Data-Driven Marketing

Technological advancements are critical in contemporary commercial activities, and reaching out to clients is no exception (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). Digital marketing influences business enterprises’ communication patterns and analogies to advertise, attract, and sell products and services in the virtual environment. According to Ryan (2016), business organisations require a digital marketing approach to gain opportunities and remain competitive in the dynamic market. Additionally, internet-based business transactions help investors with critical data for making informed decisions and repositioning to attract a large market population. As a digital marketing consultant, I will use qualitative techniques to gather and analyse data obtained from the Unilever website and provide recommendations to the organisation’s owner for future strategic marketing plans.

1. Overview of the Target Groups Using Personas Professional Tools

Unilever is a global business enterprise that targets diverse consumer groups, for instance, beauty and wellbeing, nutrition, and individual and home care products (Unilever, 2023). Therefore, this report utilises personas professional tools to design hypothetical user groups with unique demographic specifications, customer choice and preference, motivations, and their underlying history in the customer cycle.

Persona 1:	Managing Director Anti-gigger Campaign Organization, AgCO
Photo:
Fictional Name:	Madusa Faki
Job specifications:	Overall program manager, AgCo
Demographics:	·       Male ·       45 years old ·       Married ·       Father of two children ·       Has a Master of Science in Project Management.
Goals and Responsibilities	He is focused and passionate about humanity with a strong democratic leadership quality. His main concern is ensuring service to the less fortunate and marginalised people. Spends his working hours: ·       Requesting and reviewing field reports, ·       researchers on material outsourcing avenues, and ·       seeks donations for the aid of the gigger-stricken population
Location:	Sub-Saharan Africa
Income:	$30,000-$50,000
Motivations	·       Wants to elevate the lives of less privileged ·       Wants a healthy and secure society
Mode of Information Acquisition	Online articles Websites and Government publications

Persona 2:	Online buyer
	Fictional Name: Mellissa Adrian
Demographics: ·       Female ·       25 years old ·       Single ·       Undergraduate student	Social networks  ·       Facebook ·       Twitter ·       Snapchat ·       LinkedIn
Location: New York	Motivations ·       Wants fancy items ·       Likes high-end products
Biggest challenges	·       Concerned about the environment ·       Research-oriented

Objectives of the Website

The organisation’s website deploys strategic marketing techniques that aim at various clients in the international market. An insight into Unilever’s website pinpoints customer-centred interaction tools that address the organisation’s four-critical objective structures as depicted in the SMART protocol. The organisation outlines its SMART objectives in ‘The Unilever Compass for Sustainable Growth (Unilever, 2023)’ blueprint detailing the roadmap towards society’s purpose.

Specific goals. The organisation’s blueprint is specific in its four-agenda objectives in the international market. First, the organisation focuses on building a high-end portfolio in five distinct clusters: beauty and wellbeing, individual care, dietary measures, home care, and ice cream (Unilever, 2023). Second, Unilever is specific in winning the market through innovative, customer-oriented, and exceptional items generated through innovation. Third, the organisation anticipates penetrating lucrative international markets; China, Asian countries, and the United States of America (How we are driving growth through our five strategic choices, 2022). Last, Unilever anticipates utilising contemporary marketing strategies to gain a competitive advantage.

Measurable goals. The organisation underscores the scales and values by which it anticipates selling its products and contributing towards its stipulated objectives. For instance, Unilever plans to double the number of products sold to the community that enhances positive dietary standards by 2025. Besides, the company anticipates reducing the kilocalories contained in the sold ice cream by ninety-five per cent by 2025.

Attainable objectives. Based on the figures captured in the organisation’s blueprint, it is practical for Unilever to anticipate providing a living to the small, medium, and large-scale farmers through products and services sold to it (Unilever, 2023). The organisation can ensure the representation of diverse people in society in its adverts.

Realistic goals. Through its internationalisation strategy, it is practical for Unilever to expand its market scope in China, India, and the United States of America since it has establishments within the regions (How we are driving growth through our five strategic choices, 2022). The expansion of the business activities to the underscored market zones requires the willingness of the organisation owing to its financial and material strength.

Time Bound targets. Reviewing the organisation’s objectives reveals the timeframe for the specific targets. For instance, the company foresees massive product sales amounting to $1.5 billion per year on organic products by 2025 (Unilever, 2023). Besides, Unilever anticipates achieving five per cent workforce inclusivity by 2025. This target implies that the organisation works against time in realising its outlined objectives.

2. Website’s Data Gathering and Analyses

How Data was Gathered

This report captures data drawn from Unilever’s website through unobstructed information-gathering techniques. Since I anticipate providing real-time and unbiased digital marketing recommendations to the organisation’s owner, according to Burles and Bally (2018), non-interrogative data collection methods are essential. After logging into the company’s website, I familiarised myself with the structure and compartmentalisation of the website. Using my target digital marketing objectives for the research, I deployed qualitative data mining strategies by examining the existing consumer purchasing data, the historical and current organisation’s initiatives, and customer narratives within the website. I counter-checked the company’s underlying financial reports, market surveys, and consumer purchasing records. Apart from the secondary data, I observed Unilever’s product positioning in the digital space and captured the strengths and shortcomings using modern digital marketing strategies (as illustrated in Table 2: Appendix). Last, I collected the organisation’s regional sales within the various market zones.

What Data was Gathered

According to my predesigned research questions (as seen in Table 1; Appendix), I gathered various data from the organisation’s website, including; –

• Direct marketing information
• Data on the variety of products advertised on the platform
• Contractor and supplier details
• Customer satisfaction indicators
• Personal and
• Demographic buyer information

How the Data was Analyzed

Qualitative data analyses entail various steps to organise information from the raw form and make them meaningful for the research topic (Akinyode & Khan, 2018). First, I logged all the details I obtained from the organisation’s website into a data entry sheet. This included my feelings, dissatisfactions, descriptions, and insights concerning the overall encounter with Unilever’s digital marketing platform compared to other high-end companies’ websites. Second, I sorted the information into a logical and refined version to generate critical data concerning my observations and statistical recordings. Third, I made an in-depth representation of the facts and supplemented them with descriptions to underscore the strengths and weaknesses in the information gathering. This phase is a vignette stage which Akinyode and Khan (2018) posit as an informative stage that ensures the credibility of the research objectives. Fourth, I coded the information into the various digital marketing tools, including consumer engagement, purchasing behaviour data, consumer feedback, customer diversity, customer awareness, and time consciousness. These data categories formed the critical themes for analysing Unilever’s digital marketing platform.

I gathered the underlying statistical data relevant to the research questions from the website’s information centre. Even though Unilever’s digital marketing platform does not provide real-time purchasing patterns and behaviour, I analysed the current expert estimates and previous year’s sales values to compare the marketing posterity. I organised various sales and customer statistics based on the approximate values and the previous financial records. Additionally, I navigated through the organisation’s underlying news updates in the last three months to gain insight into real-time commercial activities. Last, I used the statistics to graphically analyse the sales trends for the year 2023 and the previous year, 2022, for a progress comparison; however, the statistics for 2023 are from analyses of independent experts and might not bear the organisation’s proof.

From a qualitative research perspective, I analysed the information concerning the various digital marketing tools I observed on Unilever’s website. Using a predesigned checklist, I analysed each component’s indicator structures to ascertain their presence on the website. For instance, I recorded the use of any artificial intelligence tools by checking any popping messages on logging into the website. After that, I carefully observed any message from the host informing me about further directions on the product location; however, I still needed to receive this. From this analysis, I concluded that Unilever’s website did not deploy artificial intelligence in its marketing strategy and was awarded 1 point for monotonous system navigation (see Table 2: Appendix). I did these comparative analyses for the other digital marketing tools I included in my web checklist.

3. Data Presentation and Recommendations

Data Presentation

Graph 1. Unilever’s Digital Marketing tools

Graph 2. Analyses of experts’ sales estimates for the various quarters of the year 2023 (see Figure 1: Appendix B)

Graph 3. Unilever’s Sale Values for the year 2022

Recommendations Based on the Analysis

According to Chaffey and Smith (2022), digital marketing requires integrating the modern state of the art with traditional product advertising methodologies. The realisation of a customer-oriented, simple to use and secure online marketing website demands a strategic planning layout, customer behaviour analysis, and the implementation of practical online marketing tools to be effective. The online marketing platform should ensure effective planning and technology optimisation to gain a significant market margin (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2022). My recommendations are based on the results of the digital marketing platform analyses, the shortfalls, and the omission of the traditional purchasing techniques as follows; –

First, introduce online marketing campaign strategies for the digital marketing website; for instance, email and Twitter campaigns. According to López García et al. (2019), generational platforms that utilise information in databases provide various organisations with diverse customer bases. The campaign strategies should focus on users with various demographic considerations, including age, gender, economic status, and social background. Twitter has an extensive global usage, with many users sharing various information from one region to another (Bali et al., 2017). Through Twitter accounts, prominent people, companies, and business enterprises share tweets of 140 characters in length to a large following from society. Since Unilever does not utilise Twitter as its digital marketing tool, I recommend the organisation design a database that captures and shares information with Twitter users. This will encourage Mellissa Adrian to attract her Twitter followers through short tweets. Besides, the organisation should collaborate with email firms such as Gmail to introduce popping advertisement messages to the various users in the international market (Strauss & Frost, 2019). E-marketing entails interactions in various internet-based platforms. This technological introduction of customer information in the database enhances direct marketing critical to the planning and analysing of marketing trends and patterns (Tapp et al., 2014). Direct marketing strategies shift the organisation’s focus to real-time consumers than designing various product brands. Unilever will focus on customer loyalty programs based on the underlying digital information while attracting a significant population attached to the primary customer.

Second, the organisation’s digital marketing specialist should focus on designing particular online purchasing actions; for instance, Search Engine Marketing; SEM. Based on my analysis, Unilever’s marketing website does not deploy online purchasing options and quick links towards their digital purchasing activities, as seen in Tab.2: Appendix A. This shortcoming is disadvantageous to the hypothetical client, Madusa Faki, who feels monotonous searching for the detergents to purchase for the anti-gigger campaigns in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nyagadza (2020) states that search engine optimisation strategies provide practical visibility to the organisation and enhance the unique identification of various corporate brands in digital platforms. Besides, search engines enhance customer interaction and engagement with the organisation’s online adverts.

Third, adopt artificial intelligence and data mining technology to advance customer data, perceive consumer behaviour, and infer product information the website users. Artificial intelligence mimics human actions to categorise consumer data and targets various audiences through system-generated actions (Theodoridis & Gkikas, 2019). Since customer purchasing details comprise various information that needs assembling and coding into meaningful actions, artificial intelligence utilises data mining tools. According to Witten et al. (2017), data mining codes every fragment of information generated through algorithms, reorganises them into clusters and transforms the information into meaningful categories. Therefore, Unilever’s digital marketing specialist will retrieve and analyse all the customer behaviour details and use them for planning and product modifications.

Last, Unilever has a critical marketing tool, a website, that provides and displays the organisation’s products to customers globally; however, it must strengthen its positioning strategies. Peter and Dalla Vecchia (2021) posits that websites provide an opportunity for brand development, customer sourcing, and business-to-business, B2B and business-to-customer, B2C communication channel. Mobile marketing channels deploy client-attractive strategies to ensure users are more engaged while navigating the digital marketing platform (Rowles, 2017). The organisation should deploy an interactive item visualisation to compensate for the need for physical engagement with the displayed products. For practical virtual experience, the visualisation technology should provide options for zooming, rotation, and combination with other attractive materials (Dudkina & Ellis, 2022). The display of images in 3-D influences the customers’ experience with the products and enhances sales. This recommendation will strengthen the first marketing tool illustrated in Table 2: Appendix A.

In summary, digital marketing requires a combination of traditional and modern technological advancements to gain a competitive advantage. Even though Unilever deploys an internet-based platform and website towards its marketing strategy, the organisation requires technological advancements to attract a large consumer following and increase its sales in the international market. A comparative qualitative analysis of the company’s website reveals the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities that it can utilise to enhance customer satisfaction. The website lacks effective product visualisation techniques and external purchasing links and does not include email marketing and artificial intelligence technology mechanisms towards its clients. As a result, I recommend the introduction of SEM, email marketing, artificial intelligence, and interactive product visualisation techniques to improve the customer experience with the products and increase sales.

References

Akinyode, B. F., & Khan, T. H. (2018). Step-by-step approach for qualitative data analysis. International Journal of Built Environment and Sustainability, 5(3), 163-173.

Bali, R., Sarkar, D., & Sharma, T. (2017). Learning social media analytics with R. Birmingham: Packt Publishing Ltd.

Burles, M. C., & Bally, J. M. (2018). Ethical, practical, and methodological considerations for unobtrusive qualitative research about personal narratives shared on the internet. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1), 1-52.

Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2022). Digital marketing excellence: planning, optimising and integrating online marketing. London: Taylor & Francis.

Chaffey, D., Smith, P. R., & Smith, P. R. (2019). Digital marketing. London: Pearson uk.

Decker, A. (2022, December 27). The Ultimate Guide to Brand Awareness.https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/brand-awareness

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How we are driving growth through our five strategic choices. (2022, July 29). https://www.unilever.co.uk/news/2022/how-were-driving-growth-through-our-five-strategic-choices/

López García, J. J., Lizcano, D., Ramos, C. M., & Matos, N. (2019). Digital marketing actions that achieve a better attraction and loyalty of users: An analytical study. Future Internet, 11(6), 1-16.

Milena. (2022, April 29). E-commerce Product Descriptions and Their Impact on SEO. https://delante.co/ecommerce-product-descriptions-and-their-impact-on-seo/

Nyagadza, B. (2020). Search engine marketing and social media marketing predictive trends. Journal of Digital Media & Policy, 1-18.

Peter, M. K., & Dalla Vecchia, M. (2021). The digital marketing toolkit: a literature review for the identification of digital marketing channels and platforms. New trends in business information systems and technology: Digital innovation and digital business transformation, 251-265.

Rowles, D. (2017). Mobile marketing: how mobile technology is revolutionising marketing, communications and advertising. London: Kogan Page Publishers.

Ryan, D. (2016). Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. London: Kogan Page Publishers.

Strauss, J., & Frost, R. (2019). E-marketing (8th ed.). London: Pearson.

Tapp, A., Whitten, I., & Housden, M. (2014). Principles of Direct Database & Digital Marketing. London: Pearson Education.

Theodoridis, P. K., & Gkikas, D. C. (2019). How artificial intelligence affects digital marketing. Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism: 7th ICSIMAT 2018 (pp. 1319-1327). Athenian Riviera, Greece: Springer International Publishing.

Unilever. (2023, April 24). https://www.unilever.com/planet-and-society/health-and-wellbeing/strategy-and-goals/

Walsh, M. (2019, April 12). Redefining The Role Visuals Play In Your Marketing Strategy. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2019/04/12/redefining-the-role-visuals-play-in-your-marketing-strategy/?sh=21e429445133

Witten, I. H., Frank, E., Hall, M. A., & Pal, C. J. (2017). Data mining: Practical machine learning tools and techniques (Fourth ed.). Morgan Kaufmann.

Appendix

Table 1. The Research Questions, Indicators, and the Comments

Table 2. A survey Checklist for the various characteristics of the digital marketing website based on research questions and their implications for the consumer behaviour

 Appendix B

Figure 1. Data on the expert’s sales growth estimate for the year 2023 (Unilever, 2023).

Figure 2. Data of Unilever’s full-year results for 2022 (Unilever, 2023)