BUSI 436 Week 2 Internet Marketing Plan Outcome Paper 1 Example

Internet Marketing Plan, Part 1: Situation Analysis and Objectives for Harbor Leaf Tea Company

Business Description

Harbor Leaf Tea Company is a family-owned specialty tea business with two shops in a mid-sized coastal city. It sells about 120 loose-leaf teas, teaware and gift sets, and its staff are known for helping customers choose teas and brewing methods. Annual sales are about $1.1 million, of which only about 6 percent comes from the company's website, according to the owners' records. The website is a basic online store with product photos and prices, no blog or brewing guides, and an email list of about 2,000 customers that receives an occasional sale announcement. The company has an Instagram account with about 3,500 followers but posts irregularly.

The owners want online sales to become a meaningful second engine of growth, reaching customers beyond the two shops. This first outcome paper analyzes the company's situation and sets the objectives that the rest of the plan will pursue.

Planning Approach

Roberts and Zahay (2018) present the Internet marketing plan as a structured process that begins with a situation analysis and objectives and moves through strategies, tactics, implementation and measurement, with online and offline marketing integrated rather than run separately. Research supports that integrated view. Kannan and Li (2017) describe digital marketing as a process in which technology reshapes the environment, the touchpoints between firms and customers, and the outcomes firms pursue, so planning must consider how customers move across channels, not just which channels to use. For Harbor Leaf, that means treating the website, email, social media and the shops as parts of one customer experience.

Market Analysis

Interest in specialty tea has grown alongside broader interest in premium, healthful and sustainably sourced foods, and many specialty food buyers now purchase online. Online tea buyers tend to research before buying, reading descriptions, brewing guidance and reviews, because flavor is hard to judge without tasting. That favors sellers who can explain their products well. Harbor Leaf's in-store strength, knowledgeable staff, is precisely what online buyers lack and seek.

Sales records and a short, illustrative survey of 140 shop customers sort its buyers into three groups. Devoted enthusiasts visit monthly in search of rare teas. Gift buyers arrive mostly in November and December. A larger group of health-minded occasional drinkers keeps returning for the same handful of herbal and green teas. About 40 percent of surveyed customers said they would buy online if they could easily reorder favorites, and many enthusiasts said they would value brewing guides and tasting notes.

Current Online Performance

The company's website analytics, presented here as illustrative baselines, show about 6,000 visits a month, most of them from people who already know the shops and type the company's name into a search engine. About 1.6 percent of visits end in an order, and the average online order is about $55, higher than in the shops because online buyers often purchase gift sets. Fewer than one in five online buyers orders again within 90 days. Almost no traffic arrives from searches for specific teas or brewing questions, which suggests the site is invisible to the people most likely to become new online customers: those searching for a tea they have heard about or for help brewing it. Those searchers are exactly the customers the shops' staff convert so well in person. Reaching them online is the plan's central task. Email sale announcements produce a brief spike in orders and little else, and the Instagram account's posts reach mainly existing customers. In short, the online business currently serves people who already know Harbor Leaf rather than helping new customers find it.

Competitive Analysis

Harbor Leaf competes online with three kinds of sellers: large national tea brands with polished websites and subscription programs; small independent online tea shops, many with strong content and loyal communities; and general marketplaces that sell tea at low prices with little guidance. The national brands win on convenience and promotion, the independents on expertise and story, and the marketplaces on price. Harbor Leaf cannot match the national brands' budgets or the marketplaces' prices, but it can match or exceed the independents on expertise, with the added credibility of physical shops and a local reputation.

Trust is a key battleground. Bart et al. (2005) learned that what makes shoppers trust a site, whether privacy and security promises, dependable delivery, easy navigation or sound advice, varies with the kind of site and the kind of visitor, and that this trust guides whether visitors decide to purchase. For a specialty food seller, advice and reliable fulfillment are the trust builders that matter most, and both are strengths Harbor Leaf already has offline.

SWOT Analysis

Objectives

Drawing on the SWOT, the plan sets five objectives for the next twelve months, with current figures shown as illustrative baselines.

These objectives follow the textbook's guidance that objectives be specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound. They also connect to each other: content and search will raise traffic, a better site and trust signals will raise conversion, and email and reorder tools will raise repeat purchases.

Implications for Strategy

The analysis points to three strategic priorities. First, the company must become findable by people who do not yet know it, which means content and search built around the teas and questions customers search for. Second, it must convert more visitors, which means bringing its staff's guidance onto the website through tasting notes, brewing advice, reviews and decision tools. Third, it must keep the customers it wins, which means making reordering easy and staying in touch through useful email. Each priority draws on a strength, expert staff and a loyal base, to address a weakness, a thin online presence, which is the kind of match a SWOT analysis is meant to reveal. The threats shape the priorities too: because national brands and marketplaces will always outspend or underprice a family business, Harbor Leaf should not compete on reach or price but on the guidance and freshness its competitors cannot easily copy.

Next Steps

The second outcome paper will define the target segments and positioning that the objectives require, and the third will set out the tactics, budget and measurement plan. Together they will form the final Internet Marketing Plan in Week 8.

References

Bart, Y., Shankar, V., Sultan, F., & Urban, G. L. (2005). Are the drivers and role of online trust the same for all web sites and consumers? A large-scale exploratory empirical study. Journal of Marketing, 69(4), 133-152. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.2005.69.4.133

Kannan, P. K., & Li, H. (2017). Digital marketing: A framework, review and research agenda. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(1), 22-45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2016.11.006

Roberts, M. L., & Zahay, D. (2018). Internet marketing: Integrating online and offline strategies (4th ed.). Cengage Learning.