have utilized the strategy. The SEO strategy should be employed alongside the tactics, channels and tools to maximum results. IKEA should develop invest enough time and resources in the SEO strategy. The most effective approach of developing an SEO strategy is using a website that is responsive and therefore is able to adapt to different devices used by the target audience.

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