Internet market recommendation for Sprout Stack company

Name

Institution

Internet market recommendation for Sprout Stack company

Introduction

Sprout Stack company is a firm producing agricultural products through technological means of vertical hydroponic farms in upcycled shipping containers. It has a website that provides information on how it operates, its produce, benefits of the product to the human body, and the contact information. The website is an appropriate medium for internet marketing as it reaches a broader market through the internet. The internet beats all other mediums of promotion due to up to date availability information and content (Olanrewaju & Deborah, 2016).

Right Medium

However, the company should apply the use of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) method ensures that the website and the company are easily identified by the search engines, making it available for interested consumers. The objective of the process is to increase consumer awareness of the products produced. SEO involves the creation of relevant content, with keywords and phrases that consumers are used to and which is more likely to be used when searching for information. It introduces more internet content and challenge page ranking of search engines (Xing & Lin, 2006). Therefore, any consumers who wish to have fresh produce and searches through online search engines will find the sprout stack website and could purchase from them.

Within the SEO, a link can be provided for a video, providing evidence for the information given on the company’s website. This information includes not applying any pesticides in production and producing locally. The proof in the SEO will aim to convince consumers of the fresh and safe products for consumption with no chemical additives. Providing a video that explains the process along with shots of the process and environment for growth shows enormous flexibility of the business and is fully revealed through watching.

Right Customers

Finding the right consumers increases the chances of marketing and marketplace success (Hoffman et al., 2010). Sprout stack customers produce agricultural products that are consumed by vegetarians and a healthy product recommended for healthy living. Therefore, the consumption of the products is high, especially among people of various ages, the young children and old. With the rise in diseases caused by the intake of a lot of fatty and processed foods, most individuals are moving to green consumption. People are purchasing more vegetables and reducing the intake of animal products and processed foods. Therefore, the target market for the company should be vegetarians, and individuals are moving to green consumption.

With the identification of products to consume, the readily available medium is the internet, where they would search for vegetable products of their choice. Since vegetarians only consume greens and those green products are perishable, shopping will be more frequent. Technological advancement has also increased the need for e-commerce where consumers order online, and delivery is made to them. This technique makes consumers purchase more through digital means. Examining the acquisition, usage, and disposition determines the decision points of consumers in finding sustainability in consumption (Ruchs et al., 2011). The consumers’ decision before a purchase is to get safe products hence find sources with quality products. The continuous availability of the product is also a factor considered. After using the internet medium to find suppliers, the consumers gauge the level of satisfaction from the consumption of the products. Therefore, the company should aim at making products available and providing quality according to consumers’ expectations.

Right messages

The SEO will involve the operations of the company and the methods used in producing its products. Since the objective of marketing is to create awareness, the message will be informational. The informational message presents facts on the product and production methods used in clear and concrete terms (Tafesse & Wien, 2018). The aim is to inform the consumers of the benefits they will receive after the consumption of vegetable products. Therefore, in the SEO, keywords such as healthy, safe, free from pesticides, and locally produced will directly lead the consumers to the company’s website. Apart from the benefits, the SEO will include the process of production, from planting, fertilizers used, watering, harvesting, and packaging, to when it gets to the consumers. This information is of interest to vegetarians and also the consumers wishing to go green. The objective of going green is to have a healthy living; hence the procedure for production is necessary.

Since the SEO is also providing the link to a video that shows the process, the consumers will be more interested in the products. As searches are done on vegetable products, Sprout stack becomes among the first to be found, and the information provided satisfies the target consumers, which leads to purchases. The internet offers adequate access for customers and enables immediate communication with the target consumers (Corley et al., 2013). To create awareness of the vegetable products to vegetarians, the production process is essential in guaranteeing no use of pesticides or chemicals that may affect the body or lead to other diseases.

Budget

SEO involves onsite and offsite scope. Onsite includes activities such as the creation of content required by the company and technical responsibilities such as site optimization. The offsite roles involve managing the website, seeking out links, and publishing for social use, to make the content available for target consumers. Also, the site needs to be audited periodically to prevent hacks and ensure consumers have access to the site. These activities can be done by an internal SEO specialist, or one can be outsourced. However, for Sprout stack company, hiring an internal specialist may be more convenient due to the familiarization of the company and the objectives set. This option will help in creating content that aligns with the aims of the company, and also to find more consumers.

The budget will focus on salary for hiring and costs required for maintenance and acquisition of resources to keep the site running. The budget is for the whole year, incorporating the yearly salary for the SEO specialist hired.

Activity Costs Hiring an SEO Specialist Advertisement $100 Interview $200 Orientation $100 Total Hiring cost $400

Salary $60,000

Costs for Resources Seeking out links $400 Publishing social $300 Web Video $600 Total Cost for Resources $1,300

Total Budget for SEO $61,700

Measure, Evaluate and Define Success

Effectiveness and efficiency are measures of success. Effectiveness is the foundation of success, while efficiency is a requirement for survival after the achievement of success (Gao, 2010). Measurement of the effectiveness of the website will be done by checking the website’s statistics. The data includes the number of visits and the duration on the website. The number of visits shows the number of people interested in vegetable products and who google searched to get to the site through the SEO developed. The number of visits shows the measurement of awareness created to target consumers, which can also be transformed into sales. Duration on the website also shows the content that the viewer could have acquired. Reading through the content and watching the video provides information on the products and company. The duration may measure the number of individuals who took the time to read through the material. Also, the top site pages provided by google in traffic volumes will show the effectiveness of the SEO content and keyword use.

The outcome can be evaluated through the use of goal completion rate metrics. This technique measures the SEO efficiency by comparing the website number of visits, before and after its development. If the number of visits has increased, it shows that the website has effectively performed the objective to create awareness to more people. In the long term, acquisition, satisfaction, and retention can be used to evaluate the efficiency of a method. This metric shows the rate at which information gets to targeted consumers; the potential consumers are transformed to customers and how they have been retained to keep purchasing from the company. These metrics show the effect of SEO on achieving the creation of awareness goals.

The objective of internet marketing is to create awareness for a larger population of the benefit of consumption of the company’s products and also increasing sales of a company through provision of internet purchasing (Grubor & Jaksa, 2018). In this case, the company aims to create awareness, thus, measuring success will involve calculations of the ROI using the net profit and the total investment. This formula will be the net profit divide by the total investment used. When the return on investment is positive, it shows that the internet method was useful in making individuals aware of the existence of the company as well as the quality of the product, which then led to higher purchases.

Combining online and offline marketing strategies provides efficient synergetic effect which creates an objective outcome (Bobalo, 2018). Offline marketing should involve a tracking response using offline campaigns. It can be done through creation of a URL for a campaign in that a person visits the website; it leads them to the campaign, which then reflects through the URL. The metric will keep information on the visits and the conversion rate of potential consumers to actual customers.

References

Bobalo, O. (2018). FUTURE OF OFFLINE MARKETING AHEAD OF THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE MARKETING. Baltic Journal Of Economic Studies, 4(3), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.30525/2256-0742/2018-4-3-1-7Corley, J., Jourdan, Z., & Ingram, W. (2013). Internet marketing: a content analysis of the research. Electronic Markets, 23(3), 177-204. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-012-0118-yGao, Y. (2010). Measuring marketing performance: a review and a framework. The Marketing Review, 10(1), 25-40. https://doi.org/10.1362/146934710x488924Grubor, A., & Jaksa, O. (2018). Internet Marketing as a Business Necessity. Interdisciplinary Description Of Complex Systems, 16(2), 265-274. https://doi.org/10.7906/indecs.16.2.6

Hoffman, D., Kopalle, P., & Novak, T. (2010). The “Right” Consumers for Better Concepts: Identifying Consumers High in Emergent Nature to Develop New Product Concepts. Journal Of Marketing Research, 47(5), 854-865. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.47.5.854Olanrewaju, O., & Deborah, O. (2016). Evaluating the use of internet as a medium for marketing and advertising messages in Nigeria. African Journal Of Marketing Management, 8(2), 12-19. https://doi.org/10.5897/ajmm2015.0459Ruchs, M., Rose, R., Naylor, R., & Caitline, J. (2011). Journal of Research for Consumers. Journal Of Research For Consumers, 1(19). Retrieved 12 June 2020, from.

Tafesse, W., & Wien, A. (2018). Using message strategy to drive consumer behavioral engagement on social media. Journal Of Consumer Marketing, 35(3), 241-253. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm-08-2016-1905Xing, B., & Lin, Z. (2006). The impact of search engine optimization on online advertising market. Proceedings Of The 8Th International Conference On Electronic Commerce The New E-Commerce: Innovations For Conquering Current Barriers, Obstacles And Limitations To Conducting Successful Business On The Internet – ICEC ’06. https://doi.org/10.1145/1151454.1151531