Improving search engine marketing a study of mis company limited

Along with the trend of online shopping, the fact that the company has strengths in digital marketing to attract users and turn them into their customers will help the company achieve gr

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-NGUYEN THI THU HA

IMPROVING SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: A STUDY OF MIS

COMPANY LIMITED

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Ho Chi Minh City – 2021

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-NGUYEN THI THU HA

IMPROVING SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: A STUDY OF MIS

COMPANY LIMITED

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SUPERVISOR: ASSOC PROF TRAN HA MINH QUAN

Ho Chi Minh City – 2021

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement 1

Executive Summary 2

1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 The company background 1

1.2 Company structure and mission 3

1.2.1 Company structure 3

1.2.2 Vision and mission 4

1.3 Problem context 4

2 SYMPTOM 6

3 PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 8

3.1 Potential problems 12

3.1.1 Unavailable products 13

3.1.2 Lack of positioning strategy 15

3.1.3 Advertising is not accessible to potential users 17

3.1.4 Low website traffic 18

3.2 Validating problem 21

4 POTENTIAL CAUSES 28

4.1 Ineffective SEM 28

4.1.1 Lack of SEO tool 31

4.1.2 Website content is not updated regularly 32

4.1.3 Content is not different and attractive 33

4.2 Lack of understanding about search engine user’s behavior 34

4.3 Low advertising bid 35

4.4 Cause validation 37

5 ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS 41

5.1 Improving on-page SEO 42

5.2 Improving off-page SEO 45

5.3 Improving quality score of advertising 48

6 ACTION PLAN 54

7 CONCLUSION 60

8 SUPPORTING INFORMATION 62

8.1 Methodology 62

8.2 Interview transcript 63

REFERENCES 72

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Revenue of MIS company from 2018 to 2020 3

Table 2 Some ad groups of MIS’s digital marketing campaign 16

Table 3 Campaign budget and type of bid strategy 36

Table 4 Auction insight 37

Table 5 Keyword report 51

Table 6 Action plan 54

Table 7 Timeline of action plan implementation 59

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 The MIS company’s website 2

Figure 2 Company structure 3

Figure 3 Number of orders in 2020 6

Figure 4 Preliminary cause and effect map 11

Figure 5 Updated cause and effect map 13

Figure 6 Sales by product brand 2020 14

Figure 7 Number of Impression in 2020 18

Figure 8 Number of Click in 2020 18

Figure 9 Number of Pageview in 2020 20

Figure 10 Number of User in 2020 20

Figure 11 Marketing sales funnel (18) 24

Figure 12 Sales funnels combine with digital marketing (19) 24

Figure 13 Website traffic in 2020 25

Figure 14 Number of old and new customer in 2020 26

Figure 15 Main problem 27

Figure 16 Fish-bone diagram 28

Figure 17 Website traffic and marketing cost 30

Figure 18 Organic traffic and total website traffic 30

Figure 19 All traffic in 2020 32

Figure 20 Articles in the "Blog Wi-Fi" category of company's website 33

Figure 21 The Framework for Research in Digital Marketing 39

Figure 22 Detail schedule of action plan 59

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BOD: Board of Directors

CCTV: Closed - circuit Television

CEO: Chief Executive Officer

CPC: Cost per Click

CTR: Click-through Rate

IT: Information Technology

LAN: Local Area Network

MIS: MIS Technology Service – Trading Company Limited

PPC: Pay Per Click

PSA: Paid Search Advertising

QS: Quality Score

SEM: Search Engine Marketing

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

SERPs: Search Engine Results Pages

SSA: Sponsored Search Advertising

SMM: Social Media Marketing

WAN: Wide Area Network

Acknowledgement

To complete this thesis, first of all, I would like to send my sincere and deepest thanks to the teachers at the International School of Business - University of Economics

Ho Chi Minh City

Especially, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Tran Ha Minh Quan - who has enthusiastically guided, given advice, orientation and helped me to complete this thesis At the same time, I would like to thank Professor Nguyen Thi Mai Trang and Dr Phan Thi Minh Thu for their valuable suggestions for the proposal so that

I can adjust and complete the thesis in the best way

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the management and all staff of MIS Limited Company for helping me to research, provide data and documents for me during the thesis

Because of my limited knowledge, in the process of completing this topic, I inevitably make mistakes, and I look forward to receiving comments from teachers as well as MIS Limited Company

In the context of the ongoing covid epidemic, although the demand for the purchase, installation and use of Wi-Fi devices and network infrastructure equipment for individuals as well as businesses is very high, however, buyers still have a lot of different choices to come to their purchasing decision Along with the trend of online shopping, the fact that the company has strengths in digital marketing to attract users and turn them into their customers will help the company achieve great success At the same time, this strength also helps the company increase its competitive advantage and prevent new competitors from entering the market

In 2020, MIS company is continuing to improve its main sales channel - commerce website, along with digital marketing activities to promote the brand to users and increase sales opportunities of company However, the last months of 2020 recorded

e-a decree-ase in orders e-and the number of new customers, ce-ausing revenue not to grow e-as expected This thesis carefully examines the current situation of the company to find the problems the company is facing, explore the causes of this problem and finally offer possible and optimized solutions to solve the problem The results of this thesis show that, among the many problems found, the main one that leads to the drop in orders is low website traffic and the cause of this problem is ineffective SEM The study was conducted based on the situation and data collected in the past year 2020 To completely solve this problem, several solutions have been proposed to improve the company's low website traffic

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 The company background

The development and application of information technology is more and more extensive Most businesses with many different sizes as well as households have the need to deploy the internal network infrastructure with high speed and stability Foreseeing that trend from 2018, MIS company was established MIS TECHNOLOGY SERVICE – TRADING COMPANY LIMITED (MIS Ltd) was originally established from two friends working in the Information Technology field MIS is a startup company of Viet Nam, with Information Technology (IT) and Telecommunication as the main businesses, MIS always targets the optimal benefits and values for the customers Established in 2018, until now, MIS is a solution provider, selling and distributing network infrastructure products

Starting from the beginning with a small capital, by deploying solutions for households, coffee shops, offices of small businesses Up to now, MIS has gradually acquired larger projects of bigger businesses From the initial strategy, taking the cost savings, taking advantage of the Internet to find target customers, MIS Company has built a website at www.wifiprovn.com, with the Click to Brick of e-commerce model Most customers come to MIS through the Website channel; MIS basically applies the e-commerce platform to the company's business when customers are gradually changing their buying behavior based on the Internet than before

MIS provides the services, including provide and implement hardware, software of ethernet networking (LAN, WAN, WI-FI); Provide and implement hardware, software

of CCTV (Closed-circuit Television) Working in Intranet infrastructure solutions field, MIS's customers are very wide, including individuals and businesses More specifically, the customer segments that MIS serves are mainly high-end customers, business customers with high demand, requiring strong and stable intranet systems, helping customers get a good experience, best value for the money they invest Compared to the common ground of the market, the internal network infrastructure solution provided by MIS has a much higher average price (2-3 times higher than the common market level) MIS company has 2 main warehouses, located at 2 locations in Ho Chi Minh City After searching about the product on the website, customers can view the goods and buy

directly at the warehouse The first warehouse is in District 10, near the city center area; The second warehouse is in Thu Duc district, convenient for customers and orders in the suburbs of the city and neighboring areas such as Binh Duong, Dong Nai, etc.

Figure 1 The MIS company’s website

The telecommunications market in Vietnam is currently considered a market with very high development potential, especially in the field where MIS company is operating According to data broadband subscribers (including fixed and mobile broadband) have impressive growth On average, in the 2016-2020 period, fixed broadband subscribers will grow by 15% / year Currently, the number of broadband Internet subscribers in Vietnam is nearly 7 million(1) The speed of Internet bandwidth

in Vietnam is getting higher and higher, the number of smart devices used is growing rapidly, so the bandwidth and stability of the internal network infrastructure is required MIS in the period from 2018 to 2020 mainly sells internal wireless transmitters (Router Wi-Fi), switches (Switch), internal wireless access equipment (Access Point) The company's revenue has grown steadily every year from 2018 to 2020 Despite being a new company, with many years of experience working in the field of founder members,

the company has gradually grown and achieved its revenue target for the period of

2018-2020

Table 1 Revenue of MIS company from 2018 to 2020

Revenue 2,070,866,429 3,146,644,428 3,759,726,200

(Source: Company’s management system)

1.2 Company structure and mission

1.2.1 Company structure

Figure 2 Company structure

(Source: Author synthesis)

Board of Directors: Making the final decision is the role of the Board of Directors (BOD), BOD including 03 people Due to the small size of the business, the executive board acts as the business development with supporting of 02 employees (Sale Department) beside making final decisions

Technical and warehouse department: Currently the company's Warehouse and Technical department has 5 employees In which, there are 3 employees working full-time and 2 part-time employees In addition, for the Technical department, the company has a network of collaborators ready to sign short-term contracts when there are projects Accounting department: includes a chief accountant working full time in conjunction with a member of the BOD

Marketing Department: includes a part-time employee

1.2.2 Vision and mission

VISION: The leading company provides LAN, WAN, and WI-FI infrastructure

solutions in Vietnam

MISSION: Offering network infrastructure solutions with professional services

and suitable prices for households, small and medium businesses

Understanding that the trust of the customer is the core competency, MIS always positions the customers in the center of all business activities, MIS focuses on the success of each project and the close and long-term cooperation with each available customer MIS emphasizes on the depth of company and customer development meanwhile continues the width development in a timely and suitable manner

1.3 Problem context

In periods of the end 2019 and early 2020, the members of the Board of Directors want to increase the profitability of the business while aiming to increase retail sales through e-commerce (website wifiprovn.com) In the period of 2019 and early 2020, e-commerce orders account for most of the company's revenue However, in mid-2020 onwards, the company has trouble on competing with other competitors by simultaneously following the digital transformation trend, focusing on e-commerce and online marketing, this causes a great influence on MIS company To achieve growth or stabilize business, companies all change and adjust their strategies, including marketing strategies and specifically digital marketing strategies Along with the strategy, the proposed marketing tactics must also correspond As online marketing becomes the main marketing method of MIS, it is essential to constantly update techniques to improve digital marketing effectiveness In order to get orders, the company's online advertising needs to achieve good results, reflected in the indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing campaign All ads are linked and dumped on the company's website Here, according to the purchasing process, building awareness, retaining customers, persuading, converting users into customers and creating orders has

a very important contribution to the website Good website performance has a great influence on the company's business activities because this is the main sales channel of MIS Since then, the good online marketing activity and website performance will help the company to continue to survive in the current difficult economic situation Although

the company has oriented to use e-commerce as a competitive advantage from the beginning, with many difficulties, in 2020 the company has not been able to achieve the strategic goals as expected

2 SYMPTOM

From the beginning of 2020, the company have set up management processes, so customer and order data will be collected and analyzed in 2020 These processes help company finding out about the company's performance, problems to be solved, causes

of occurrence, and propose solutions for the company present and so far

Based on analysis from secondary data of MIS company, there is one sign that reflect the situation of the company is decreasing number of orders From the initial symptom, it is easy to focus and analyze deeply on the problems and causes that are occurring at the company According to sales report, in 2020 shows signs of a decrease

in company orders In 2020, in the period of the first 5 months of the year, the number

of orders is steadily increasing month by month, from 62 orders in January and nearly doubling in May with 103 orders Along with the orders, the number of new customers buying at the company also increased significantly However, from June to December, the number of orders dropped significantly and showed no sign of rebound By the end

of December, the total number of orders for the month was 35, only one third of the number of the peak month At the same time, the number of new customers also decreased gradually, with the number only 1/5 of the peak month

Figure 3 Number of orders in 2020

(Source: Company’s management system)

In conclusion, the company’s operation is affected by the main symptom of decreasing in number of orders From that symptom, it will be analyzed further to

Jan-20 Feb-20 Mar-20 Apr-20 May-20 Jun-20 Jul-20 Aug-20 Sep-20 Oct-20 Nov-20 Dec-20

Number of orders decline

Old Customer New customer No of Orders

explore the potential problems, find out the causes and propose the solutions to minimize the negative consequences on the company

3 PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

After defining the company's symptom is the number of orders decreased in 2020 based on sale data provided by the company Before conducting the interview, questions were prepared to get an overview of the current situation of the company, performance

in activities and related issues To better understand this phenomenon, two orientation in-depth interviews were conducted to further explore the relevant issues leading to the company's negative signs:

- The first in-depth interview: Mr Nguyen The Ngan, Chief of Executive Officer (CEO), founder of company, he is responsible for administering the daily activities of the company

- The second in-depth interview: Mr Tran Anh Quan, part-time marketing staff

of the company

From the results of the initial interview with the company, issues from the company's perspective have been listed, strung to form the preliminary cause and effect map There are many issues mentioned such as: high bargaining power of suppliers, inventory of goods cannot meet demand, lack of digital marketing plan, marketing campaigns are not specific, no promotion programs, lack of human resource for marketing, content is not different and attractive, website content is not updated regularly, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) content is not optimized, low advertising bid, advertising is not accessible to potential users, number of pageview and website traffic (user) decline, low number of organic website traffic, number of impression decline, number of click decline

Currently, the company's product portfolio is diverse, including many products from many brands from many different manufacturers The company is a partner of many major suppliers such as: TP-Link, Cambium, Grandstream, Linksys, etc The company purchases goods from many different sources, the first source is buying directly from the manufacturer, the second source is purchased from other distributors Building relationships, becoming partners with suppliers is very important to the company because of benefits such as discounts, availability of products, enthusiastic support, good warranty policy, etc However, the company still has problems with

product inventory, which greatly affect the company's product sales Mr Nguyen The Ngan - CEO of the company mentioned:

The company has inventory However, at the time when orders fell because there was

no stock for sale because the supplier stopped supplying the company anymore and raised the price of the product The suppliers work with larger companies such as The Gioi Di Dong, Tiki, not selling products to small companies At that time, the company's bargaining power with suppliers was not available, partly because the company did not have enough financial capacity, the relationship was not enough, and the supplier did not meet the conditions (suppliers did not show specifics conditions)

During the time since its inception, the company did not have a marketing strategy and specific plan Each month, the BOD will contact the part-time marketing staff to discuss the month's budget, requirements, and goals In addition, all other activities related to the implementation of marketing campaigns are carried out by employees and without interference from the company's BOD This leads to many problems, including campaigns that are generic, not specific; The entire campaign is about image advertising

of companies and products, without any promotions MIS company runs 07 main campaigns in 2020, specifically 05 advertising campaigns for general products and 02 campaigns for TP-Link products Mr Nguyen The Ngan has commented on the company's marketing activities, specifically the digital marketing plan:

The company is not planning to run marketing There is no plan next year The marketing staff does not follow a specific schedule, the marketing staff will set the ad according to the goals and budget set by the BOD and run the campaigns

When there are sales discounts on products, the BOD only adjusts prices on the website, not articles about promotions

Currently, the staffing for the marketing department includes a part-time employee responsible for setting up and running ads Because the company has no strategy and no digital marketing plan, the allocation and recruitment of additional personnel is not yet available When problems arise in running ads, the issue is not always resolved immediately because human resources are unavailable The lack of full-time staff for the marketing department has affected many aspects, leading to a decrease in orders due

to ineffective marketing campaigns The company's current staff is not in charge of content writing and SEO, which is currently being done by a member of the management

team The above is caused by the lack of specialized staff in the marketing segment and has led to a decrease in the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns, causing a drop in the number of orders due to not attracting customers to buy

Mr Nguyen The Ngan states that:

Website content is not updated continuously because the company does not have much budget for this activity and has no one to do Because the current marketing staff is a part-time employee, only responsible for running ads, not responsible for the content of the article All articles on the website are written by the BOD

SEO is researched and implemented by the BOD, but it is not effective because the smaller number of articles and the time to invest in SEO is short, the keywords have not been thoroughly researched, the website has not been invested in terms of design and display Besides, there is not much time to invest and not specializing in marketing, the content articles are mainly about introducing the company, introducing product information, and project of the company, there is no difference compared to rival companies and does not convey a message to customers

Mr Nguyen The Ngan shared that:

… The reason for the ineffective purchasing is the company lists a lot of products on the website, but when the customer calls, the company do not have in stock, there are products that are no longer in business, but the company still keeps on the website The website has too much content but is not attractive, so it cannot attract customers to buy The current spending of money in marketing, website content is not good, customers come to see it but there is no need to buy

… “Currently the company only runs Google Ads with 3 main types of ads: display, paid search and other group of free ads” … “The least effective is SEO because the company does not invest in content The goal of the company is to raise SEO SEO is what helps the most stable rate of users to the website, people know me, remember me because I naturally provide the right information that customers need.”

Regarding the advertising budget, the BOD of MIS has discussed with the marketing staff to set a specific budget for each campaign Overall, the company's advertising budget is relatively low, with a total of 250,000 for all general product advertising campaigns in one day When there are other companies bringing ad bids high, with a company's low advertising budgets, Google's algorithm gives priority to

displaying ads from other companies In addition, the company's SEO content is not optimal, leading to the company's website not being displayed in a good position when users search for shopping needs on Google From the two direct reasons above, MIS's advertisements will be difficult to reach potential users

At MIS company, there are two indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns that the company is using, namely pageview and website traffic (user) Currently, these two indicators are trending to decrease in 2020 and the results are not uniform although the marketing budget for each month is not much different Besides, some popular KPIs that measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns such

as organic website traffic, impression, click are experiencing a decrease in number as well, directly reducing the attractiveness of customers Those KPIs are mainly influenced by marketing campaign, promotion program, website content and SEO technique Since then, customers rarely approach the company's website, and it leads to the reducing the number of orders

Figure 4 Preliminary cause and effect map

3.1 Potential problems

Preliminary problems from intake meeting and orientation interview indicated the direction and the scope of the problem that will need to be explored After researching related theories, the problems leading to the decrease in the number of orders in the past year have also been analyzed in more depth and clarity According to Goi, initially, the marketing mix consisted of 12 elements proposed by Borden, namely: product planning; pricing; branding; distribution channels; personal selling; advertising; promotions; packaging; display; servicing; physical handling; and fact finding and analysis These components were then grouped into four main components, also known as the 4Ps today, including product, price, promotion, and place(2) Besides, Summer also mentions that

in the core marketing mix based on the 4Ps, fundamentals enhance product success by delivering a variety of benefits Among them, important benefits include improved customer satisfaction, larger market share and higher sales volume(3) From here, the 4Ps

of marketing have an impact on the company's sales volume After interviews with the CEO and marketing staff, issues are linked and visualized through a preliminary cause and effect map Based on the 4Ps of marketing, problems have been grouped, linked together, and temporarily eliminated the causes of problems to form an updated cause and effect map

There are four potential problems in operation leading to the above symptom including: Unavailable products, Lack of positioning strategy, Advertising is not accessible to potential users and Low website traffic As for the potential problem unavailable products, here is the problem group related to the product section of the 4Ps

of marketing Similarly, in Frey's study, branding is one of the marketing variables in the offering group(4) Therefore, the lack of positioning strategy is considered as one of the potential problems leading to the symptom Regarding the problem related to advertising and website performance, these are two issues of online advertising in the promotion of 4Ps marketing

In addition to these issues, there were other issues related to the decrease in the number of orders of the company, however, the impact on the issue was not much, therefore, it was not mentioned in the article and in the cause-and-effect map Before going into each problem, the updated cause and effect map will provide an overview of

the problems that lead to the company's negative symptom and the effect to the company It can be seen that the impact of the decrease in the number of orders has a great impact on the company In the long run, if the problems are not completely solved and the causes are not found out, it will lead to many consequences for the company such as: affect the company's finances, reduce revenue and profit; affect brand image building and brand coverage, less known by many people

Figure 5 Updated cause and effect map 3.1.1 Unavailable products

Kotler et al defined that product is anything that can be offered to the market for various purposes such as attracting the attention of a customer, acquiring, using, or consuming In general, products can satisfy the wants or needs of the customers and consumers in the market(5) In the past year, specifically from June to December, the number of orders decreased because the company did not have enough products to sell

to customers According to figure 6, it can be seen that the 3 top-grossing product brands

of the company are Linksys, NETGEAR and TP-Link However, from June to December, the company was unable to continue purchasing some product lines because

the supplier did not supply the company Besides, big firms began to step up and use their financial resources to prevent smaller businesses like MIS from accessing products from manufacturers This led to a decrease in the number of orders compared to the first months of the year, when this product was among the top selling products on the market

Figure 6 Sales by product brand 2020

(Source: Company’s management system)

In this regard, Mr Nguyen The Ngan - CEO of the company gave his comments that:

As of April, and May, company has new products However, after that, the company cannot stock to sell, so revenue and orders declined At that time, the company adjusted marketing expenses, dedicated campaign to that product but ended up not selling because there was no product to sell, the marketing was running but could not close the orders

Bellman researched those consumers tend to be less loyal to online stores and focus

on purchase by transaction, with about half of all stock out of stock eventually leading

to cancel orders(6) The availability of goods causes much loss in the short and long term For short-term losses, a customer may delay an order or switch to a competitor's purchase With long-term loss, customers may move away, resulting in lost sales and customers Besides, Son et al also found that the out-of-stock situation have a great negative affect on order amounts and firm performance(7)

According to the company, the cause of unavailable products is the low capacity of the company to negotiate with its suppliers Suppliers are organizations or individuals engaged in supplying goods or services in the market Porter stated that suppliers can put pressure on companies and businesses through increasing prices of products and services, reducing the quality of goods provided, delivery at wrong time and at specified

Product Jan-20 Feb-20 Mar-20 Apr-20 May-20 Jun-20 Jul-20 Aug-20 Sep-20 Oct-20 Nov-20 Dec-20 Total

Asus 31,200,000 45,800,000 22,000,000 42,900,000 11,400,000 22,400,000 28,150,000 48,800,000 18,000,000 22,800,000 26,700,000 15,150,000 335,300,000

Draytek 12,950,000 3,500,000 3,290,000 3,400,000 23,140,000 Google 15,100,000 4,400,000 80,200,000 70,900,000 42,450,000 48,900,000 38,450,000 11,700,000 18,500,000 24,750,000 37,880,000 393,230,000 Grandstream 21,600,000 11,800,000 18,600,000 9,700,000 50,800,000 49,150,000 32,760,000 34,400,000 40,415,000 269,225,000 Linksys 119,950,000 103,490,000 109,980,000 81,730,000 56,097,000 60,915,000 68,220,000 79,505,000 32,528,000 82,350,000 49,670,000 45,645,000 890,080,000 Mecury 1,550,000 700,000 9,200,000 500,000 1,700,000 13,650,000 Mikrotik 5,100,000 4,050,000 4,500,000 5,700,000 13,059,000 32,409,000 Netgear 62,510,000 75,000,000 87,900,000 63,900,000 93,400,000 62,560,000 37,700,000 73,450,000 59,950,000 31,810,000 78,200,000 54,250,000 780,630,000 TP-Link 16,340,000 24,230,000 48,150,000 142,670,000 151,800,000 57,575,000 26,790,000 33,450,000 30,290,000 5,250,000 29,220,000 43,740,000 609,505,000 Unifi 15,532,000 8,150,000 7,580,000 11,330,000 42,592,000 TOTAL 271,800,000 254,420,000 376,730,000 437,782,000 363,997,000 275,300,000 275,640,000 318,285,000 159,268,000 199,720,000 359,369,200 298,619,000 3,590,930,200

locations(8) Those things directly affect the price as well as the quality of output products and at the same time affects the competitiveness of the business In Macy K's study also mentioned three factors affecting the bargaining power of Porter: the scale and level of concentration of buyers compared with suppliers, the ability to integrate vertically and information usage Suppliers are a very important part of keeping supply chains uninterrupted The supplier has a high bargaining power, particularly in the company's situation where the supplier increases the price of the product, fails to meet the company's requirements for the quantity of products, the company depends on the Sales of suppliers will cause many disadvantages in business operations, directly affect the number of orders sold and reduce the profit of the company(9)

3.1.2 Lack of positioning strategy

Since its inception, the company has focused on digital marketing rather than traditional marketing Building a website and following a click and mortar model has helped the company balance between implementing digital marketing on an online website and maintaining a physical store, providing customers with an enhanced shopping experience with more options, more flexibility, more convenience, and more services Integrating physical and e-commerce channels helps companies find synergies while companies using independent channels may not be able to do(10) However, whether it is digital marketing or traditional marketing, there is also a need for a specific marketing strategy

Marketing strategy is marketing logic that the company hopes to create customer value and achieve these beneficial relationships It will help company answer the key question and decides how to serve their customers by positioning strategy Once a company has chosen a desired position, it must undertake vigorous activities to deliver and communicate to consumers At the same time, the company's entire marketing program must support the chosen positioning strategy(5) Besides, Dou et al researched that SEM and SEO are two factors that have the ability to directly affect the company's brand positioning strategy(11)

Until now, the company did not have a marketing strategy and specific plan With the two big questions of the marketing strategy, the company answered the first question

on segmentation and targeting However, the second question about how to create value

for customers, the company could not answer because there was no positioning strategy Due to the lack of a marketing strategy, the company cannot have a marketing plan with

a specific marketing mix tactic In mixed marketing there are many elements arranged into 04 main groups called 4P: (1) Product; (2) Price; (3) Place; (4) Promotions Lack

of marketing strategy directly affects the Promotion - 1 in 4Ps of the marketing mix Specifically, the company's marketing campaigns are just general campaigns about advertising the company and product models, without any promotion programs Most shoppers are often attracted by interesting advertising and promotion, which hit the psychology and demand However, MIS only runs general digital marketing campaigns,

it has not motivated shoppers to see advertisement Since then, the number of new customers to reach is low, and the company will not have many new orders

Table 2 Some ad groups of MIS’s digital marketing campaign

"Linksys" AG GMC_Ad_muasam_#2 Shopping

"Google" AG GMC_Ad_muasam_#2 Shopping

"Netgear" AG GMC_Ad_muasam_#2 Shopping

"Grandstream" AG GMC_Ad_muasam_#2 Shopping

"Asus" AG GMC_Ad_muasam_#2 Shopping

Ad Group_Linksys #Wifi Search Campaign Search

Ad Group - All - wifi_Wifi #Wifi Search Campaign Search

modem wifi samsung #Wifi Search Campaign Search

Adgroup_Linksys_Velop #Wifi Search Campaign Search

Ad Group_Linksys #Wifi Search Campaign_2 Search

Ad Group - All - wifi_Wifi #Wifi Search Campaign_2 Search

modem wifi samsung #Wifi Search Campaign_2 Search

Ad Group_Asus #Wifi Search Campaign_2 Search

Ad Group - All - wifi_Bộ Wifi #Wifi Search Campaign_2 Search

"Linksys" AG GMC_Ad_muasam_#1 Shopping

"Google" AG GMC_Ad_muasam_#1 Shopping

"Netgear" AG GMC_Ad_muasam_#1 Shopping

"Grandstream" AG GMC_Ad_muasam_#1 Shopping

"Asus" AG GMC_Ad_muasam_#1 Shopping

(Source: Company’s Google Ads report)

3.1.3 Advertising is not accessible to potential users

At MIS company, customers know the company as well as the products through the ads that are run on Google All advertising is done and managed through Google Ads Google Ads is Google's online advertising program that enables users to create online ads aimed at reaching exactly the people interested in the products and services they want to offer(12) Running Google AdWords or Google Ads is paying Google to display ads on Google's search results When customers type a keyword on Google, ads will appear without having to SEO keywords on Google Running Google AdWords ads

is one of the most expensive advertising methods However, often when customers go

to Google to search for information, they have identified their needs, the rest of the company is to convince customers to buy its products However, ads that are difficult to reach potential customers will directly affect the company's website traffic Currently, advertising through Google AdWords is the main source of website traffic for the company, but it only works for a short time The ineffectiveness of ads reaching users

is reflected in 2 specific metrics that Google Ads defines as Impression and Click Impression is determined by the number of ads displayed on the Google search engine

or other sites on the internet and Click is the metric calculated when the user clicks on the displayed ad(13, 14) In 2020, the number of impressions and clicks from ads fluctuates from month to month but tends to decrease at the end of the year For this matter, the person who works directly - Mr Tran Anh Quan shared that:

It will be difficult to explain in detail the reasons why traffic, website traffic is unstable month by month In months with sudden pageviews and low traffic, the main reason is due to the company reducing its budget to run ads With the months with a spike in pageviews and high traffic, partly due to market demand at that time In addition, the ads do not reach potential users partly due to low ad bidding, which quickly uses up the cost per day

Figure 7 Number of Impression in 2020

(Source: Company’s Google Ads)

Figure 8 Number of Click in 2020

(Source: Company’s Google Ads report)

3.1.4 Low website traffic

At MIS company, product sales and customer communication are done through a main channel, which is the company's website To access the company's website, users can see from many sources and arrive from many different mediums Regarding the source, MIS company currently has a lot of different sources because they come from different advertising groups such as Google Merchant Center (GMC), Remarketing, Search ads To measure the amount of traffic to the website, people use the website traffic metric Website traffic is a term to illustrate the traffic of any website The goal

is for the reader to know the number of user visits to the website Traffic is one of the

666,646

614,141 680,890

550,116 533,304

10,187 8,621

most important website metrics and this is also the goal of many websites For MIS company, the two main indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing campaign are pageview and user, these are two very important and meaningful indicators for the company Every day, BOD regularly updates data on these two indicators on Google Analytics to know the trend of user demand to take more accurate actions In the study about factors influencing website traffic, Wolk et al also used two measures of traffic included number of users and number of page views per user (15) Increased traffic will help assess the user's interest in the website, increase the conversion rate, brand coverage, increase the credibility of the website, increase the ranking of the website, and increase sales opportunities According to Google Analytics, Pageview is a metric that represents the total number of pages viewed (16) It is a common term in the website language, used to describe the number of times a user requests to download or reload an HTML file (data of any web page) on a certain web page via the Internet User is a metrics that can be divided into two kinds include Users and Active Users, it represents the total number of users engaged with the site(17)

Website traffic of MIS company comes from many different channels such as display, paid search, organic search, direct social, referral The top 10 sources of high traffic volume in 2020 of MIS company include Google, direct, m.facebook.com, zalo, Websosanh.vn, Coccoc.com, forums.voz.vn, otosaigon.com, Bing, Sogou Rank traffic

by medium from high to low including CPC (Cost per Click), organic, direct, referral, zalo MIS uses search engine marketing including SEO and PPC However, traffic from PPC has 5 times more traffic than traffic from SEO In general, the traffic volume of MIS company is not as high as expected by BOD, has not been stable and tends to decrease at the end of the year Figure 9 and 10 shows the number of pageviews and users of the company in 2020

Figure 9 Number of Pageview in 2020

(Source: Company’s Google Analytics)

Figure 10 Number of User in 2020

(Source: Company’s Google Analytics)

Since the website is the company's main sales channel, if it does not attract many users to view its sales page, it is also very difficult for the company to take the next steps

to convert visitors into customers The company's final goal is offline sales, MIS tries to get people to come into the warehouse or buy over the phone, direct from web but people usually ask questions before buying products

10,019

18,082 16,460

18,041 16,156 14,358 13,784

of goods for some products in the second half of 2020, resulting in a partial decrease in the number of orders However, not all products of all different brands have this problem In addition, products in this field are characterized by constantly updating new features and models, therefore a shortage at one time does not mean a long-term shortage In addition, the company still has the opportunity to introduce other similar products, so this potential problem is not necessarily the main problem leading to the company's symptoms

Second, about the lack of a positioning strategy Here, it can be understood as product positioning and brand positioning At MIS company, although the company is oriented to sell high-end products, for customers with high demand However, customers almost only know this when visiting the website and viewing information about the products The company's advertisements only have general titles such as

"providing high-end Wi-Fi modems", "high-end Wi-Fi transmitters", "quality prestige Wi-Fi", etc without clarity and specificity Regarding the issue of brand positioning based on quality, the company is evaluated by customers as a company that has the ability to execute and offer good solutions Without a clear positioning strategy, the company could not plan marketing and promotion campaigns, but the company still received orders from old customers This affects the number of orders from new customers but not too seriously because when customers have a real need, they still buy Third, ads that do not reach potential users are the source of declining orders According to the sales funnel model, the first stage the company needs to pay attention

to is increasing user awareness The company's ads have a drop in impressions and clicks indicating a decrease in reach However, with the number of impressions in the last months of the year, if the number of users accessing the website to view product

information is stable, the company still has a chance to sell Therefore, advertising reduced access times is the source but not directly generate the impulse purchase Fourth, low website traffic is affected by the effectiveness of advertising Similar

to advertising, users and pageviews indicators decreased in the last months of the year

In order to sell, the company needs to do well in the user awareness stage and the discovery and consideration stages To do this, it is necessary to ensure that the user has made a visit to the website - the company's main sales channel Therefore, the decrease

in website traffic index is a remarkable thing when this is one of the input conditions for the company to continue the process of persuading and converting users into customers From there, this is an important problem, directly affecting the sales channel, the processes in the sales funnel, the marketing funnel and specifically the results of these processes - orders To have a clear view of this issue, theories and data have been collected and served for the following analysis

From the period of 2017 to 2020, the company follows the e-commerce trend In the period 2017-2019, large businesses as well as traditional businesses have not paid attention to the application of e-commerce, so the company searches for customers through the website and search engine according to the click to mortar model is a great competitive advantage However, by the end of 2019-2020, when the market had strong fluctuations due to the covid epidemic, businesses began to invest heavily in e-commerce Therefore, in 2020, MIS company has a serious decrease in e-commerce efficiency

At MIS company, the company's marketing goal is to increase traffic and get more people to know its brand For this matter, Mr Nguyen The Ngan also shared that:

The company is using 2 main KPIs to evaluate the effectiveness that is the number of pageviews and traffic of the website in 1 day Mainly the company will consider how many visitors a day The company has not yet assessed the conversion rate clearly because the source of visitors is not entirely from online marketing but possibly through referrals, so the company uses pageviews as a benchmark As many people know, as much as possible, for building the company's brand to many people, so when evaluating marketing activities, it only stops at the level of how to attract many people to come Behind the scenes, customers who buy goods will be a story about sale

Currently, the company is not satisfied with the results of its marketing activities, namely the number of pageviews and traffic (also known as users) because it is difficult

to predict and is not commensurate with the company's budget

According to Jacunski, the concept of the marketing or sales funnel has become popularity in marketing communication, besides, it can be used to measure the effectiveness of the operation(18) In 1988, the AIDA model was created to reflect the sale funnel(19) Through a combination of sales funnel, marketing funnel, and digital marketing, a company can visualize the actions it needs to take to turn visitors into customers Firstly, the top of the funnel plays similar roles as Awareness stage, visitors encounter company’s online brand and are attracted to the websites by marketing tool

or advertising through three actions: SEO, social media marketing (SMM), PPC advertising From a marketing view, this is the stage that company provide information

to create an impression and get attention to generate leads in the beginning(20) With the first approach to the company, users can go through many different means when searching for information such as organic search, word of mouth, links appearing on websites or other platforms, social networks, etc.(21) After that, the next step is to make visitors feel interesting and want to build the relationship, they will stay in the web or page and become content readers before moving to generate leads Then, it will help drive call-to-action and increase the opportunity to convert them into a customer Although, for digital marketing, the process in the marketing funnel does not follow

a linear path from top to bottom, but users can join any stage in the process(22) However, the first stage – awareness is still a very important stage and affects the sales and number

of orders of the company In general, it can be seen that, to increase awareness for customers, what the company needs to do is increase traffic According to Linn, in awareness stage, one of the metrics to measure the success of driving people to website

to build audience is traffic(23) Although switching from visitor to customer requires a certain time, however, low input traffic will greatly affect the next steps in efforts to turn potential customers into buyers Figure 11 describes in a very general the marketing sales funnel and the metrics that can be used in each section corresponding to the sales funnel According to figure 12, the further down the funnel, the lower the number of users converting to customers When the visitor comes to the website, the traffic will be

recorded Almost the percentage of users on customers is very low Therefore, it can be seen that the higher the amount of input traffic, the higher the likelihood that users will stay on the website and take actions that lead to a purchase

Figure 11 Marketing sales funnel (18)

(Source: Jacuński M Measuring and analysis of digital marketing RESEARCH PRIVACY

2018:11.)

Figure 12 Sales funnels combine with digital marketing (19)

(Source: Digital Marketing: Integrating Strategy and Tactics with Values, A Guidebook)

Currently, with unstable traffic from month to month, it is difficult to forecast the amount of traffic in the next month In addition, the CEO expects the total monthly traffic from all channels to be greater than or equal to 20,000 users According to data from Google Analytics, the figures in 2020 show that the amount of traffic is not as

expected For display channels, this is the channel with the most marketing costs However, although marketing costs do not change much from month to month, the amount of traffic is difficult to predict, the chart shows the continuous fluctuation in the number of users on this channel As can be seen, this is the only channel that tends to increase at the end of 2020 The channel with the second highest number of users is paid search In general, this channel has more stability in traffic The marketing cost for this channel is also quite high, however, it tends to decrease by the end of 2020 With organic search channel, this is a low-cost channel but very low traffic The remaining channels only account for a small portion of the total traffic In short, traffic from most channels brings unexpected results

Figure 13 Website traffic in 2020

In fact, traffic reflects sales potential and site interest Alternatively, it could be argued to be a reasonable representation of the sale Therefore, increasing traffic is important(24) It can be seen that due to low traffic, the conversion of visitors into customers will have a lower rate, from which, the number of orders of the company will not have a high growth In 2020, the decrease in the number of new customers while the number of old customers returning to buy goods is not high, causing the number of orders in the second half of the year to decrease and unstable The figure below shows the downward trend:

Figure 14 Number of old and new customer in 2020

(Source: Company’s management system)

With the above factors, it is clearly saw that a company that uses e-commerce and e-marketing as a strategy to reach potential customers is consistent with the current trend However, due to ineffectiveness of website performing, specifically the website traffic, the company had a negative impact on the development of the company According to the company's long-term strategy, MIS wants to build a strong foundation

in e-commerce, following the trend of changing customer behavior, including individual customers and businesses in a digital transformation society and information technology application Because the company relies on the website as the main sales channel, so with low traffic, the company cannot compete with competitors in increasing brand awareness for customers, lead to a decrease in the indexes, hard to finding customers to bring orders and revenue for the company In order to deal with the drop in orders, the company needed to solve the main problem that is improving website traffic, figure 15 will highlight that problem

Jan-20 Feb-20 Mar-20 Apr-20 May-20 Jun-20 Jul-20 Aug-20 Sep-20 Oct-20 Nov-20 Dec-20

Number of new and old customer in 2020

Old Customer New Customer

Figure 15 Main problem

In conclusion, the main problem of MIS company is identified as “Low website traffic”

4 POTENTIAL CAUSES

From interviews with the company along with theories of online advertising, specifically SEM and digital marketing campaign performance metrics, fish bone diagram has been formed with three main elements as follows:

Figure 16 Fish-bone diagram

There are three causes of Low website traffic that leads to the decreasing of customer’s orders at MIS company included ineffective SEM, low advertising bid and lack of understanding about search engine user’s behavior As mentioned in the previous section, the company's website traffic - the main problem of the company has caused many impacts such as affecting the company's revenue, the company's goals of branding and gaining many people known

4.1 Ineffective SEM

Based on McCarthy's mixed marketing theory(25) and Dominici's revision better suited to the business environment on the Internet, an e-commerce business can also apply marketing mix to determine the factors that need to be done to get the best results

in the market In which, Promotion factor is advertise a product, built a purchase relation, and create a perception of trust in the customer(26) At MIS Company, the marketing and communication method (Promotions) mainly uses digital marketing and marketing techniques based on the Google search engine This technique is also known by the term SEM - Search Engine Marketing According to Chaffey et al., there are many ways to attract customer traffic (Building traffic), SEM includes one of these techniques(27) A major reason for the popularity of SEM is its unique ability to customize an ad to the keyword for the consumer's search This customization enables advertisers to attract highly qualified visitors, already interested in buying, to their Web sites(28) In order to

get the traffic of leads, MIS has built the website wifiprovn.com along with the application of SEM on the website

Chaffey et al defined that SEM includes SEO and PPC (Pay Per Click) “Search engine optimization (SEO) involves achieving the highest position or ranking practical

in the natural or organic listings on the search engine results pages after a specific combination of keywords (or key phrase) has been typed in Paid search marketing or Pay Per Click (PPC) is similar to conventional advertising; here a relevant text ad with

a link to a company page is displayed when the user of a search engine types in a specific phrase” Comes with SEO and PPC is a re-marketing technique that displays banner ads based on Google AdWords – “Google offers retargeting through cookies placed on the searcher’s computer to display reminder ads on the display network after someone has clicked on a paid search ad, as a reminder to act These reminders can be effective in

Considering the SEM activities related to the Promotions factor of MIS, many issues emerged through data evidence and interviews:

(1) Based on the graph of Website traffic and the cost of SEM (mainly budget for PPC and re-marketing) in 2020 of website wifiprovn.com, the data show that there is no correlation between the costs spent on SEM and the outcome There are months when the company plans to increase costs for SEM to attract traffic, but the results are not as expected (March, April, July, and September) Meanwhile, there are months when the company forecasted to reduce the cost of SEM, the number of visitors increased highly (August)

Figure 17 Website traffic and marketing cost

(Source: Company’s management system)

(2) Activity related to SEO is almost absent Based on organic traffic statistics related to SEO accounts for less than 10% of traffic Organic traffic SEO is one of the important indicators in SEM techniques to attract users, with low traffic from SEO, MIS company has almost ignored how to attract users effectively with low cost

Figure 18 Organic traffic and total website traffic

(Source: Company’s management system)

(3) At the same time, the company's CEO Nguyen The Ngan in in-depth interview also said:

Jan-20 Feb-20 Mar-20 Apr-20 May-20 Jun-20 Jul-20 Aug-20 Sep-20 Oct-20 Nov-20 Dec-20

Organic Traffic/ Total Website Traffic

Organic Search TOTAL

2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000

Website traffic - Marketing cost

Marketing cost User

MIS Company from the beginning has identified the application of commerce and marketing as a long-term strategy We have had initial success in applying SEM However, the techniques we are using are suitable in a less competitive environment, but the level of competition is higher now With the current approach, it is still not special enough We do not invest much in content, but only buy the right keywords Now, our company has shown clear signs of shortness of breath when compared to other competitors

e-Based on the interviews and application of the mixed marketing tool to the situation analysis of the MIS company, the reason MIS leads to the main problem is the implementation of Marketing Communication (Promotions) Specifically, it is the attraction of users (potential customers) to the Website through the search engine Because of the above reason, it is very difficult for MIS company to make marketing plans for the next months or quarters In the period before 2020, MIS can take advantage

of e-marketing as an advantage to reach customers when other companies do not pay much attention to e-commerce activities However, from 2020, when large companies and e-commerce products also start pouring budgets into online marketing activities, ineffective internal SEM activities lead to fluctuations and negative results when the mayor has higher competition The drop in orders throughout 2020 is a testament to this

4.1.1 Lack of SEO tool

The purpose of SEM is to increase the brand's visibility on search results, volume, and organic traffic to company’s website through appearing in the top 10 in SERPs (Search engine results pages), or the top position of advertising positions(29) With the high-ranking position will bring a correspondingly high traffic for the business(30) Although SEO requires a lot of technical complexity, investment of time, and rankings appear not to increase as fast as PPC, but SEO brings sustainable development benefits for organizations and businesses If the company does SEM, it cannot just focus on running PPC, but need to pay attention to SEO Furthermore, SEO is essentially a part

of SEM as well In other words, they complement each other, and are indispensable for either company if the company wants to do an internet marketing campaign

SEO is the process of optimizing a website to get high rankings for keywords in search engines SEO principles also help the company create a website with quality content that meets the needs of visitors At the same time, SEO also helps create trust

for users because when faced with too much information, users often only care about the top of the search results list, so that the site can be ranked first and being sought first

is essential Through several optimization techniques such as SEO and PPC, it is possible to improve website ranking(31)

Figure 19 All traffic in 2020

(Source: Company’s Google Analytics)

From figure 19, we can see that the amount of traffic from SEO (organic), just over 14% of the total The company has not focused on investing in the use of SEO tools, which makes the SEM method ineffective Besides, Mr Nguyen The Ngan also mentioned in the interview:

The company has no SEO tool and no person in charge of SEO, the most important thing right now is the content, but the company has no one who makes content that can

be improved every time When BOD has free time, content for the new product will be created Before now, users search for which keyword, the company pays for showing that product The problem of attracting organic traffic sources, investing in SEO and content, the company does not have

4.1.2 Website content is not updated regularly

As mentioned in the analysis above, the website content of MIS company is mainly about product information In addition, the company does not have a clear message to convey to customers when running ads Besides articles about product information, the company's website has a “Blog Wi-Fi” section, which publishes information about

instructions and tips However, due to limited resources and no time to invest in articles, the content on the website in this category is very little The total number of articles in the category written from 2018-2020 is 08 articles According to figure 20, 2019 is the year with the highest number of posts with five posts, 2018 has two posts and 2020 has only one post

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Figure 20 Articles in the "Blog Wi-Fi" category of company's website

(Source: Company’s Website Management)

To achieve good results through using SEO techniques for website content, one of the techniques used is “White Hat” This technique of SEO is a natural way to achieve results in case the website is updated on a regular basis with quality and unique content(32) Therefore, the website is not updated will affect the application of SEO techniques, thereby reducing website traffic

4.1.3 Content is not different and attractive

Like other sales sites, the company focuses on providing detailed information about each product When users search for information about Wi-Fi and related issues, the search keywords will help users access the articles displayed on the search page Therefore, the fact that the article is not attractive, does not include the content that users need to search for, specifically optimizing keywords to be able to get website to rank in the SERPs will make the amount of website traffic decrease because users do not click

to the company's article to read

The content characteristics of a website include factors such as keyword placement within a web page, keyword overlap, their layout, and combinations.These factors can affect a website's visibility in search engines(33) Besides, in each article, its main part covers the quality of the content and how it can best be presented in search engines(34)