The tactics in the SOSTAC planning model should be defined by the actions. It means that there should be a plan to implement and study budgets, responsibilities and return estimates for the project. It is important that company’s employees comprehend the plan of action and agrees to communicate to each other to keep track of what needs to be done as well as what has been done. (Smith 2017, 199-224.)
Currently, the case company has a marketing budget of about 500 euros per month for all digital marketing channels. However, most of the set objectives can be achieved without using money at all. After reaching short-term objectives, paid advertising is going to help maximise marketing efforts by reaching more potential customers and increasing brand awareness even further. While the company has a new marketing plan, the set budget of 500 euros is estimated to be a good monthly budget for paid ads in Facebook and Instagram as well as possible influencer collaborations.
As mentioned, it is useful for the company to utilize tools for example checklists for keeping track of the tasks of the plan. The Gantt Chart created earlier can also be used as a checklist for planning content. However, it is beneficial to create another list for other marketing and company related actions to be completed. For the case company, the suggested activities to plan would be to establish a blog on the website, implement Google Analytics on the website and e-commerce along with planning new content and YouTube/Instagram videos according to the established marketing plan. The company can establish detailed deadlines for each objective, however short-term objectives should be started as soon as possible to see results.
3.5.1 Website
In this part, the website of the case company is going to be analyzed for actions. The website’s design, interaction, content, and usability will be reviewed to assess what could be changed or improved to bring more potential customers to the website and increase sales.
When designing a website for a company, it is important to keep the target customer group in mind while also making sure the audience gets a good user experience. A Webpage is one of the most important parts of online presence of a company, thus it should be designed according to the brand so that it represents the company the right way. Key elements in website design are brand image, colour, layout, fonts, accessibility and site navigation. All of these components play a crucial part in what kind of an impression of the brand potential customers get when visiting the website. (Smartinsights, 2020.)
Figure 7. The main page of Bulba’s website
The website’s layout on the main page looks somewhat cluttered. As this is the main page, it would better represent the brand to have a large picture or something specific for the prospect to focus on when entering the site. The layout could overall be more modern and cleaner to give a more professional image of the company. Additionally, the products should not be shown on the main page, because it makes the page look unorganized. The main page could only include maybe a few large pictures, links to social media channels and essential information about the company along with drop-down menus for products.
The logo and fonts of the company look appealing but could be more utilized for example by adding some earth-tone colours that represent the brand. A certain colour theme helps a potential customer remember the brand better, like for example Coca Cola. It has a red and white colour theme which it uses boldly in its marketing and therefore people associate the colours with the brand (Smartinsights, 2020). The fonts and other texts in website of the case company seem otherwise easy-to-read. For an even better visibility, some of the fonts could be a little larger.
The accessibility of the website is good, however, after making some possible changes to the main page, it would be a lot better. Moreover, the site’s navigation could be clearer, for example by listing all the product categories under ‘’Osastot’’ and deleting all other products from the main page.
3.5.2 SEO
When searching the case company on Google with relevant keywords, Bulba appeared as the first search result. However, it was a paid Google advertisement. As mentioned earlier on the theoretical framework, most people prefer organic search results instead of paid ads.
In the organic search results, the company ranked on the first page with different keywords.
To better find out what could be improved in terms of search engine optimization for the website, a SEO site analysis was performed on a page called ‘’SEO Site Checkup’’. It is a free check that anyone can do to determine how well a website is optimized.
Figure 8. Search Engine Optimization website check-up of Bulba.fi
The SEO checker site performed an extensive analysis on the webpage, which included common SEO issues, speed optimizations, server and security, mobile usability, and advanced tests (SEO Site Checkup, 2022). Overall, the result was satisfying however there are some things the website could improve even more.
The checker notified that that website of Bulba has some Uniform Resource Locators, URLs, that are not fitting for search engine optimization. These URLs should be examined and fixed accordingly. Another important issue was that usual keywords are not displaying in meta-tags. The most important keywords should be visible in the meta-tags in order for Google to determine the topic of the website. In addition, there is not any meta-description tag on the page. Meta-descriptions that are written well can help to increase clicking rates for the website as well as provide helpful information. Finally, the website is notified to use render blocking resources. By deleting render blocking resources from the page, it can assist in loading the website much faster thus giving a better user experience. (SEO Site Checkup 2022.)