WMG

The Guide to Digital Marketing Campaign Project for

China’s SMEs

Project Proposal
Peifeng Zhang 1060144
2011/3/1
Content
The Guide to Digital Marketing Campaign Project .......................................................................... 2
for China’s SMEs .............................................................................................................................. 2
1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 2
2. The Research Objective ........................................................................................................ 4
3. The Background Literature Review ....................................................................................... 4
4. Overall Methodology ............................................................................................................ 8
5. Data Collection & Analysis Strategy...................................................................................... 9
6. Resource Requirements........................................................................................................ 9
7. Significant Risks .................................................................................................................... 9
8. Dissertation Structure ............................................................................................................. 10
9. Project Plan ............................................................................................................................. 11
10. Reference List ........................................................................................................................ 12
11. Reading List ........................................................................................................................... 13

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 The Guide to Digital Marketing Campaign Project

for China’s SMEs

1. Introduction

In 2008, the economic crisis brought a huge influence to the world. As well as in
China, especially in the southeast, 80% percent of the factories there are depends on
the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer).After the financial crisis, 30% were
bankruptcy; and 20% of those factories are keeping suffering by now. Despite of the
large companies have sustainable contractors, like FOXCONN. The crisis makes the
owners of the rest factories have to change. Apparently, those factories have great
productivity; the management teams have enough experience to cut the cost and
control the quality. What is the main reason shut down those factories? Most of the
millionaires agree that lack of independence takes the most responsibility. For the
OEM factories, there are only two things they need to do: waiting for the order and
manufacturing for the order. All the business fairs are based on the requirement of the
company which provide the orders. Without direct contacting to the end customers,
any false from the company provide the orders could cause the glut for the
manufacturers. Because of low profit margin, the large amount of stock may kill the
manufacturers easily. Thus, the manufacturing type businesses need to change from
the pull strategy to push.

Oppositely, the China’s economy has continued maintain sound development. Same
as the domestic market, it has been expanded drastically. The demand of China’s
people is keeping growing in variety aspects. Not only the amount, but also the
quality of demand is increasing. As the people in China are getting wealthy, the
standard of living is increasing, they tend to consume goods with good quality rather
than satisfy the primary needs. Most economists have reached the consensus that
China will be the largest worldwide market. Domestic sales of commodities originally
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produced for exports have been the trend between those small medium enterprises.
However, as the matter of the massive competition and copyright, the profit margin
still remains low. Branding and marketing can still solve this problem.

However, it is not as easy as it seems like to run marketing in China. The most
significant challenge is the cash. China definitely, has been one of the most expensive
countries to advertise via the television. The last news said that the price of
advisement during the live coverage of the Oscar is 175 million dollar per 30 seconds
which is as the same as the Chinese New Year Party via CCTV (China Central
Television). Moreover, the price of advertisement between CCTV news shows, “Xin
Wen Lian Bo”, is more than 1 million dollar per second, which is three times great as
the price of the advertisement during the Super Bowl. (Xinhuanet, 2011) As well as
the newspaper, the price for advertisement is definitely not for the small medium
enterprises. Therefore, for the SMEs the options to run marketing via the television
newspaper are not acceptance. Because of the population and the country land area,
radio and mail are not effective to build up the brand or run marketing.

As the rise of the new media, the new media has become very much a part of people’s
life globally. Although the popularizing rate of the internet in China got behind with
the developed countries, 1/3 population of Chinese is using internet, and the number
is keeping increasing with a high rate. In the term of popularity rate, to run digital or
internet marketing is more than satisfaction. Moreover, the cost to run the marketing
campaign, including PR (Public relation) , Promotion, CSM (customer relation
management) and any other activities is much lower than in the physical world.
Within the internet marketing, there is a Chinese fashion clothing brand named Vancl
has reached 25 million dollar revenue in 2 years. The company was established by
few e-business specialist and marketers. The successes prove that it is possible for the

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SMEs to gain amount of profit in China. All they need is a strong brand and proper
marketing campaign. However, most of those manufacturing business even have no
formal marketing department. They need the guidance urgently. Although the internet
marketing has been noticed by the western specialist around 1995, and they have
developed maturity theory and framework, it cannot be a guide for the Chinese SMEs
to apply directly. There are three mainly differences from the western countries, the
value, culture, and political system. As the consequence, the consumer behavior must
be different from the western world; and the companies need to behave under the
Chinese system.

2. The Research Objective

This research is aim to provide a basic pattern or idea for the Chinese SMEs of
manufacturing type to create and build up the brand image. Mainly to reach four
objectives:

1. To identify the main element can influence the marketing campaign project,
including the character of new media, the perspective from customers and the
political issues.
2. To identify the key success factors in China to run internet marketing project.
3. To create a pattern/framework for the target to run the digital marketing project.
4. To identify the main factors need to concern during the digital marketing project.

3. The Background Literature Review

New media, as the words themselves, there should be different attributes from the
traditional media. Within comparing, there are four main new attributes: Essentially,
the information distribution channel is no longer one way, people at the end or in the

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middle of the channel could send and receive message at any time. In other words, it
is freer to communicate with one other if in the same network with you. Secondly,
new media do shortens the distance in the real world. Then, the convergence of digital
data can be stored in such devices with enormous capacity, such as laptops, memories
stick DVDs, or blue-ray. Thirdly, new media have attributes of producing publications
for everybody. Finally, it is that the new media distributes the information in a viral
way; the information could be transferred actively and the sources of information
keep increasing. (Caldwell, 2003) Nowadays, for a marketer, it is hard to be
successful; to simply add a few digital activities to their traditional plan is never
enough. Instead, marketers have to start from ground zero. They have to re-craft all
the plans which they once had. The new plan should depend on the features of the
new media and digital marketing. As the outcome, the marketers will receive a boost
from marketing renovation. Refers to the basic marketing principles, for instance,
positioning and segmentation, will remain. The new media will bring marketers a
brand new way to reach consumers and also engage them; Evolution is also founded
in the digital world as well. The pressures created by market forces help to evolve
towards the customer base. The customer may engage in favored brands continuously.
As the consequence, the marketing is keeping changing with consumers’ changing
behavior. Digital marketing plans will be constantly evolving and improving, based
on real-time data about what consumers are actually doing (Fenwick, 2008).

According to Scott, the rules of marketing have changed a lot. In the past time,
marketing is advertising simply; PR (Public Relation) is separated from marketing.
Therefore, the only thing for marketers to concern is how to do the advertising. They
need to make the advertising reach as many as people. Of course, creativity is vital, a
good advertising or trick could catch much attentions. And also because of the speed
of transferring message is slow, the impact of a advertising could last a long time. For
the advertising agencies, to win an award is much more important than serve for their
clients. (2010) Nowadays, the marketing has changed a lot. It is not as simple as
before, PR, sales, promotion and much more elements are combined together.
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Especially the PR, there is even not a clear border between marketing and PR. Within
the development of all the aspects of the world, people are smarter than before and
have the willing to take part in the marketing process. Therefore, as a marketer, needs
to consider more about the people. Unlikely push the information, marketing need to
deliver the message as people’s desire. As the advertising agency, they have to serve
their clients well rather than to win a prize. (Scott, 2010)

As the marketing channels have fragmented, marketing has been driven by media
selection. Internet has made the marketing principles address individual privacy more
closely. On the basis of four Ps (product, place, promotion and price), the personal has
been added, particularly for the digital marketing. (Rowan, 2002) Thus, in order to
run as successful E marketing campaign project have to be operate in a new way
based on both the characters of the new media and specific customer needs.

During the digital marketing process, Chaffey and Smith break the strategic process
for strategic Internet marketing into six parts: Situation Analysis, Objectives, Strategy,
Tactics, Actions and Control. The process is start from the situation analysis; in this
stage, the main task is to identify what is the current situation; it includes the analysis
about both internal and external; in specific, they are customer insight, E marketplace
SWOT, brand perception and the internal capabilities and resources. The second
procedure is to identify the objectives, Chaffy and Smith suggest to set the goal in 5
Ss: sell, serve, sizzle, speak and save. In specific, sell is the customer retention targets;
serve means the satisfaction of the customers; sizzle refers to the site stickiness and
visit duration; speak represent the number of engaged customers; and save shows the
quantified efficiency gains. Afterwards, it is to set up the strategy. Segmentation,
targeting poisoning and online value proposition need to be set; the tools should be
chosen as well, include web functionality, e-mail, IPTV and so on. The next move is
to find out how exactly do the businesses get there; it is the general guide of the
marketing project, in this stage the E-marketing mix needs to be chosen, detail of
contact strategy needs to be set, and the E-campaign initiative schedule need to be
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made. Then, it comes to the action stage; in this stage, every single detail need to be
confirmed, including the responsibilities and structure, internal resources and skills
and external agencies. The last step is the control, which is to monitor the running of
the project and response to the changes. ( 2008)

In order to deliver a proper marketing campaign project, seven critical factors need to
be concerned during the whole process: firstly, the campaign need to target the right
customers; then the company have to own the customer’s total experience; in the term
of inside of the company, they need to streamline the business process that impact the
customers; moreover, in order to deliver a better service, they should provide a 360 –
degree view of the customer relationship; furthermore, it requires the customer can
help themselves; and the project needs to deliver personalized service; finally, the
project should help to foster community. (Seybold, 1999) Moreover, the series
activities are all tend to deliever customer a impressed experience; and help to build
up or manage the customer relations. Thus, all those activities mentioned need to be
customer centrlized. (Chaffy, Ellis-Chadwick, Mayer, & Johnston, 2009)

However, it is not enough to stick the process on the strategic level. In practice,
during the tactics and actions stages, despite the elements noted by Chaffy and Smith,
the budget, resources, risk and organization need to be planed as well before the
project started. (Rosenau, 1998) Moreover, according to Harvey Maylor’s 4-D project
process model, the process should divide into four main parts: define it; design it; do
it; and develop it. (2010) Compare to the SOSTAC planning framework, the idea of
sustainable development is involved. For a marketing project, it is vital to look
forward. A successful marketing campaign has to contribute both in the present and
future. During the development stage, Harvey Myaylor suggests to review, learn and
justify. (Maylor, 2010) It is not fully integrated with the goals of marketing campaign;
we still need to justify it in the further work.

During the project, it is vital to integrate the risk management in to the project
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management process, particularly for the marketing project which has low power to
affect the external environment. Actually, risk, for lack of a better world, it is not a
negative element. There is no doubt which to take a risk is a dangerous thing. But the
risk also has upside, including both reward and innovation. Without it there would not
be successful project. (Damodaran, 2008) In theory, the project risk management
needs to be divided into five procedures: initiate, identify, assess, plan response
implement responses manage process. (Bartlett, 2004) But there is another concept
seems to not be only simplified the procedure but also more practical. The process
would focus on three phases: risk evaluation, risk reduction, and monitoring and
control. (Robins, 1993) This process can integrate into the 4-D model perfectly.

Even though we can create a perfect plan, the controlling of project execution is not
less deserving of attention. The project requires the control of performance, cost and
time. (Conrow, 2000) There are three processes named Cybernetic Control, Go/No-go
Controls and Postcontrol are introduced to guide us how to control the project in the
terms of physical asset, human resource and financial resource. (Meredith & Mantel,
2010)

4. Overall Methodology

The research is mainly to find out the China’s customers’ perspective on the on-line
marketing, government influence, key success and fail factors of China’s on-line
marketing. The methodology is mainly divided into four areas:
1. Basic rationale and justification
2. Preliminary survey of online marketing across Chinese internet users
3. Questionnaire-based structured interview with Marketing agency company
manager
4. Case studies – two current representatives of SMEs, one for fail and one for
success and the Advertisement Law of PRC.

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5. Data Collection & Analysis Strategy

The preliminary survey is going to hold across China’s internet users, who are age
between 18 and 35; In order to provide audit an easier experience, the survey will be
only contain nominal and ordinal method. The amount of available survey needs to
reach at least 50. Afterwards, the data is going to analysis by the software.

The interviewee is going to be the middle level director of Ogilvy China. The answer
will be summarized into essentials to provide the reference for the success and fail
factors of China’s online marketing.

The first case study is going to create by myself with my experience of the company I
have worked and running by my family, Which has fail to run the marketing several
times. The data and document can be achieved directly, for I use to be a part of the
marketing project. The second case study is from the successful story of Vancl. Main
source should be the internet and annual report of this company.

6. Resource Requirements

IBM SPSS Statics

7. Significant Risks

Since in the survey, there is no open question, the result may be limited.
Since the group of survey is not that big, the result may be not universality.
Since the interview is with the marketing agency director, the perspective may be
different from a integrated marketing department.
The survey and interview might be taken in Chinese, translation may cause
misunderstanding.

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8. Dissertation Structure

1. Introduction
1.1 Background to the current situation of China’s SMEs and media
1.2 Project objectives/research question(s)
2. Literature Review
2.1 Characters of new media
2.2 Strategic approach to run online marketing campaign
2.3 Project management approach
2.4 Marketing project management
3. Research Methodology
3.1 Basic rationale & justification
3.2 Detailed research design
4. Results
4.1 Preliminary Survey Results
4.2 Interview Results
4.3 Case Study – Fail online marketing campaign of Beijing Jian’an Culture Ltd.
4.4 Case Study – Successful online marketing campaign of Vancl
4.5 Case Study – Advertisement Law of PRC
5. Discussion
5.1 Identify the Key Factors Influence the China’s Online Marketing Campaign
5.2 Adapting Project Management Techniques to the Marketing Campaign
Process
5.3 Pointing the Main Factors Need to Be noted During the Project Management
6. A Online Marketing Campaign Framework for the Chinese SMEs
7. Conclusions
Note – the dissertation

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9. Project Plan

The Excel file is in the another attach

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10. Reference List

Bartlett, J. (2004). Project Risk Analysis and Management Guide. Buckinghamshire: APM.
Caldwell, J. T. (2003). New media: theories and practices of digitextuality. Routledge: New York.
Chaffy, D., & Smith, P. R. (2008). EMarketing Excellence: Planning and Optimizing Your Digital
Marketing. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Chaffy, D., Ellis-Chadwick, F., Mayer, R., & Johnston, K. (2009). Internet Marketing:
Strategy,Implementation and Practice. Rotolito Lombarda: Pearson Edication.
Conrow, E. H. (2000, 8 4). Why Project Risk Management. Retrieved 11 30, 2010, from
risk-services: http://www.risk-services.com/whyrm1.htm
Damodaran, A. (2008). Strtegic Risk Taking: a Framework for Risk Management. Ner Jersey:
Wharton School Publishing.
Fenwick, W. (2008). DigiMarketing:The Essential Guide to New Media & Digital Marketing.
Clementi Loop, Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia)Pte.,Ltd.
Maylor, H. (2010). Project Management. Essex: Pearson Education.
Meredith, J. R., & Mantel, S. J. (2010). Project Management: A Managerial Approach. Hoboken:
John Wiley & Sons.
Robins, N. (1993). RISKMAN: The New European Methodology for Project Risk Management.
PMNETWORK, 38-40.
Rosenau, M. D. (1998). Successful Project Management: A Step-by-Step Approach with Practical
Examples. Toronto: John Wiley & Sons.
Rowan, W. (2002). Digital Marketing: Using New Technologies to Get Closer to Your Customers.
London: Kogan Page.
Scott, D. M. (2010). The New Rules of Marketing and PR. New Jersey: John & Sons.
Seybold, P. B. (1999). Customers.com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for Internet
and Beyond. London: Random House Business Books.
Xinhuanet. (2011, Feb 25). The Sales of CCTV Chunwan 2011 is More than the Oscar. Retrieved
Feb 25, 2011, from Xinhuanet:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/newmedia/2011-02/25/c_121123721.htm

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11. Reading List

Despite the 13 books on the reference list I am reading and have started read, I am going to read
22 more books as reference to finish the project.

1. Internet marketing : a practical approach - Alan Charlesworth., Butterworth-Heinemann,

2009
2. Internet marketing : building advantage in the networked economy - Rafi A.
Mohammed ,McGraw-Hill, 2002
3. Internet marketing intelligence : research tools, techniques, and resources, Edward
Forrest, McGraw-Hill, 2002
4. Strategic internet marketing- Susan Dann, Stephen Dann, Wiley Australia, 2001
5. Principles of internet marketing- Ward Hanson, South-Western College, c2000
6. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, London
7. E-marketing : improving marketing effectiveness in a digital world- Malcolm MacDonald
and Hugh Wilson, Financial Times Prentice Hall, 1999
8. CIM Coursebook: Project Management in Marketing- Lynn Parkinson, Matthew Housden,
Elwyn Cox, Frank McKee, Elsevier, 2009
9. Online marketing: a customer-led approach - Richard Gay, Alan Charlesworth, Rita Esen,
the Oxford Express, 2007
10. Success secrets of the online marketing superstars -Mitch Meyerson, Dearborn Trade,
2005
11. Online marketing success stories: insider secrets from the experts who are making
millions on the internet today- René V. Richards, Atlantic, 2006
12. Online Marketing: How to Increase International Sales with Search Engine Optimisation-
Sandra Spindler,Grin, 2007
13. Real estate rainmaker: guide to online marketing- Dan Gooder Richard, John Wiley &
Sons, 2004
14. The small business marketing bible – David Frey, Marketing Best Practices, 2003
15. Project management : achieving competitive advantage-Jeffrey K. Pinto, Pearson, 2010
16. Project management best practices : achieving global excellence-Harold Kerzner, John
Wiley & Sons, 2010
17. The Oxford handbook of project management - edited by Peter W.G. Morris, Jeffrey K.
Pinto, Jonas Söderlund, Oxford University Press, 2010
18. What executives need to know about project management-Harold Kerzner, Frank Saladis,
John Wiley & Sons, 2009
19. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling-Harold Kerzner, John Wiley & Sons, c2009
20. Project management : case studies-Harold Kerzner, Wiley, 2009
21. Project management for business, engineering, and technology : principles and practice -
John M. Nicholas, Herman Steyn, Elsevier, 2008
22. Project management leadership : building creative teams-Rory Burke, Steve Barron,
Burke Publishing, 2007

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