Moonpig digital marketing strategy

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Moonpig digital marketing strategy

Introduction

Moonpig is an internet-based business that focuses on creating and retailing gifts and cards purposefully to celebrate heartfelt life moments (Moonpig, 2021). The company’s head offices are located in London and Guernsey. The company focuses on selling personalized gifts, greeting cards, and flowers. Moonpig aims at satisfying heartfelt life moments market gap that incorporates birthdays, new arrivals, and surprise engagement. Moonpig comprises the Moonpig brand operating in the United Kingdom and the United States and Greetz brand that operates in the Netherlands. Moonpig’s mission is to help in connecting people and creating memorable moments. The organization’s vision is to become the only place where customers find an outstanding way of making every occasion and moment special. The company’s primary aim is to achieve its strategy of becoming synonymous with gifts and be the preferred gifts needs destination in the retrospective market (Moonpig, 2021). For Moonpig to realize its mission, vision, and overall strategy, it needs to venture into an appropriate digital marketing strategy that integrates technology to data science and artificial intelligence, necessary for continuous awareness improvement. According to Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2019), a digital marketing strategy aims to enhance continuous awareness by providing, monitoring, directing, and helping sellers achieve their sales volume increase objective. Therefore, this paper seeks to coin Moonpig’s digital marketing strategy by analyzing its external environment and the buyer personas.

External analysis

The external analysis involves analyzing environmental activities that a business considers vital in shaping its industry dominance and overall operations. The external analysis aims to identify the industrial threats and opportunities that influence growth, volatility, and profitability (Bolland, 2017). The external analysis incorporates both macro-and micro-environment analysis.

Microenvironment analysis

Michael Porter presents the five forces model as a tool for analyzing a firm’s external microenvironment. In analyzing the environment, the model focuses on five vital areas: new entrants’ threats, buyers’ bargaining power, bargaining power of suppliers, competitive rivalry, and substitute threats (Bright et al., 2019).

New entrants’ threat

Since Moonpig business mainly operates on the internet, new entrants’ threat is high. The new market entrants do not require huge investments to access the internet; the internet switching cost is low as any person can market any product at any time irrespective of their location. Internet markets require moderate fixed costs as it does not compel the business to have a physical location; however, the stock should be available as a business can take place anytime. However, existing brands tend to shape internet business, as their brand image would attract more customers.

Suppliers bargaining power

Since Moonpig relies on various suppliers to source raw materials, buy items from other retailers, and rebrand, the suppliers’ power is low in the industry. The variety of suppliers of raw materials and items indicate that the industry has numerous suppliers reducing their bargaining power. Moreover, the organization has a higher switching cost compared to the suppliers. However, the suppliers tend to have power since the firm depends on them for business continuity.

Buyers bargaining power

Buyers’ bargaining power entails the amount of pressure customers can put on the Moonpig business. In the internet business that Moonpig operates, customers tend to be price-sensitive as they can easily switch to competitors’ products. Moonpig operates on gifts and cards that the buyers can easily substitute. The organization experiences a small number of buyers as it targets specific occasions. Therefore, buyers in this industry have higher bargaining power.

Threats of substitute

The online retail industry that Moonpig operates in has a low switching cost making the substitute threat high. The gifting niche that Moonpig explores has several substitutes such as vacation and other retail gift cards sold in retail shops and supermarkets. Buyers in the industry can easily switch from one product to another, depending on the substitute pricing level.

Competitive rivalry

Moonpig experiences competition from other online retailers like Archies online.com, Funkypigeon, Touch note, and Snapdeal (Owler, 2021). Therefore, the competitive rivalry is high in the gift card online retail industry.

Macroenvironment analysis

Macroenvironment analysis focuses on identifying opportunities and threats that affect the industry and are outside the industry’s control. Bright et al. (2019) elaborates that an organization’s macroenvironment contains elements that affect the firms’ operations but are beyond its control. In analyzing the macroenvironment, Bright et al. (2019) acknowledge the comprehensive nature of PESTLE in scanning an industry environment. Pestle analysis focuses on political factors, economic factors, sociocultural factors, technological factors, legal factors, and environmental factors. A PESTLE analysis is a strategic business method that companies use to discover, evaluate, organize, and detect macro-economic factors that can affect the business in the future (Rastogi & Trivedi, 2016).

Political factors

Political factors are the opportunities and pressures from political bodies and the degree of public regulation’s impact on the business. The political factors include tariffs, taxation, environmental regulation, and labor regulations. The e-commerce industries, especially online retailers like Moonpig, face both political and regulatory challenges (Pratap, 2018). Some of the regulatory challenges affecting Moonping include European Union technology regulation, a threat to e-commerce growth. Another factor is digital product taxation since the organization in different countries with different taxation policies. Covid-19 compliance regulation government requirements also impact how Moonpig business operates.

Economic factors

Economic factors entail the economic policies, structures, and trends that affect the organization’s performance. The main economic factor that affects the e-commerce industry economic fluctuation brought about by the economic crisis (Pratap, 2018). Moonpig business economic capacity is currently affected by the Covid-19 pandemic that has brought about economic recession as potential customers become jobless. Supply and distribution mismatch that results in to increase in price also affects Moonpig’s operations.

Sociocultural factors

The sociocultural factors target potential customers’ social and cultural practices that affect their purchasing decision. Understanding the sociocultural environment involves acknowledging the customers’ beliefs, standards and customs, internet usage habits, and the level of internet access. Moonpig allows its customers to customize the product according to their preferences; therefore, the sociocultural environment presents an opportunity for the organization to upscale into new markets.

Technological factors

Since a high level of technology characterizes the e-commerce industry, technological factors are the e-commerce industry’s foundation. Since Moonpig is an online retailer, the technological factors present an opportunity to escalate its market dominance. Currently, with a working website, the organization can reach most potential customers all over the world. Moreover, the organization’s level of technology equips the organization to diversify into various technological platforms like social media.

Legal factors

External environment legal factors revolve around laws and their compliance level. Data protection legal requirements, copyright infringement issues, product placement, and promotional content legal factors often characterize digital marketing. Some of the legal factors that affect e-commerce include compliance to trade regulating bodies like the Federal Trade Commission. The main legal factor affecting Moonpig operations is laws compliance since it operates in different countries with various trade regulations.

Environmental factors

In the digital industry, environmental factors have minimal impact on the organization’s operations. The only direct relation of the environment to e-commerce is packaging elements. Digital industry players should focus on using environmentally friendly packaging materials. Moonpig’s packaging and wrapping materials are recyclable, biodegradable cards; thus, the organization is mindful of environmental sustainability.

Buyer personas

The buyer persona embodies a business’ ideal and comprehensive description of their target audience, with the necessary, desirable characteristics ideal for the company to effectively achieve its strategies and goals (Cruz & Karatzas, 2017). The buyer persona explores the ideal conditions based on their client’s name, demographic, interests, and behaviors to provide convenient features that make the client perfect for the company. Buyer persona spring is useful in integrating the organization’s buyer persona to the business objective. Therefore, buyer persona spring focuses on five key elements; business objectives, buyer persona, content, channel, and data.

Business objective

The overall business objective of Moonpig is to be the market leader in the gift card e-commerce industry, increasing its market share in gifts and become the only choice in celebrating significant occasions and events.

Buyer persona

Moonpig target customers all over the world with specific occasions that require gift cards. Therefore, this organization’s ideal customer is an individual irrespective of gender and age with ambitions of celebrating special occasions and events like birthdays, Christmas, graduations, and valentines. Content, channels, and data elements of buyer persona spring are applicable in coining an ideal customer for Moonpig products.

Channel

Understanding the channel that most customers use to reach the organization is vital in developing the buyer persona (Heinze, 2021). Moonpig has operational social media accounts and websites where most of their customers learn about the organization. Moreover, some customers emerge from a referrals by friends, relatives, and parents. The social media platform access has a varying degree of customer access. The Facebook page attracts the highest number of customers with a follower base of 170,665 people, unlike Twitter, with a follower base of 44,400 people. The follower base shows that most customers prefer Facebook to Twitter. Moreover, some potential customers reach out to the organization through emails.

Content

The content aspect of buyer persona spring focuses on identifying specific information that helps reach out to the customers. Through the content aspect, the organization can acknowledge the customer objectives and the problems they encounter to satisfy their objectives (Heinze, 2021). According to the reviews on social media platforms and the website, the Moonpig ideal customer tries to satisfy events-wishing objectives in purchasing Moonpig products. However, the customers express dissatisfaction with longer waiting time and damaged deliveries.

Data

The data aspect of buyer persona spring focuses on measurable customer wants and service deliveries (Heinze, 2021). Collecting data on the order and purchase level of the organization’s product is vital in identifying customer preferences. The ideal customer would have specific preferences from the organization thus would always favor the company brand in product decision making.

Buyer persona 1

The first buyer persona’s characteristics include a female individual at the age of 26 years old, working as a photographer, married and with one child, living in Coventry, United Kingdom, and is fun-loving. The persona’s personalities include introvert, extrovert, thinking, feeling, judging, perceiving, sensing, and intuition. The persona’s goals include having a gift that provides a warm emotion and improves the recipient’s mood, and proves the best and thoughtful manner to appreciate loved ones. The frustrations that the persona encounters include the gifts’ high prices, lack of dedicated platforms to satisfy the gift needs, and limited gifts. The persona’s communication channel preferences include online and social media, traditional ads, and referrals.

Buyer persona 2

The second buyer persona is a male individual at the age of 24 working as a fashion designer, living in Texas, United States, and with a loving character. The persona’s personalities include extrovert, thinking, intuition and judging. The persona’s goal is to have a gift that triggers emotions and love feelings and has a gift that creates events and occasions memorable. The customer’s preferred channel of communication is a referral, followed by traditional ads and efforts.

SWOT analysis

The Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis is used to evaluate and plan a company’s competitive position (Gürel & Tat, 2017). The SWOT analyses both internal and external and present and future possible variables, crucial to a business’ activities and aids in identifying the areas a business can apply themselves to achieve success in their industry. A SWOT analysis is designed to help analyze an entity’s strengths and weak points, projects, or industry practically and factually (Sarsby, 2016). Instead of holding the analysis straight, the company needs to avoid preconceived biases or grey areas and concentrate on real-life contexts

Strengths

Moonpig’s strengths rely on its online presents due to its websites and social media capacity. The organization’s website attracts more clients as it is easy to use in making purchases. The organization also has reliable customers that facilitate a continuous supply chain in the organization. Moonpig prides on its premium pricing techniques that put its products ahead of its competitors in the market. The strong Moonpig brand enables it to conquer new markets as most established customers buy the brand instead of the product.

Weakness

Moonpig weaknesses are drawn from the low number of retail outlets across the world. Despite having an online platform, physical outlets would help in satisfying specific customers who lack internet access. The level of technology in the organization is also a weakness. Moonpig technology lacks the tracking concept that can help the customers to trace the delivery progress of their purchases. Longer delivery times are another weakness that Moonpig should put much emphasis on. Most customers’ reviews reflect slow deliveries and even damaged delivery, which affect the company’s reputation.

Opportunities

The organization’s brand image presents it with the opportunity to explore new markets in other continents like Asia and Africa. With the new markets, Moonpig can increase its revenue than making profits. The online presence is another opportunity that Moonpig can exploit to reach new customers. Moonpig has a working social media platform with a huge follower base that gives it’s potential to market its products more than the competitors. Since the market niche that Moonpig ventures have few competitors, the organization has an opportunity to carry out research and development on its products, coming up with diversified products that consider social and cultural policies.

Threats

The organization’s threats emerge from the direct and indirect competition from established gifts e-commerce platforms. Although e-commerce diversifies competition, Moonpig still faces competition from other firms that offer gifts and cards. The premium pricing strategy of the organization is also a threat. Since there are numerous outlets that the gifts and cards can be found at considerate prices, the organization’s pricing technique presents a potential threat to its survival, as the switching cost is low. European Union regulation on technological processes is another threat to Moonpig’s survival. Since Moonpig entirely on the technological process for business operations, the regulations can limit the organization from exploiting the full potential. Customer service dissatisfaction is another threat. When customers are dissatisfied, the competitors can easily sway them to shift their purchases.

Plan

Key SMART objectives

For Moonpig to achieve its overall strategy, it needs to capitalize on its strengths, exploiting the available opportunities and minimizing its threats while improving its weaknesses. Therefore, the organization should shave specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound objectives that concentrate its operations on achieving the overall strategy (Bjerke, & Renger, 2017).

Specific

A specific goal has higher chances of being accomplished. In making a goal-specific, the who, what, where, when, and why questions need to be considered (Bjerke, & Renger, 2017). From the Moonpig’s overall strategy, a more specific goal would be:

‘Enhance and improve gift niche market dominance by advancing online presence through online platform development and advancement.’

Measurable

A measurable goal should have criteria for accessing its progress. A goal is only measurable if it has specific, measurable elements. Aspects that should be considered in making a goal measurable include progress indicators and goal attainability indicators (Bjerke, & Renger, 2017). Basing on the specific goal, the measurable goal would be:

‘The organization would aim at improving its customer service, communication pattern and establish Instagram and TikTok platform.”

Achievable

A goal is only achievable when it has the capacity to challenge the goal setter. Therefore, the organization can achieve the goal if it has the necessary resources and capabilities and has a benchmarking point (Bjerke, & Renger, 2017). Based on the specific, measurable goals above, Moonpig’ achievable goal would be:

‘… by undertaking training and development sessions on customer service.’

Realistic

A goal is realistic when it is achievable within the constraints of the organizational resources and capabilities. Therefore, before adopting the goal, the organization should assess its potential of achieving the goal within its constraints.

Time-bound

A goal must have a specific time in which it must be achieved. The goals starting and completion time must be definite. Therefore, Moonpig should initiate the goal realization process from next month and complete it by the end of the following month (Bjerke, & Renger, 2017).

Therefore, Moonpig’s SMART goal would be:

‘To enhance and improve gift niche market dominance by advancing online presence through online platform development and improvement through customer service and communication channel improvement by undertaking training and development sessions within two months beginning next month.’

Strategic recommendation

Content

Moonpig needs to examine the necessary content to promote communication and address the buyer persona’s issues and concerns. Therefore, there is a need to venture into content creation in its online platforms and social media by increasing its advertising and brand promotions with exciting themes and offers.

Channel

Moonpig needs to explore the available communication channels that the organization can use to obtain information from the customers. Taiminen and Karjaluoto (2015) acknowledge that communication channels play a pivotal role in highlighting the buyer persona’s activities. Therefore, Moonpig needs to have various channels to communicate, such as emails, online chat platforms in its website and app, and social media platforms to reach its clientele.

Data

Moonpig should focus its decision-making process on data obtained from customer responses. Moreover, Moonpig should ensure that the customer buying behaviors are monitored to predict future customer behaviors.

Strategic recommendation

Despite the above environment analysis, industry analysis is also vital, and Moonpig should undertake the industrial analysis to evaluate its market position compared to other competitors. Industry analysis focuses on facilitating an organization to understand its market position compared to competitors with similar products. Industry analysis would help undertake strategic market planning (Aithal, 2017).

Conclusion

In conclusion, Moonpig still has tremendous opportunity to improve its digital marketing strategy by incorporating digital techniques such as Search Engine Optimization, Email marketing, and social media marketing. These technology-oriented opportunities have the ability to increase brand awareness and help build and maintain a strong image reputation (Godey et al., 2016).

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Appendices

Buyer Persona Spring