Essay Sample on Sainsbury's: Company Overview and Digital Marketing Strategy

1a. Company Overview of Sainsbury Ltd.

Type and size of the organization

It is a profit-oriented legal entity for the UK, operating through its Head Office in London. Sainsbury's is a private limited company that offers retail services through its chain of supermarkets with over 1000 operational stores in Europe and 160,300 employees and an annual revenue reaching up to 23.506 billion pounds (Sainsburys.co.uk, 2017).

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Brand vision statement

The company has at its core retail sales in non-specialized stores with food, beverages or tobacco brands predominating across the United Kingdom.

It is a brand focused towards providing the best for the community with the vision: to be the most trusted retailer, where people love to work and shop. By putting the customers at the heart of everything, investing in our stores, our channels, and our colleagues to offer the best possible experience (Sainsburys.co.uk, 2017).

The range of products

For the last 148 years, since 1869, it has specialized in operations falling under two categories, supermarkets and local convenience stores in which it offers over 30,000 lines of products with 20% of them being own-label products (Sainsburys.co.uk, 2017). The primary products include food products such as groceries, chilled foods, drinks, baked products, meat, and fish; household products including furniture, lighting and kitchen products; clothing products; and energy products including gas and electricity.

Also, services it offers include pharmaceutical services for outpatients; online shopping services for their products; and banking services encompassing insurance covers, credit cards, and loans and offering savings accounts.

Customer Base

The Sainsburys Supermarkets Limited offers a range of retail services to the final consumer thus a business-to-consumer (B2C) customer base whereby self-service is paramount. The company also provides a business-to-business (B2B) customer base to other businesses through banking services and selling of products to businesses such as cafes and restaurants.

Main Competition

It is the third largest supermarket chain in the UK with a market share of 16.9% (Barber, 2015). Tesco, Morrisons, and Asda pose the major competition to Sainsbury's, especially in the grocery products sector.

1b. Key Elements of Digital Marketing

Attraction and Engagement

Entail the cohesion of the content and design of the ad with the company's brand. In this case, whether social media or other video channels are used, the company's website or blog should be utilized as the core component for the content creation of the ad so as to be easily searchable, attracting and engaging the customer.

Capture and Nurture

Entails the way the digital marketing content provides leads to the client and the prospective customers towards acquiring the advertised products. The content must be captivating to blow the consumer's mind and create an urge to buy the product.

Convert and Measure

Conveys the specific offers that a given Sainsbury's marketing activity is to deliver to the customers. The suggestions are meant to compel the customer into buying the product or using the brand being marketed through personalization and customization of the goods and services in the ad.

1c. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Benefits of Search Engine Marketing

- Offers a broad brand awareness Avenue and thus incorporates much creativity.

- Cost effective: cost can be regulated minimized by adopting the cost-per-click pricing system.

- Flexible: one can add/change campaigns fast at little cost.

- Quick responsiveness: readily available to many customers within very short periods of time.

- Easy to track and monitor through the use of online tools such as Google Analytics.

Search Engine Marketing Tools

- Pay-per-click Web Spy: enables one to view and virtually steal keywords used by other companies in similar ads.

- Keyword Spy: allows the use of keywords to perform advanced and in-depth research and analysis of the competitors of a company.

- Google traffic estimator: allows analysis and estimation of overall number of clicks on Google AdWords ads

- Search engine optimization: maximizes the use of Google as it is the most popular.

2a. Recommendations for Generating Revenue From Online Avenues

The Sainsburys Supermarkets Limited can generate online revenue by:

Enhancing Sainsbury Online Application

The company could apply a small additional fee for the services offered online which means improving their Sainsbury Online services. The online order payment can be made every minute to cater for delivery services (if any) while at the same time not discouraging the use of the online services. For instance, to encourage the utilization of the online services, the company should ensure that there are gains such as gift cards which the customers acquire once they make certain purchase amount limits. Food tokens and other forms of points could be earned when the buyer makes large quantities of buying online which would enable him/her to make a bonus purchase at some point in time.

Launch an Application on Google Play Store

The company can capitalize on offering a purchase or customer service platform through the use of an application. The application can be utilized either on the phone, PCs or other internet accessing gadgets. To earn from such a request, the company should upload the application on Google Play Store platforms. The essence of placing the application on Google Play Store is that the company will earn revenue as per the number of downloads of the application that occur. In other words, each person that will download the application from Google Play Store will result in the company making a given amount of revenue from the Google Company. The revenue will be a small percentage of what the Google Company makes from the download of the application whether it is for use on a computer or use on a mobile phone.

2b. Suitability of Using Search Engine Marketing

The Sainsburys Supermarkets Limited has online retail services at the click of a button. Considering that some of their sale avenues are online and that the online platform is a primary channel of publicizing themselves, the company is suitably suited to using the search engine marketing strategy. The suitability of this technique of marketing is emphasized by the fact that about 97% of the UK population are fond of using the Google search engine when they use the internet. As a result, the company should optimize the use of search engine marketing with a particular consideration of the Google search engine. It is good to mention that this approach of marketing offers the advantage of providing the analytics data based on how many people have searched and have engaged with the company through the Google search engine platform.

2c. Mobile Channels

The Sainsburys Supermarkets Limited should appraise the mobile app opportunities and the messaging platforms in a bid to reach their target audience through mobile channels.

Mobile Application

Establishing a mobile application which will enable the customer's target group to update their locations. Specifically, the company should consider the facts that: 29% of the millennials within the UK are accustomed to sharing their real-time locations and 27% of the luxurious product purchasers prove to have an interest in smartphone marketing. In this case, the mobile app shall enable the luxury purchasers and the millennial customers to get real-time offers updates according to their locations. Additionally, the customers would be able, if the app is enabled, to interact with the retailers within the stores so that they can gain information on the availability of particular products of interest. The use of the app could be enhanced through the use of priority customer scenarios in which the customers that use the app are discounted on any products they purchase. For instance, on a 100th-customer basis of purchase.

Use of a Mobile Site Redirection Utility

Considering the number of people using mobile phones, where 62.3% people are using smartphones in the UK, the company should consider incorporating a mobile site redirection utility. In this case, the company should place an access banner at the top of their web pages and their online ads. Consequently, any prospective customer visiting their website will be referred to a created mobile app which is meant to make work easier for their purchase. This will increase their reach for the target audience.

As can be noted from the two proposed mobile channels, the mobile app is the primary channel through which the company can market itself. Thereby, incorporating the redirection cites are enhancers of the mobile app technology whereby the two mobile channels complement each other. The company could also capitalize on ensuring that they utilize the fact that 27% UK consumers would like to reach the customer service through online chat or messaging avenues which are mostly incorporated in mobile phones. Consequently, the company can create such avenues for its customer service to interact with the consumer so that they can improve their business efficiently.

3a. Social Media (Facebook) and Search Engine (Google)

Social Media: Facebook

Social media is a major platform and digital player when it comes to marketing. Hughes (2013), talked of a growing social media platform use across all countries in Europe and globally and mentioned there were 0.5 billion Instagram users globally in 2016 as compared to the initial 10 million users in 2011. The identical trend has been observed in the use of Facebook and other social media platforms. Specifically, Facebook has been a common platform in the UK and Europe over which businesses share photos and videos so as to create awareness of their presence and operations within their areas of specialty. As such, Hughes (2013) talked of the social media platforms as particularly useful communication avenues for food, fashion and homeware sales, offers and promotions.

Apparently, the fact that Facebook is a major social media avenue means that Sainsburys Supermarkets Limited can exploit it to market its products. It can help influence and determine the number of people that get access to major online advertisements. Additionally, through publicizing the company's logo and theme colors, the company can build on its brands. The ultimate advantages of Facebook are that there are significant opportunities for growing the online PR which would greatly benefit the company.

Search Engine: Google

As already mentioned in Task 2, 97% of the UK population use Google as their default search engine. This means that search engines are a major determinant of the number of people that get to view the company's websites and ads. Consequently, the optimization of Google AdWords and keywords for use on the Internet increases the User Generated Content and the online PR growth opportunities which favor the company's operations.

Relating all this to the Sainsburys Supermarkets Limited, it is evident that utilizing the Google search engine as a way of publicizing themselves is a sure way of enhancing their marketing. For instance, using keywords and AdWords such as grocery, clothing, and others related to their advertisements and products increases the chances of the customers finding the company's website, ads and other online campaigns which are a great enhancer of Sainsbury’s marketing strategy. In other w...