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1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 2 2.0 e-Marketing Plan ................................................................................................... 3 2.1 Situational analysis ............................................................................................... 3 2.1.1 Types of business ...................................................................................... 3 2.1.2 Target customer and e-Business Model ................................................... 3 2.1.3 e-SWOT analysis ..................................................................................... 3 2.1.4 PEST analysis .......................................................................................... 4 2.1.5 Competitors analysis ............................................................................... 5 2.2 Objectives ............................................................................................................. 5 2.3 e-Strategy ............................................................................................................. 6 2.3.1 Web-site design ........................................................................................ 6 2.3.2 7Ps e-Marketing ...................................................................................... 7 2.4 Tactics .................................................................................................................. 8 2.5 Actions ................................................................................................................. 9 2.6 Control ................................................................................................................ 10 3.0 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 11 4.0 Bibliography ......................................................................................................... 12 5.0 Appendices - e-Marketing Budget ...................................................................... 13

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1.0 Introduction This new start-up company is a dog care center located in Ireland which will provides services such as dog boarding, grooming facilities, pet transport service, dog training and selling pet products. There is a trend of people favours to purchase online and browse products offered online. In order to gain competitive advantage and save advertising costs, e-Marketing is essential for the company. This is an e-Marketing plan which follows SOSTAC framework made up of 6 parts. Situaltion analysis analyse macro-environmental factors by conducting a SWOT, competitor and PEST analysis. Next, the objectives of going online for marketing have to be outlined. Then, tactics and actions is shown on how to implement the strategy. However, control has to be in place to ensure the plan is so smoothly. At last, conclusion will be drawn and marketing budget to be attached in the appendix.

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2.0 e-Marketing Plan This is an e-Marketing plan for launching a new start-up company online. 2.1 Situational Analysis 2.1.1 Types of business This new start-up company is a dog care center located in Ireland which will provides services such as dog boarding, grooming facilities, pet transport service, dog training and selling pet products. This is a combination of service and products type of business. Besides that, this business have B2C model which refers to business communicating and selling to individual rather than a company. 2.1.2 Target customer and e-business model The target customer mostly is the dog owner especially younger generation who are highly engaged with social media. There are several e-business models going to use for this dog care center. First of all, it is an advertising business model. The web ads of business will be posted to certain website which has high volume of traffic. Next, click and mortar merchant e-business model will be used because the business is going to sell pet products to customers under its own website that provides information of pet products. Furthermore, community business model will be used to provide social networking service. There will be a forum in our website to provide a platform for dog owners to share their experience (Michael 2010). Our unique selling points is our websites provides one stop service for customer in which they can buy their pet products online, book places for dog boarding online, discuss with other dog owners on their experience taking care of the dog and so on. 2.1.3 e-SWOT analysis Our strength is providing one stop service to customer through websites. However, our weaknesses are we do not have high brand recognition as this is a new start-up company. Besides that, we do not have strong IT team that can design an interactive website. However, there is an opportunity for us as there is a high demand for dog owner to purchase pet products online. Besides that, people finding it is save time to purchase online at anytime and anywhere they like. People also believe that purchasing online will help them to save costs as they can compare the price of
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difference suppliers. The threat will be the internet is filled with threats and thus it may damage the confidence of consumers to purchase online. Besides that, since customers can get information easily through internet, the competition become higher as the customers may change their preference to other suppliers which can provide better services with cheaper price. 2.1.4 PEST analysis Social It is common for users to search information online. I found out that the number of internet users in Ireland is increasing rapidly and AMAS research showed that 43% of Irish bought something online during 2011. Refer to Appendix 1 for population of online shopper in each state in Ireland (Stephen 2012). The reason is because they believe online shopping will give them the good value and they are taking advantage of debit card to purchase online show that they are confident in online shopping. Political However, we should be aware of the regulations includes E-commerce regulations, distance selling regulations and so on (Pinsent Masons 2013). The regulations including require company to provide correct information to customers, data privacy problems and so on. Technology Furthermore, there is growth in technology such as wireless internet access, development of broadband and others that have increase the speed of internet. Thus, people are moving towards going online for their marketing for greater exposure. Economy Irelands economy will grow by 1.6% in 2013 according to the Irish Quarterly Economic Oulook. Besides that, growth in gross domestic product is expected to be 1.6% and 2.8% in 2013 and 2014 respectively (The Irish Times 2013). Although Ireland face financial crisis in 2007-2008, however, Irish economy grow or recover faster than anywhere else in the euro zone. This is good news for the company as it will bring more sales to the company.

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Summary of PEST The PEST analysis above shows it is attractive to go for e-Marketing. It is because analysis showing the trend of people using internet and technology is getting advanced. Furthermore, e-Marketing supports the increasing environmental awareness as fewer brochures are used to promote the company. However, the company have to be aware of any E-commerce regulation. 2.1.5 Competitorss analysis Most of the competitors running dog care center in family business basis sush as Moynalvey boarding kennels, Tukmill Dog boarding kennels and so on. However, there are quite a number of competitors offering online-business by selling pet products and having their own websites such as Muttugly which provides a range of services to pet owners including dog grooming, training, boarding and so on. The others competitors mainly set up website to promote their center such as Happy Hound boarding kennel and there is competitors where they only focus on selling pet products online such as PetSmart Inc, PETCO Animal Supplies Stores, Inc. 2.2 Objectives The objectives we get into e-marketing have to be set out clearly and SMART. There are 5s by Chaffey describing the objective of e-marketing which includes to sell, serve, speak, save and sizzles. First of all, the main objective is to grow the sales of center by 6%, achieve a positive profit and 2% market share in pet care industry. Secondly, increase brand awareness of dog care center by providing interactive feature in the websites such as having video clip on website and also organize dog competition. Thirdly, by giving the customer extra benefits online such as online promotion, the objective are to increase number of customers using online service actively at least once per month. Besides that, there is another objective related to it is to increase duration of customer spent on our website. In addition, website which can be used as a communication tools with customers. Thus the objective is to improve customer relationship and the ratings given by customer in community site. Lastly, e-marketing may help to reduce the direct

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promotion costs as can promote online. Thus, our objective is to reduce the cost of advertising by 30% in two years time. 2.3 e-Strategies 2.3.1 Website Design A quality website design is important and it reflects the image of the company. Firstly, the company has to register its domain name and the web host. The web host will be based in Ireland as the business will be set in Ireland. Besides that, it would be important to create a simple, short and easy remember domain name. Next, design an interactive website to attract potential customer. However, the company has to improve the layout of the web-site to make it more interactive and also update the content more often (Christopher 2013). There is a sequence in building a web-site, it is to create an information website firstly which emphasize on the contents of website includes what types of services and dog products offered, locations of the center, FAQ and so on. After that, for traffic building purpose, the company may go from online communications to offline communications. Next, introduce e-Commerce into the company where the dog products are sold online and also e-CRM programme to gain more understanding of the customers and provide greater experience to the customer by going online. Integration of website with offline activity The website provide online purchasing of dog products and booking for services such as dog boarding, dog grooming and so on. It is important to improve our service such as booking process of customer through analysis of statistics such as number of repeat customer, what they are browsing, what they bought and so on using web analysis software. Besides that, there is other ways in which company can get feedback from the customer such as through customer survey and forum. For example, we can have a promotion such as having discount for next visits if the customers able to answer the online survey form or entitle for a lucky draw. On the other hand, forum serves as an informal way of collecting feedback. Customer can post their comments, experience or even complaints in the forum.
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2.3.2 7Ps e-Marketing mix In order to gain higher market share in our industry, 7Ps in e-Marketing mix is analysed to penetrate the market (Carmen 2013). Products - Besides dog care service, the center will also selling dog products such as dog food, and so on. The customer can order online and the center will deliver the products to customers. Furthermore, the customers can book their time for any dog care service for example dog boarding, grooming and others. Price - Since it is a new start- up company, it would be better to use penetration pricing strategy which aims to capture market share with a lower price compare to competitors. Sales promotion and discounting can be given if order or book online. Although at first it might be a loss for the company, but it helps to create awareness and get people to try the service. Place - Website is the place where e-Marketing takes place in including transaction, booking, providing information and so on. Therefore, the website design must be interactive and creative to attract attention of potential customers. For example, we can add some videos and also photos of our customers dog in the website. Promotion - Promotion is to communicate to customers and attract them. Therefore, dog care center may provide online discounting promotion to encourage people buy our products online. Besides that, in order to promote the dog care center, they may create banner ads in those famous websites and link to own website. Besides that, they can provide limited promotion such as free dog grooming for the first 10 registered members in the website. People - There must be a person who can continuously update the layout and content of website to make it more interactive. Besides that, the staffs have to be trained to solve problems encounter by the customers during transaction by providing live chat session. The customers are also welcome to provide feedback and share their experience in the website forum. Physical evidence - The only online evidence consumer may get is through welldesignated website including images of dog owner, dog products that selling, videos, contents of the website and also reviews given by previous customers on

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the services they had. Besides that, customers may print out coupons in the website as evidence and get discount for the amount stated. Process - Processes is important to deal with online selling of products which includes tracking the order of customer, sending notification of sales to customer and so on.

2.4 Tactics There are different e-tools to be used to implement our strategy set out above. First of all, websites could be a useful tool for company to communicate with their customer. For example, provide sufficient information such as business information, contact and location details, online catalogue on types of products selling and services offered and images or graphics that can attract customers attentions. Furthermore, forums in the website serve as a platform where the customers can leave their feedbacks about the products or services. Besides that, having the website integrated into social media pages like Facebook , Twiiter an LinkedIn will makes the websites more user friendly and lets the customers to share the contents easier. The company may also go for online partnership with voucher code site such as MyVoucherCodes, Groupon, MyDeals and so on to attract customers. Furthermore, viral marketing can be used such as video clip, funny picture of dogs owner and their dogs in the website to attract customers. Then, people may spread it through social media, e-mail or through word-of-mouth (Chaffey et al. 2008, pp.328330). Besides that, interactive advertising (banner ads) can be put in those famous pet society websites or forum and then when visitors click to it, it will links to the website. However, it is important to make sure that the ad is creative to attract attention of visitors. Search engine optimisation can be used to increase the amount of visitors to the website by obtaining high ranking in the search results in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and others. It improves the chances of websites visited by internet users with lower costs (Webopedia 2013). Besides that, sponsor on any pet events or competition may help to create brand awareness and build traffic. In addition, opt in email can be a form of advertising
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whereby the company can send them vouchers for any services in dog care center, invite them to any events or contests that is organised or sponsored by the company, alert them on latest promotions and so on. It aims to create on-going relationships where the company can deliver the marketing message (Chaffey et al. 2008, pp.325 328). Furthermore, e-CRM can be implementing in order to get repeat sales of customers. First of all, the customer will be required to register as a member in the website to gain more benefits as a member. Once they registered, the company able to get their details and able to understand the customer needs through analysing the customer behaviour browsing the website. Rewards can be given for the members for example of spending more than 100 per transaction. Besides that, company able to email or contact the customers if they have been inactive for a long time. 2.5 Actions The dog care center will be officially launched in June 2013; therefore some marketing activities have to be started one month before the launch date. As during summer holiday, people will be going out travel. Therefore, it may leave their dogs at home without care. Therefore, this is a greater chance to gain new customers for the dog boarding services. Firstly, IT personnel will be employed to design as website which can get better ranking in the search engines which are Google and Yahoo from May 2013. Besides that, advertising in The Irish Times newspaper for one week from mid of May in order to gain brand awareness of consumers promoting on the first 100 customer who spends on the dog care center entitled for free gifts and vouchers. Advertising in pet magazine such as Dogs Monthly magazine, Dog Lover magazine and so on will help to gain awareness of readers. This advertisement which will be advertised in three issues from May to July is more effective as it targets on dog owner. Besides that, banner ads can be placed in few famous pet website such as MyPetDirectory, PetFriendlyIreland from May 2013. Furthermore, online partnership with voucher code site such as Groupon, MyDeal to sell the voucher on behalf. This can be done for two months periods from May till July 2013. After this, the company will do online promotion in its own website such as the first 100
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customers who visit the website and register as a member entitle to get discount voucher or any free dog products. IT personnel of our center will be in charge of creating an interactive advertisement in our website to attract attention of the visitors. This activity will be on going from Jun 2013. In addition, dog care center will sponsor some pet events, festivals, dog show and so on able to enhance company image, reached targeted market and opportunity to build brand awareness. The sponsorships depends on whether there is any related events organise. Furthermore, a dog competition can be organised which is Great moments we had. This is a photo competition where the dog owners and their dogs can capture photo related to the dog care center such as capture photo with any dog products bought and so on. The most creative photo and the photo which can get the highest likes in facebook page will get a prize. This competition may be held in August 2013. In addition, they can participate in Pet Expo events which is organised in Ireland annually (Marie 2013). The exact date of the events is not confirmed yet. 2.6 Control A good plan should have control system to assessing the results against objectives. If there is necessary, corrective action is used to revise the strategy. The performances have to be measured using key performance indicator (KPI) or metrics (Hayes 2013). Objectives KPI - Growth of sales by 6% and - Average sales value per visitors achieve a positive profit - Profit margin for each product or services - Achieving 3% market share in - Revenue of child care center per year relative pet care industry to total market value - Increase brand awareness - Click through Rate from a banner ad in other websites. - Number of unique visitors.

- Increase number of customer - Number of registered member in companys using online service actively website. - Conversion rate of visitors who converting from visitors to customers who places an order.
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- Number of days member visit the website since previous visit - Increase durations of customer - Stickiness - average length of time visitors spent on our websites. spend on website - Number of pages viewed per visitors and per day - Improve customer relationship - Customer ratings given in the website forum - Number of repeat visitors - Customer feedback given - Social sharing and number of followers of company in Facebook and Twitter. - Differences between budgeted promotion costs with actual promotion costs

- Reduce direct promotion costs

3.0 Conclusion As a conclusion, different approach is used to analyse internal and external environment. Objectives going for e-marketing have to be set out clearly. Then, tactics and actions on how to implement the strategy is to be outlining. However, control system must be in place to ensure the marketing plan can be implement successfully and achieve the objective.

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4.0 Bibliography Carmen, 2013. Using the 7 Ps in Your Internet Marketing Plan Marketing Services for Businesses Internet, SEO, PPC. Using the 7 Ps in Your Internet Marketing Plan. Available at: http://www.karmasnack.com/knowledge/internet-marketing/2010/06/usingthe-7-ps-in-your-internet-marketing-plan/ [Accessed April 13, 2013]. Chaffey, D., Smith, P.R. & Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2008. eMarketing eXcellence: planning and optimizing your digital marketing, Amsterdam; London: Butterworth-Heinemann. Christopher, H., 2013. How to Make / Create Your Own Website: The Beginners AZ Guide to Starting a Website (thesitewizard.com). How to Start / Create Your Own Website: The Beginners A-Z Guide. Available at: http://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/startwebsite.shtml [Accessed April 13, 2013]. Hayes, M., 2013. 32 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Ecommerce Ecommerce Blog by Shopify. Available at: http://www.shopify.com/blog/7365564-32-key-performance-indicators-kpisfor-ecommerce#axzz2QVcMSIoV [Accessed April 15, 2013]. Marie, M., 2013. Irelands Family Pet Expo 2013. Available at: http://www.petexpo.ie/ [Accessed April 15, 2013]. Michael, R., 2010. Business Models on the Web | Professor Michael Rappa. Available at: http://digitalenterprise.org/models/models.html [Accessed April 11, 2013]. Pinsent Masons, 2013. Selling online: an overview of the rules. Available at: http://www.out-law.com/page-424 [Accessed April 11, 2013]. Stephen, C., 2012. Irelands population of online shoppers increasesDigital Times | Digital Times. Digital Times. Available at: http://www.digitaltimes.ie/newsdt/irelands-population-of-online-shoppers-continues-to-increase/ [Accessed April 11, 2013]. The Irish Times, 2013. Irish economy to grow 1.6% in 2013. Irish Times. Available at: http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland/irish-economy-to-grow1-6-in-2013-1.1071337 [Accessed April 15, 2013]. Webopedia, 2013. search engine optimization (optimizer) - SEO. Webopedia. Available at: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/SEO.html [Accessed April 14, 2013].

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5.0 Appendices

Sources: Note 1: DG Group, 2013. Special Offers-business website. Available at: http://www.thedggroup.ie/special-offers.asp#page [Accessed April 15, 2013]. Note 2: The Irish Times, 2013. Advertising Rate Card | Advertise With Us | The Irish Times. Available at: http://www.irishtimes.com/about-us/advertise/rate-card [Accessed April 15, 2013]. Note 3: Dogs Monthly magazine - half page of advertisement to be display in three issues Dogs Monthly magazine, 2013. Dogs Monthly magazine Advertise with us: Simply the best magazine for all dog lovers. Available at: http://www.dogsmonthly.co.uk/advertise-with-us/ [Accessed April 15, 2013].
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Dog Lover Magazine - half page of advertisement to be display in three issues Dog Lover Magazine, 2013. Dog Lover Magazine Advertising Information. Available at: http://doglovermagazine.com/RateCard.htm [Accessed April 15, 2013]. Note 4: Banner advertisement is both website will be display for year. My Pet Directory, 2013. Advertise With Us. Available at: http://www.mypetdirectory.ie/advertise/ [Accessed April 15, 2013]. Pet Friendly Ireland, 2013. Pet friendly accommodation | advertise with us | Petfriendly Ireland. Available at: http://petfriendlyireland.com/advertise-with-us/ [Accessed April 15, 2013].

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