My company background and marketing audit concerned The Winehouse, an independent wine retail warehouse in Shoreham. Studying their current marketing initiatives revealed four key ideas for improvement: updating and maintaining the website and Facebook page; making better use of the customer e-mail database; starting a blog, and supplementing the blog with e-mailshots and a Twitter account.

The Winehouse’s website and Facebook page are both easy to find on the web; however there is very little, if any, overall ‘look’ on the two platforms, the only common feature is the logo: The website has an empty ‘News and Specials’ section. The latest post on the Facebook page is dated 30th September 2015 even though there has since been a Christmas wine tasting event. The company’s ad-hoc email campaign is an ineffective way of utilising the existing customer base. There is no Twitter account associated with The Winehouse, another part of the jigsaw which is missing. Essentially, there is no marketing strategy at present, resulting in social media platforms that are under-utilised and little evidence of branding, which at best will put off potential customers and at worst, could damage the reputation of the company. Indeed ‘a poor website undermines your business’ credibility in the eyes of your customer’ (Ross, 2011).

Chaffey’s second channel, Online PR (see below), is concerned with how a company ‘leverages the network effect of the internet’ (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012, p 506). This can be achieved by reaching out to influencers in the market, be they journalists, bloggers, celebrities or industry experts; by responding to the customers that do find you; and by paying attention to your competitors and what they are up to.
Chaffey’s six digital marketing channels (Chaffey, 2011)

In this series of blogs I will use Chaffey’s six channels as a starting point for investigating what The Winehouse could be doing to improve its digital marketing strategy. What goals should this strategy aim to achieve? What will be their targets and how will they measure these? And what is the competition doing? To begin with, let’s have a look at Majestic Wine Warehouses Ltd (2016).

Majestic, which competes in the same market sector and actually has a branch not too far from The Winehouse, combines the elements of website, Facebook, Twitter and email newsletters successfully, demonstrating a clever use of some of the six digital marketing channels described by digital marketing guru Dave Chaffey.
is another successful strand of Majestic Wine Warehouse’s online presence (read their latest blog here Majestic’s Burns Night blog, posted 22nd January 2016) and blogging is an activity which I would recommend is included in a digital marketing strategy for The Winehouse as ‘when managed effectively, blogs can be a valuable addition to the company’s overall marketing strategy’ (Singh et al, 2008). I will investigate blogging further – in an upcoming blog!

Of course the first place a customer will look for you online is likely to be your website. An out of date website, or one which doesn’t allow your customer to interact with the business, is a trick definitely missed. However, to misquote Kevin Kostner, ‘if you build it, they will come’ is not going to give social media success unless the website loops between Facebook and Twitter, and back again, perhaps via a blog (Powills, cited by Brandau, 2010).

According to Lumpkin and Dess (2004), ‘customer feedback, expertise and entertainment programming are potential sources of competitive advantage’. Whilst entertainment programming is not relevant to the wine trade (or at least not at the level of The Winehouse), the other types of content identified are. Maintaining the existing digital channels and strengthening the online presence by adding a blog and starting to use Twitter should increase traffic to the website and thus increase the potential sales and visitors to The Winehouse (because we mustn’t forget that we are promoting a physical retail outlet as well).

This blog has looked briefly at the current marketing offering of The Winehouse, and assesses the need for a digital marketing strategy for the company. My future blogs will discuss and expand upon the following areas, as my proposal is developed:

• CRM: upselling, cross-selling, loyalty programmes and e-mail marketing (Chaffey 5)
• Website SEO and content, mobile marketing (Chaffey 1 and 4)
• Social media, Web 2.0, Facebook and Twitter (Chaffey 6)
• Blogging and the blogosphere (Chaffey 6)
• Marketing planning and schedules, future goals and strategies, LinkedIn, Web 3.0 (Chaffey 3)

References

Brandau, M. (2010) A site to behold. Nation’s Restaurant News. September 2010, p 46

Chaffey’s six digital marketing channels (2011) [Online] <http://www.smartinsights.com/reach/attachment/digital-marketing-channels/> Accessed 23rd January 2016

Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012) Digital Marketing Strategy, Implementation and Practice. 5th ed. Harlow:Pearson

Lumpkin, G.T. and Dess, G. G. (2004) E-Business Strategies and Internet Business Models: How the Internet Adds Value. Organizational Dynamics. Vol. 33, pp 161 – 173

Majestic Wine Warehouses Ltd (2015) Blog [Online] <http://blog.majestic.co.uk/haggis-wine-whisky-matching-burns-night> Accessed 23rd January 2016

Ross, H. (2011) How an out of date website can hurt your business [Online] <http://www.thewhir.com/blog/how-an-out-of-date-website-can-hurt-your-business> Accessed 23rd January 2016

Singh, T., Veron-Jackson, L. and Cullinane, J. (2008) Blogging: A new play in your marketing game plan. Business Horizons. Vol. 51, pp 281 – 292

The Winehouse. [Online] <http://www.thewinehouse.co.uk/> Accessed 23rd January 2016