Selin Bilgin

500748548 - 1IBM4 - This is my blog for Digital Marketing. Several cases are discussed on this page. 

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Super Bowl Social Media Command Center

Social media strategies link to social customers. Social customers, are the type of customer’s brands want. Those brands can reach out to them via social media and engage with them. When negative comments are posted about a brand, that brand needs to respond quickly to prevent misunderstandings and make the unsatisfied customer happy again. A keyword suited for this case is Super Bowl. A keyword needs to be something that catches attention.

Pitfalls of engaging difficult customers on social media platforms is that everyone can see the comments posted. This can give the brand a bad image. A great community manager should respond to questions quickly, to keep people satisfied. A community manager should also feel the urge to solve customers’ problems. Brands that are targeted on the community that uses digital devices, should use social media because it is a good way to engage with the people. Brands that are targeted to elderly people do not need to use social media, because those people will not use those platforms.    

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Fuji Xerox

Fuji Xerox implemented an integrated CRM system. This way data was storage centrally. The company included an Oracle ERP system, which is a resource planning software. The new CRM system, solved several problems. The most important one is that the focus of is now on the customers and their needs. The sales team can now manage their sales pipeline effectively. On the long-term, with using the new system, a better customer experience will be found. Also quicker responses to sales queries, can be made on the long term.

Creating customer loyalty is the main objective of CRM. Social media is a very productive and easy way to interact with customers, which is good for the customer relationship. Customers like personalized communication, because it is direct, and it feels personal. Behavioural tracking can cause a feeling of unsafety for customers. Customers can feel like their privacy is invaded. These are ethical problems that can occur when using behavioural tracking.

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Zando

Zando wanted to increase their customer database. The company did this by email marketing. Zando approached Digital Fire, a digital marketing agency, to help them with their campaign. The email had a very good call to action. The campaign offered to win a new pair of shoes for a whole year, together with your friend. Zando did this, because their target group never shops alone. This also made people share the campaign. The email Zando sent, asked the receivers to fill in their own data. This caused the database to grow, which was Zando’s goal. Because of the viral sharing, even more people filled in their data on Zando’s site. A total of 11800 people entered the competition.

Mass customisation, is segment people within a demographic or behavioural group, for example. This makes people more attached, because it is based on their personality. Direct marketing per email is very cost-effective, but can land in peoples’ spam boxes. Direct marketing per post is not cost-effective, but more people feel obligated to read it. Permission from people, prospects in this case, need to be granted to be able to send emails. The prospects can see it as spam, if there was no permission granted, and are allowed to accuse the company.

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Quirk Education

Images are important on sites, because it gives an impact. Images can indicate emotions without the use of words. In addition to that, makes an image the site less bland. It attracts more attention. To increase the conversion, the company wanted to add images. To test which image had more impact, Quirk Education used A/B testing. This is a way of testing where the original version and an additional version get tested to check which attracts more attention. This was important for the company, to make sure no mistakes were found in the site, and to see if the impact was high enough. The image the company eventually picked, gave the company more credibility.

Using an A/B test would be better in a situation where an online shop wants to add ‘Up to 30% discount’ on their site, and the brand needs to know where it should be placed. A multivariate test would be better to use, when a site is not made yet, and a company want to know which combination works best. A conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the number of visitors, expressed as a percentage. This is important to marketers, because it determines the success of campaign. What can be tested on e-commerce product pages are, for example, calls to action, themes and social sharing.

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Motoreasy

A conversion funnel are the steps a person takes on a site, to end up in becoming a customer. Motoreasy looked where people left the site in the conversion funnel. Professionals discovered that the website visitors were lost. The language was too formal, and products were only mentioned in the beginning of the process. Motoreasy improved the site where it lacked. The company made sure the benefits were mentioned more often in the process, next to that a phone number was provided to call, if any problem occurred. Language played an important role in this case. Because the language on the site was too formal, people stopped within the process.

 Using data to base the business decisions on is important, because the companies need relevant sources. If the company does not know anything about their target, it will not be able to succeed. Business decisions need to be based on facts and not completely on speculations. A single-page heat map shows the company where the site visitors click. This gives an indication on what seems clickable and what not for the visitors. A goal is something a company wants to achieve and a key performance indicator (KPI) is a pointer to measure what is achieved.  

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Col’Cacchio

Col’Cacchio started a #PriceSlice campaign on Twitter for engaging the community. Twitter was well suited for this campaign, because Col’Cacchio knew that their customers used social media a lot and thus used Twitter. Twitter has a function where you can see which hashtags are trending. The more people tweeted, the more discount followed, and more awareness for the brand is created. Hashtags were useful for this campaign, because monitoring them is easy. Not only is it easier to monitor for the company but also for all Twitter users, which creates even more awareness for the brand. Because of the campaign, more people went to the store and got their discount. This causes a chain affect, because more people will want the discount. And thus an offline and online interaction is created.

The site the Guardian support social media, by showing their own social media accounts. The site shows the top 10 most viewed articles. People are able to subscribe to the paper or sign in on the site. Companies should be transparent for the customers to trust them. Via social media comments can be posted about brands, which can cause either improvement or harm for the brand. Transparency has accelerated the use of social media for marketing, because people can respond immediately when there is something to say. When using social media for advertising, only an add is post and no interactions take place. When using social media for marketing, however, a lot of interactions take place. The benefits are that social media is a big platform almost everyone, worldwide uses. This is at the same time a challenge, because this means the other brands will promote on this big platform too, in which the company has to make sure, their brand stands out.  

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Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola’s goal is to double its business by 2020. The company let the audience be in control of the brand, by being open to them and having conversations. Instead of advertising only. Brand storytelling is used by Coca-Cola. This is because, stories create emotional bonds and spreads ideas. Content audit is important for every brand. Preferences of people change all the time, and for a brand to satisfy the wants and needs of those people, it needs to inspect.

Content marketing strategy is creating, and distributing relevant content a target audience. The strategy applies to where people share content and which way it is shared. The customer journey or buying cycle is relevant to content marketing, because by understanding those cycles, a company can adjust to where the customers cut off and improve that part. The making of new content for a brand is split into four parts. The first part is making a brand style guide. This is a guide for the person creating content. The second part is making a content calendar, this helps the person in planning the content. The third part is making a workflow map. This map assist in streamlining the process. The last part is making a persona map. This map focusses completely on the target group.

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Rocking the Daisies

The festival Rocking the Daisies, wanted to know what people thought about their festival. The brand hired a company named BrandsEye. This company can track all data about a brand, in terms of what has been said, and what has been written about that brand. When Rocking the Daisies announced an international band was performing, the festival attracted a lot of attention. The festival should let more international bands perform in the future, to keep excitement around their brand. Ongoing monitoring is important in this case, because that way the organizers can see where people get bored, and pay more attention to improving here the festival lacked. Also, popularity of bands changes a lot; the organizers should know, which band is popular and when.

Exploratory research is done to know what customers feel and think about a certain topic (qualitative data). The market is being explored with this research strategy. Primary research, on the contrary, is done by collecting data through surveys, for example. This research strategy is for gathering new data, for a particular product (quantitative data). For online research, both research methods can be used. Quantitative data defines whereas qualitative data describes. A company can see how many people have visited their website, as well as seeing their comments.

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Nike

Nike saw the effectiveness of big-budget advertising going down. The brand’s customers are mostly Generation Y customers, which is the digital age. This digital age looks for innovation, as everything is changing so quickly. Nike realised this, and changed their marketing strategy. The key insight that helped Nike develop a complete marketing strategy, was that the marketing in the digital age is a conversation. Thus interaction is important. The offline branding was still a small part of their marketing strategy, which is important because that causes people to think about the brand. Not everyone is online all the time; by still using offline branding, it will stick to the person’s mind.  Nike should always take into consideration, what is currently trendy and liked by their target group when making new campaigns.

Before planning a marketing strategy, a company should know their business context. The company needs to know the environment its working in, and what the customers want and need. The internet affected marketing in a way that it constantly needs adjustments and improvements. Customers can respond rapidly to the innovations, and the company receives that feedback quickly. It is a fast moving environment and thus needs a lot of effort to stay in people’s mind. Customers are more empowered now than before the digital age. It is easier for customers to buy stuff. Going into stores is not necessary anymore; online stores are frequently used. People find online shopping, and interacting with the brand online nice and therefore, the people are more active.