Preventing Failure Of Boo.com: Strategies For Digital Marketing And Website Optimization

Targeting Local and International Audiences

Boo.com was founded in the year 1998, it was a European company which was operating in its main office in London. The company was founded by three entrepreneurs from Sweden. Kajsa Leander, Ernest Malmsten and Partrik Hedelin. Leader and Malmsten had business experience in special publishing, initially, they had created specialist publisher and online Bookstore which they called Bokus.com, this company was rung the third largest in the world in e-retailer behind Barnes & Noble and Amazon (Ryan, 2016).

The company collapsed on May 2000 because the investor’s funds were not raised enough to meet the increasing marketing cost, wage bills, and high technology demands. This paper would explain various ways on how Boo.com failures would have been prevented (Rowley & Keegan, 2017).  

Many business organizations struggle in choosing the kind of marketing to use, depending on the budget each and every organization have, the decision to be made are not so easy. ‘’ which method of marketing will give me most bang of my buck?’’  ‘’ How do I know the kind of marketing which is working?’’  ‘’ who should I trust in marketing?’’. These are the kind of questions that are always in mind for every business intending to market products or services (Jernigan, Padon, Ross & Borzekowski, 2017).

To illuminate the terms, the application of print materials such as ads in magazines and newspapers is an example of traditional means of marketing.  On the other hand when a company use website or advertising products and services using social media such as Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube, the kind of marketing is known as Digital marketing ( Lui & Au,2017).2.1 Reasons why it would be important for Boo.com to invest in digital marketing 

The company can target both local and international audience. Furthermore, the company can modify a campaign to certain demographics of the audience such as, the age, location gender and interests. The campaign for Boo.com will be more effective.

With the use of digital marketing the company’s audience would be able to choose varies ways of receiving the content, for instance others might choose to read on blogs, others may choose to stream from the YouTube. Unlike the traditional marketing whereby the audience does not have a choice, most of the audience receive sales flyers or phone calls at inappropriate time and the may not have little or no interest. The online guys are able to opt in and out of communications freely (Bampo, Ewing, Mather, Stewart & Wallace, 2010).

The interaction of customers would be made possible.  With the application of networks for social media the communication is made fast, convenient and reliable unlike traditional marketing whereby it does not allow interaction with the clients. Boom.co would be able to encourage prospects, followers and clients to take an action, visit the company’s website, read about services and products offered, buy goods and services, rate the company and provide visible feedback to the company’s market ().

Implementing Digital Marketing

Digital marketing would be cost-efficient to the company.  Though may invest on ads payable online, the cost of marketing would still be much cheaper than the traditional means.

The company’s data are safely recorded- by the use of insight tools and google analytics offered by most many channels of social media, the company would be able to monitor their campaigns at any given time.

Increase the company level of competition   

 With the use of digital marketing, Boo.com would be able to compete favourably with competitors irrespective of size with robust digital marketing strategy.

Brand development- If the website of boom.com is well maintained with high quality content which meet the needs of the clients it would lead to generation of opportunities and provide significant value to the company. 

The speed of the website is the first impression for the company. It is crucial to know that the company would not have an excuse when it comes delivering fast and reliable user experience. If the website has low speed it’s a frustrating issue to the company and would turn most clients away (Quinton & Simkin, 2017).

The following are several ways in which website can be optimized:

1. Use CDN (content delivery network)– CDN consist of several servers that are distributed across many geographical locations which provide content of the web to the end users according to their location. When the website is hosted to a single server, all the request are directed to same hardware. Due to this, it increases the time that is need for processing of the requests. Furthermore, it increase the load time even if the users are far away from the server. By the use of CDN, user call are conveyed to a nearest server. Because of this the information is supplied to the user faster and the website also would be quicker. Although this is expensive but it is the most effective method of optimizing the website load time.

1. Relocating website to best hosting companies – com should apply the following type of hosting services

• Shared hosting – this is the most popular and type of hosting services which widely used globally. This is the cheapest method for Boo.com to get their site online within a short time with a low cost. It is very crucial for the company to choose to choose the best web host in order to guarantee better optimization.
• Dedicated servers and VP servers are faster than. Virtual private servers are utilize many servers of content distribution. If boo.com would have a website that have a typical traffic or electronic commerce site containing traffics spikes at some times. Virtual Private servers would be the optimal resolution for the company.

Another method Boo.com can apply is hire a dedicated cloud server from Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google or any other cloud provider, this makes the website to be more

Faster especially if both dedicated server and Virtual Private Server are combine to form hybrid cloud.

1. Image size optimization technique-every individual love attractive images, if boo.com need to have a successful digital marketing site, photos , graphics and images would improve the website engagement. Large size image slows down the website and should be avoided
2. Reduce plugins –it is very common to have plugins in every website. Plugins add certain features to the website that are suggested by third parties.  More plugins would mean that more resources would be needed. Because of this the website is going to be very slow and also would raise insecurity issues. Some plugins may not be able to work after some time, I recommend boo.com to check plugins regularly and delete those that are unnecessary.
3. Reduce the number of CSS and JavaScript files- if a website have many CSS and JavaScript files, it will cause the web to have many HTTP requests when visitors of the web try to access certain files. The requests would be treated by browser of the website individually and will lead performance of the website to be slow. Reducing the number of CSS and JavaScript file will definitely increase the speed of the website. Grouping all CSS and JavaScript files would minimize HTTP requests. There are many tools that can be used to minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML files faster, for example the company may use Script Minifier, Grunt or WillPeavy tools.
4. Use web caching-servers work slowly  when there are many servers accessing the website page and the site will need more time to deliver the content to every user. Caching means storing current version of the web until it is updated.   
5. Optimize database in CMS-optimizing the database would be the effective technique to increase the website performance of Boo.com. If the content management system with multifaceted plugins is utilized it will lead to slow performance of the website because of the increase in the size of the database. For example the CMS for WordPress stores blog posts, comments and other data, this consumes a lot of data space. Every CMS needs its optimization measure and certain plugins. If the company will use WordPress for instance, one may think of WP-Optimize.
6. Minimize the use of fonts on the web

The use of web fonts has become common in the design of web. Unfortunately if web fonts are used it have negative implication to the page load speed. Web fonts add many HTTP requests to outward resources.  The following measures would help Boo.com to minimize font traffic on the web.

• Use contemporary formats WOFF2 for the modern browsers.
• Use only the set characters for the site
• Select the needed styles only

Ix. Detect and minimize 404 errors

404 error implies that the ‘page is not found ‘the message is given by the host to the browsers to the search engines when the content accessed does not exist. To detect and eliminate the error, the company may use plugins and the detection tools. As said earlier many plugins reduce the efficiency of the website. So I recommend the resource to be run over an external error detection tool. For example the company may use (GWT) Google Webmaster tool, Xenu’s Link Sleuth or Redirected Plugin.

1. Search Engine Optimization – search engine optimization would have helped the company to appear on the first page of the search. If the company does not have use SEO techniques, the online bleaches of the company would remain empty. Search Engine Optimization means that the website of the company would be improve to enhance visibility. By making certain changes of the website the company would be able to increase traffic and make the website to be visible. Boom.co would have boost the rankings of their website by applying the following SEO tools without having to look for a webmaster.

• Google trends-  search querieschange over time, it depends on how frequently users search for a product on the google search, if the products of  the company would have been appear on the google trend, definitely would have create more awareness and hence more sales would have been realised.
• BROWSEO-the tools how search engine would be able to access the site.  The tool is able to trip down the website to base level.  By looking at the Boom.com site this way, the company would have been able to view what is to be improved.
• Streaming frog-turning on streaming frog would have enable the company to troubleshoot problems. The tool would be able to view missing metadata, broken links, duplicate pages and many more. It is like auditing of the SEO in other words. The results from the audit would have been used by the company to improve the SEO and the website.
• GTmetrix- ‘’how fast had the boo.com website load?’’  ‘’did the Boo.com website had some pages that too long to respond’’?  Slothful speed of the page obstruct SEO. The website speed does not play any role in the rankings of the search engine. There was need for the Boo.com to counter check site speed with GTmetrix. The company could have think of the way to improve the speed of the website, for instance resizing of images in order to optimize the load time. 

1. Social Media- I can say with a lot of confidence that Boom.com failed to leverage the use of the social media with their marketing strategy. The company putter, sure, but unfortunately their efforts end up with content and advertising. This was a big mistake for the company and here is the reason why…(Kannan, 2017.).

Many of the people during that time had adopted the use of internet, many people in Landon in 1999 had started to get updated on business news via social media. There are four stages that I would have recommend boo.com to follow in order to develop a robust social media marketing. The stages are:

1. Listening – it gives the insight that the company would have need to influence, network and sell products and services. Listen would have help Boo.com to develop a marketing strategy that that would have given the company influence, robust network and many sales and leads. The main purpose of listening is to obtain information to the customers and prospects.
2. Influencing – in this face the company would have tried the following:

• Improve engagement with both the brand and the content.
• Start off conversations related to the business organization.
• Increase the traffic of the website.
• Increase the product awareness

1. Networking – at this stage the company would have been able to connect with many other authorities and influencers and start moving on very well.
2. Selling- this is the interesting part whereby the company would have been able to begin delivering products and services to the people.   

1. Content Marketing Strategy – content marketing is where by the company could market their products by creating and sharing online materials like blogs, videos and posts on social media. Boo.com could have created content marketing strategy by following the following 5 steps:
2. Creation of buyer personas.
3. Creation of list of keyboard that is based on the personas.
4. Identify the persona which is highly preferred by buyers.
5. Occasionally create a personality that is very appealing to the buyers.
6. The final step is to the settle into ‘content frequency pattern’

Increasing Customer Interaction

KPI is refers to ‘key Performance Indicator’   the goodness of digital marketing is that everything can be tracked very easily. If Boo.com could have used KPI the company could have monitor their progress very easily. The following are the key KPIs that the company could have adopted:

1. Determination of return on investment- this is the crucial part because it answer the following question effectively ‘’ is this digital stuff working’’ return on digital id calculated by subtracting digital marketing cost from total revenue accrued from the digital marketing
2. Conversion rate of the website- can be tracked by calculating total number of forms that is submitted , tracking of phone calls and emails on the company’s website
3. Cost per Lead- if Boo.com could have measure cost per lead all for web source, the company could have focused on digital marketing operations that are very useful.
4. Measurements of percentage sales of digital marketing – this is calculated by dividing the total attributed revenue with monthly sales from digital activities.

Pay Per Click is  a way of utilizing search engine such as google to produce clicks to the company’s website somewhat  earning the clicks occasionally. For a company could have set up PPC adverting in Bing ads or in Google AdWords by following the following steps:

Step 1: create login e.g. E-mail and password. One need to have Google AdWords account to do this

Step 2: Target a certain geographical region- the company would decide whether to do business locally or globally then choose the preferred location.

Step 3: Set daily budget- in the case of Google AdWords one need to decide how much to spend every day. The company would then pay if it receives a click.

Step 4: controlling the amount that is pend per click

Step 5: creation of ads

Step 6: selecting keywords- keywords are phrases for which the ad will appear one it is searched in the search engine.

Online display (& video) – this includes a promotional banner of any size or shape that is put on the website, Boo.com could have choose from the variety of banner formats including rich media, interactive ads and video.

The following are the steps I would recommend boo.com to set up online display (& video).

Step 1: Select objectives and KPIs – effective campaign  are found by using a sound strategy, the first step the company could have taken is deciding on the goals, the calls may be for instance increasing the web traffic. The goals would thereafter monitored using KPI to determine viability (Kumar & Reinartz, 2018).

Step 2:  define the target audience- this process is closely related to the campaign goals. The target audience are those that the company need to reach.

Step 3: purchasing of media- after finalizing on the objectives of the campaign the next step would be to buy a media. BOO.com could have bought their media from the following channels like Publishers, Ad networks advertising agencies and many more.

Step 4: Developing creative campaign – it is very important to think about how the products would be display to bring about positive impression.  There are several display formats to choose from, for instance, Text, Image, video or Rich media ads

Cost-Efficiency

Step 5: monitoring and optimization- the interesting part of display marketing is that it is possible track the performance of the campaign.  

 Email is revenue driving machine if used effectively, it is a very powerful channel for marketing when it comes to return on investment on companies that have applied this strategy. I would recommend Boo.com the following ways to improve their email marketing strategy: (Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014).

1. Retention of customers by the use personalization- personalization is the key element to retain customers. Personalisation can be done by copying data for clients, sending emails reminders that features products preferred by customers.
2. Creation of email subject lines that boost conversation. Consider the length of the subject it should be brief and direct.
3. Try segmentation/ triggered automation.  Once customer information are known it is important to segment to categories based on interest, behaviour and the current situation of customers.
4. Personalization using the dynamic content- with the use of campaign marketing tools it is very easy for the company to customize their content to meet the customers’ demands.  Dynamic content allow the company to customize the emails send to customers very easily.  Personalised email help the content to be relevant to customers.
5. Tracking behaviour using robust analytics- a web snippet allows the company to monitor behaviour of the users whenever they follow links send to them via email. Tools such as Google analytic help the company to make sense the data which would help in boosting segmentation and personalization (Leppäniemi, Karjaluoto, Lehto & Goman, 2010.).
6. Creating consistency – according to most entrepreneurs, magic number on how frequently marketing emails are to be send does not exist. Marketing Sherpa suggest that it is better to send emails more often, like let say everyday than less often (Taken Smith, 2012).

Market ongoing analysis describes the current state or status of the target market.  Hence, Boo.com could have cater information that are generated from analysis and research on the target market,  customers , competitors and the challenges that are faced by the company.

The ongoing analysis would have helped boo.com to compare business data over time in order to determine whether the results are consistent or not, the company would have then develop a digital management strategy to respond to the trends in accordance to the objectives of the business (Smith, 2011).

Ongoing analysis would have help the management team for Boo.com to understand the performance of the business over time, this would have help the company to the outcome of their business operations. This would have given ideas on the changes that was necessary to be made to prevent further risks (Leeflang, Verhoef, Dahlström & Freundt, 2014).

The company could have employ the following ongoing analysis to help improve on their performance.

• Identification of areas where business is performing very well so as to duplicate success.
• Identification of areas where the business is under performing and
• Provision of evidence that will inform the decision making

There are certain regulations that relate to digital marketing specifically. Any organizations that use digital marketing should keep abreast of growth in the area to make sure that it is complying with the rules and regulations (Wind, Sharp & Nelson, 2013).

SMS and Email marketing rules

The ‘Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations’ have introduce an unsubscribe feature to all commercial emails, this means that a business organisation can only contact individuals who have agreed to receive emails alerts (Mackey & Liang, 2013).

Social media and website

The website should have registered address for the company according to the law. Business organizations should consider to include the website disclaimer for the web and terms and conditions (Weber, 2009).

The use of cookies as key performance indicators (KPI).

Cookies are text or files that remain on the browser of the computer. Cookies may be used to track user browsing partialities. According to the laws, all business must tell their clients that they are using cookies (Chester, 2007).

Conclusions

To summarise this report it has clearly shown that future marketing is highly depend on digital means. The digital marketing is not concern only to posting ads on the portal, it involves integrated channels and integrated services. Many companies seek to use varies components that has been discussed in the report to reach build their brands and reach the target groups (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2010).

Brand Development

Digital media is mostly preferred by most marketers because it is the best platform where they are able to convert their product into a brand. Digital marketing is cost effective as compared to traditional marketing and it provides lots of touch points to the company. Digital marketing enables a company to engross their target segment in an effective and efficient way via digital platforms. The digital platforms enhance the influence of brand recall in the target groups (Blakeman, 2018).

I honesty trust and believe that this paper is the most useful to marketers to master the digital marketing and plan future strategies to avoid business failure that has been witnessed by Boo.com.

I conclude this report by quoting that ‘’ business organizations must pursue digital platform’’.     

References  

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