Marketing 1352 – Internet Marketing

Group Project Outline

Instructor: Andrew Naiberg

 

Website Analysis, Strategies and Recommendations

 

In this project, you will be a marketing consultant for (ideally) a real company. The primary goal of the project is for you to apply the concepts you are learning in the course to a real-life business, marketing strategy and website. Your report will be written in 2 sections:

• In Part 1, you will analyze the company’s existing website and marketing using the framework provided in lectures and labs and in this outline.
  • Part 1 is NOT the place to make your recommendations; it analyzes the current situation.
• After completing a detailed analysis, in Part 2 you will make detailed recommendations on online marketing strategies and tactics. Your recommendations should be detailed enough that the company’s marketing department could execute them successfully
  • You will not be required to execute your recommendations but the report should be comprehensive and detailed enough that the company could evaluate the strategy and have its employees execute them.
  • In other words, don’t just say, “we recommend a social media campaign;” explain which social media sites they should, use, what content to publish on each site and so forth.

 

You are not required to work within a monetary budget for this project; developing a budget is beyond the scope of this course. Be creative, but keep it realistic: don’t recommend a 95% discount or a SuperBowl ad featuring Taylor Swift – make sure your business could realistically afford the tactics you recommend.

 

If we have time, each group will present the key findings and recommendations in class. Details on the presentations will follow.  You will not present all your findings, but will focus on the 1 or 2 key areas or strategies you recommend.

 

Tips for success:

• This outline includes as much detail as possible about the report – the easiest way to make sure you’ve covered all the topics properly is to follow it! The majority of marks are lost by leaving out sections (if something doesn’t apply, explain why not).
• Make specific, detailed recommendations. If you recommend email marketing, provide explain what the company should offer and provide examples of at least one email and associated landing page. For social media, explain what sort of content you recommend on which sites. In other words, it’s not enough to recommend a strategy; detail the tactics and execution so the company could execute it without you.
• You probably won’t find a company that is doing (or even should be doing) marketing across all channels, so your project probably won’t be equally detailed for every channel. But when planning your project, you should identify at least two or three key channels that you will focus on and will form the backbone of your project. And if you decide that some channels are not relevant, explain why they are not relevant.
• Don’t review or re-teach the course. In other words, don’t explain, “Email is a very valuable channel that provides high ROI…” Explain how you would apply the techniques.
• Remember this is an INTERNAL report for the company; it should not be self-promotional or written as if it is the company’s marketing material (you’re not trying to market the company to its own employees; you’re evaluating their current marketing and making recommendations).
• Remember: Think of yourself as a consultant hired to analyze your company and make specific recommendations that the company’s employees could run with.

 

Plan Outline

Title Page – Company name, logo, website URL, group members, date

 

Executive Summary – Include a CONCISE (approx. 1-page) summary of the key findings and recommendations in your report. Think of it this way: You have 5 minutes to explain the results of your analysis and your key recommendations to the CEO of the organization. The executive summary DOES NOT discuss every strength and weakness you identified or every tactic you suggest; instead, it summarizes the most important and relevant findings (i.e. strengths and weaknesses, “where are we now”) and outlines the key recommendations, including the objectives, strategies and a brief synopsis of the tactics that will be deployed. You do not have to write, “In this report we have analyzed XYZ’s marketing…” – assume the readers knows what the report is and summarize the key findings and recommendations.

 

Table of Contents – include all major section headings and page numbers; the executive summary is not part of the TOC and is not a numbered page.

The above 3 sections are not numbered pages.  The following section should begin page 1 of your report.

 

 

Internet MARKETING Project Outline

 

PART i – website aUDIT

 

 

1. Background and Description

 

• Company Name, Company Description, Current Organizational Objectives
  • Briefly describe the business
    • what product(s)/service(s) does it provide
    • who are its target customers
    • how long has it been in business
    • how is it structured (one-off, chain etc.)
    • how/where it operates – local, physical store, online only, physical with online etc.
    • how many employees etc.
  • Briefly describe the industry the company operates in

 

 

1. Strategic Position

 

• Website Online Value Proposition (OVP)
  • Is there one? What is it?
    • This answers: why should I stay on this site and not hit the back button.
    • What does this site have to offer better than the competition?
    • What is the value it offers to the target market?
    • It should be clear on the home page and obvious in a few seconds. Critique it. Remember it is defined by the website visitor.
    • If there is no apparent OVP or if it needs improvement, you will recommend a new one in the Recommendations section – NOT HERE!!
  • Note that if the business does not conduct business online (i.e. the website is purely information, customers must interact directly with the company to buy), the OVP will likely be very close to the general USP – in other words, the OVP will try to convince customers of the benefits/advantages of the company in general versus specifically its online offerings.

• Consumer Analysis – very important!
  • It is critical to understand whom you are selling to in as much detail as possible
  • Is there a clearly defined audience or target customer? Explain and describe in detail.
    • Families, women, small businesses, single men etc.
    • Age range(s)
    • Income level
    • Education level
  • Are there other segments out there who could be interested in your website offering?
    • Note that if the business is ignoring potential target markets, this could be a key recommendation in your report (along with the marketing strategy to attract these new customers).
  • Include details on the demographics:
    • Relevant habits (for example, if analyzing a restaurant, how frequently does the target market eat out? How much do they typically spend on a restaurant meal?)
    • On-line behavior (including buying behavior, if applicable)
    • Interests – what relevant interests do the target customers typically have
    • Media habits – where they get their information and make buying decisions
    • How they use mobile devices, which ones?
    • What websites and social media platforms do they use?
    • If B2B, explain the type of businesses, industries (if applicable), size, locations, etc. that the company serves
      • Note: Although you can provide information about the size and composition of the target market, it is often more important to explain their behaviour – how do you expect them to use the website, learn about the company and make a purchase decision.

 

• Internet Revenue Streams
  • Is the website currently generating revenue?
    • Remember: Online revenue streams refer to companies making money directly from their sites, such as ecommerce, on-site advertising, affiliate marketing (e.g. a blog with links to a retail site that pays commission) etc.
    • Many sites do not have any online revenue streams, such as sites that promote products that are available only in stores or through a direct sales force.
    • Don’t try to find online revenue streams where there are none. If there are none, that’s fine. For example, students sometimes write that the company may be charging its website designer for putting her logo at the bottom of the page – that’s not online revenue.

 

• Website Metrics

 

Remember: If your company has not been collecting analytics data, try to have them sign up for Google Analytics or some other analytics provider (and tag their web pages). Unfortunately, if they haven’t been collecting analytics data, you probably won’t have much to work with. And if they refuse to add analytics or refuse to give you access to the data, there’s not much you can do about it. But let the business know how useful analytics can be!

 

• Benchmark Current Metrics – you will get this information from:
  • The analytics software your client uses – http://www.google.ca/analytics/ or http://statcounter.com/
  • Free tools – broken link tool is http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/ or http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/ or http://xenus-link-sleuth.en.softonic.com/
  • Free tools – website grader tool is http://marketing.grader.com/, http://www.alexa.com/

 

Number of visits/visitors/unique visitors (monthly average).

Bounce rate (monthly average).

Time on site (monthly average).

Top performing keywords (in terms of rank, traffic and lead generation). This part will be completed after you complete the SEO section that follows.  Come back to this.  You will simply include the top keywords here, not all the details.

Number of inbound linking domains. This is a quick summary of the count.  The SEO section deals with the details including quality of links.

Total number of new leads/form submissions (per month).

Total amount of sales generated (per month).

Total number of pages that receive traffic.

The most trafficked pages.

Number of broken links. Use this free tool to help you determine this: http://xenus-link-sleuth.en.softonic.com/

Number of pages indexed by the search engines. This info will be in the report you produce from http://marketinggrader.com

Add any additional metrics you have discovered using the free and/or paid tools

 

If the company has the data, show how the traffic has changed over timed – does the company have more or fewer visits than a year ago, are people viewing more or fewer pages in each visit. This may show whether any site improvements have helped.

 

You will benchmark more detailed metrics (for example, social media, mobile) in other sections of this report.  These are the main metrics which lead into an analysis of the website.

 

 

1. Website Audit – website Analysis

 

• Website Objectives
  • Explain the website in general terms. What is its main purpose? (Informational, online sales etc.)
  • What are the current overall objectives of the company’s website? Examples include: building product/brand/company awareness, building product/brand/company image, encouraging trial, online selling, enhancing customer service, adding additional value, reducing costs to serve, etc. Be as specific as you can.

 

• Home Page

 

This section should include a detailed analysis of the Website design, layout, navigation, usability, content, etc.

 

• A great way to make specific points is to include screen shots with callouts or arrows to emphasize the major points. Include them right in your analysis (rather than referring to an appendix) to improve readability. Make sure you provide context for any screen shots and clearly identify/reference them.

 

• Remember, this is the analysis section. Recommendations should NOT be in this section.  Once you have completed this analysis, summarize as to whether the website meets/exceed the expectations of the target market.
  • What is your first impression?
  • Professional?
  • Trustworthy?
  • Appropriate to the target audience (age, income, education etc.)?
  • Use of colours, animations, gadgets (want to avoid anything unnecessary)
  • Typography – legible? Font size and colour? Use of bullets or long paragraphs?
  • Is important information above the fold?
  • Social Media Presence?
  • Clear Search Box?
  • Account Login? (Should there be one?)
  • Any conversion events (CTAs)?
  • Use of Flash? Load speed?
  • Use of Images?
  • Site Map?
  • Contact Information? Footer Links?

 

• Content Strategy
  • What information does the website provide? What is the company trying to accomplish with the information on its site? Does the website just try to sell stuff or does it also provide valuable information to help educate/inform customers?
  • What is the tone (serious, humourous, cool)? Explain and critique using actual content examples from the website. Focus on the main pages of your site if you have a large site.  What is the most viewed and/or shared content on the site?  What seems to be working really well? What isn’t?
  • Is the content written with the audience in mind? Does it answer questions they may have?

 

• Conversion
  • Are there conversion events on the site? What is/are the main conversion events on the home page and other main pages? Is there a clear call to action with as few and simple steps possible? Include any existing metrics on conversions (what is the conversion rate etc.)?
  • Remember, conversion can include many actions beyond just sales – it could be signing up for a free trial, registering for a free document, watching a video etc.

 

• Website Navigation and Usability
  • Navigation, Menu Structure, Sub-menus, Hierarchy, etc… How many levels of navigation (menus and sub-menus)
  • Critique the ease of finding information
  • Consistent, understandable navigation menus and links?
  • How many levels deep is navigation? (How many levels of links?) Is navigation as simple as possible – are there too many levels or would an additional level of navigation make the site easier to use?
  • Does the site use breadcrumbs or other indicators to help viewers know where they are or get back?

 

 

 

1. OnLine COMMUNICATIONS AUDIT

 

Normally you would evaluate the entire marketing mix. For purposes of this plan, you will focus on the communications section – you must include an evaluation of:

 

• Search Engine Optimization

Exercise to Get to Your Organic Position: 1.     Estimate how effective your site’s SEO is at attracting new customers. Brainstorm keyword phrases your primary target market will use to search for your product/service/content, etc., assuming they have not previously purchased that item from you. Write down 10 – 20 keyword phrases and identify the ones you feel the site needs to rank high for. Do not include your brand or company trademarked product names in this analysis. 2.     Now do the same thing, but include your brand and company trademarked products/services.   This examines how well your site ranks for branded searches; it should rank higher here. 3.     Use the following 2 tools to refine your list of the top 10 to 15 most important keyword phrases to build qualified traffic to your site – Google Trends and Google Keyword Analysis. 4.     Enter all the keyword phrases into Google and see where you rank. 5.     Using the Google Keyword tool, enter your Web Site URL to find out what Google thinks your Web Site is about. Is this consistent with what you know your site to be about?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Current Organic Ranking – Document the current organic position for all relevant keyword phrases you determined from 1 and 2 above. Provide the exact ranking – page number AND position on the page. A table format here is acceptable. Now, summarize your ranking – good, bad? What is the implication of your rankings?  How is your ranking impacting building qualified traffic to your Website? Discuss how, if at all, social media impacts your rankings. Look at personal results as well, if possible.

 

2. On-Page SEO Factors – analyze all on-page SEO factors such as page titles, descriptions and so forth (use Google SEO Starter Guide and lecture notes for each section). Perform this analysis for your home page and the high level sections of your site as dictated by the main navigation menu (5 pages min).

 

See Table on Next Page that should make your SEO evaluation complete and easier:

 

SEO Template – complete for a few key pages of your site

 

Page  Heading	Page URL	Current Page Title Tag (70 character max)	Current Page Meta Description (150 character max)	What is the purpose of the page? Ex – product description, information, FAQ, etc. Include Conversion.	What keyword(s) is/are this page optimized for?	What are the main headings on this page?  Do they stand out? Are they important to the target audience? Do they include keywords?	Heading Tags, Images, Alt Tags, Anchor Text – do they exist? Give examples & critique
Example:   Company Home Page	http://www.bcit.ca	BCIT::British Columbia Institute of Technology	British Columbia Institute of technology is BC’s largest post-secondary institution. BCIT offers part-time and full-time courses and programs in technology, trades, engineering, business, and health.	Home page: explain scope of business here			Heading tags exist, no image or alt tags. Anchor text adds no new value Example:…
…
…

 

 

3. Off-Page SEO Factors

How much benefit is your company getting from building inbound Links and credibility; aka: authority, “link juice” (use https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/ etc.)

• Critique factors explained in lecture

 

4. Local Results: Google My Business
   • Does your business have a complete, up-to-date Google My Business listing?

 

 

• PPC – Paid Search, AdWords

 

• Does you business use paid (PPC) advertising (e.g. Google Ads or re-targeting)?
• If they can’t tell you, using the keywords you determined are most relevant to your target market, can you find any evidence of PPC advertising by your website?
• If yes, include the relevant keywords and corresponding ads – critique both. What is the call to action? Critique the copy in the ad – all components are described in lecture.
  • If the company tried PPC and found it didn’t help, try to determine why – is PPC simply not relevant to the business or was there a problem with the PPC effort? Were the keywords appropriate? How were the landing pages? Did the ads get no clicks or clicks but no purchases?
  • Show the landing page (screen shot). What is the conversion event? Critique how successful the landing page is at achieving conversion. Does the content support the ad?
• If not, was there a reason? In other words, did they think PPC wouldn’t help, or did they just not think of it or not have anyone to do it?

 

Other Advertising

 

• Does your Website have any ads on other Websites to drive traffic to the site?
• Does your site advertise in any social media spaces? g. Facebook, LinkedIn?

• Social Media
  • Identify the communities/customers the company is trying to interact with through social media (e.g. current customers, competitors’ customers, influencers, volunteers, environmentalists etc.)
  • Community can comprise many different sections of people who have conflicting interests and needs. From a marketing perspective, you need to know which part of your community you are talking to, as this will potentially affect your message and the medium you use.

 

• Once you identify your community, determine where they contribute and what they discuss. What is topical with this community? Which conversations do you need to monitor?

• Your own brand, products, industry, sector
• Competitors
• Customer segments
• Geography/location (local, regional, national), etc.

 

Make a list of all the different conversations you have to monitor. Select a few for each of the above and then adapt as you learn.

 

Determine where the relevant conversations taking place.

Use these tools to help you monitor these social media channels.

 

Examples of Social Media Channels	Examples of Monitoring Tools
Twitter	Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Twitter Search, Social Mention, Topsy,
Facebook	Hootsuite (for own pages) + paid tools like, Sysomos or Synthesio (for external pages)
Google+	Google Alerts, Google Search, G+Search
YouTube, Flickr, Delicious	Addict-o-matic
Pinterest	Pinterest Image Search, Google Search
Blogs, Forums etc.	Google (for public content)

 

• Describe the current Social Media initiatives. Include an assessment of company’s contributions – the quality and quantity of content produced, the consistency of your brand, who is interacting with the content (comments and replies to posts, videos, blogs, etc.), and any existing quantitative measurables (fans, followers, views, click-throughs, etc.). Comment on the engagement levels.

 

• Don’t just state how many posts/tweets the company has on each social media platform – provide some insight into how they use the platform (e.g. do they provide interesting information? Motivation? Just product or information or in-store events (sales)?

 

• Consider all the following:

 

1. Blogs – include (in table format) blog author, bio, blog objective, platform, topics, ranking for keywords, number & frequency of posts, number of hits, content sharing buttons, RSS option, Community comments, discussion that follows the comments, inbound links, tags, and finally overall strengths and weaknesses of each blog.

 

2. Micro-blogs – Include (in table format) author, bio, objective, number of followers, # of follows, re-tweets, lists, favourites, klout score, mentions – brand mentions, product mentions, event mentions, use of #hashtags  (brand, product, event), quality of tweets, number of clicked links from tweets, etc.   Overall strengths and weaknesses.

 

3. Social Networks – Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube, Vimeo and others (e.g. dedicated or domain-specific sites). Brand Pages or Subscriptions. Include metrics such as number of posts, type of posts, number of views, consumer interactions with posts (shares, likes, re-tweets, comments, fan count, traffic referred from SM to Website). Comment on use of contests, incentives to join brand pages, etc. Overall strengths and weaknesses.

 

4. Check-in or Rating/Review sites?

 

5. Social Shopping sites – relevant?

 

6. Professional Networks – LinkedIn Profiles; Company Page (critique it), Groups – company group &/or group the organization belongs to and contributes, status updates, mentions, sharing of content, company followers, etc.

 

7. Social Media and Public Relations – does your company use Social Media for PR purposes?

 

• Viral marketing
• If your company has tried to introduce viral content, describe the effort and results.

 

• Mobile Marketing
  • Explain the compatibility of your website across various platforms including tablets and smartphones – is the website fixed or some level of adaptive/responsive?
  • Is your website optimized for mobile? Explain the current mobile user experience your site is providing
  • Briefly reiterate if and how your target market uses mobile; consumers now get almost any information on mobile devices, but is mobile specifically appropriate or valuable to your company/industry?
  • Does your website have a mobile version or a branded smartphone or tablet app? Critique.
  • Does the website sponsor any mobile application as opposed to having its’ own?
  • Describe the current mobile marketing tactics including SMS, QR codes, etc.
  • Does your company have an app or use text messages in marketing or customer service?

 

• Permission Marketing (Email)
  • Does the company have a customer or prospect email database?
  • Does the company utilize email-marketing to drive customer relationship and revenue goals?
  • How creative is the company in terms of collecting email addresses? Do they provide a signup incentive? Include examples of any recent emails and evaluate their effectiveness. If the company currently engages in email marketing, do they include advertisements in their emails? (This may not be appropriate to do, but mention it).  Also comment on the call to action, the landing page and the corresponding conversion event for the emails.
  • What information is the site collecting from users – just the basics (name and email address) or enough to make informed marketing decisions and campaigns, e.g. age, sex, purchase history etc?
  • Include any metrics that have been shared with you.

 

1. Competitive Analysis

 

• You may use a table format for this section.
• Include a brief analysis of two key competitors. Compare the OVP, website analysis, online advertising, online communications strategies, tactics and activities etc. Essentially an overview of everything you discussed above.
• Are your top competitors actively producing content in Social Media? If so, where? Which tools are they using? Which platforms are they using? What topics do they discuss and how often do they post? Critique the quality of the content and the conversations/contributions consumers are making to this content. Are they perceived to be influential or thought leaders?

 

The end of this section should be summarized with the top strengths and weaknesses of your two top competitors.  Explain why and think strategically.  

 

 

• WIDER MACRO ENVIRONMENT

 

• Here are some BRIEF thoughts to get you started. Refer to any Marketing Strategy classes you have taken, and be sure to include all factors that are important and relevant to your business.

 

• Focus on trends or changes that impact the business. For example, under legal, do not confirm that the business follows spam laws – that’s expected; explain if any legal changes are affecting the business (positively or negatively). See the examples below:

 

• Social – have consumer attitudes changed to help or harm your business?
  • Rising health consciousness benefited health food companies, health clubs, health equipment manufacturers and stores etc.
  • Car sharing (e.g. evo, car2go) and ride share companies (e.g. Uber) are changing attitudes toward car ownership and transportation.
• Legal – Are any legal changes impacting your business?
  • BC once changed drunk driving laws, which had a significant (negative) impact on restaurants and bars.
  • Canada recently legalized recreational marijuana, creating a new (at least newly legal) industry and new opportunities for some existing businesses
• Environment – is your organizational approach ethical and sustainable?
  • Is your product/service and approach an advantage to highlight (e.g. ethically sourced materials) or a problem to overcome in your marketing?
• Political – Are any political developments impacting your business?
  • Will a newly-elected government make changes or new policies that help or harm the business
  • Are municipal politicians planning to build a community centre or a 12-lane highway right next to your company’s new housing development? Can you take advantage of government funding or tax incentives?
• Technology – review any technology developments that may impact your customers or your company/industry.
  • Software enables people to do their own tax returns easily and accurately; before, taxes were too complicated for most people to do themselves. This dramatically reduced business for tax filing companies.
  • Online shopping, online vacation/flight/hotel booking etc. completely changed those industries
  • Video streaming killed video rental businesses
  • Lasik surgery created new industry or at least new opportunities for ophthalmologists/eye surgeons
  • Would a phone app be worthwhile to increase customer convenience or reduce costs?

 

• SWOT Analysis

 

• Now that your analysis is complete, you are in a position to take what you have learned, and objectively and strategically determine and document the company’s ONLINE strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

 

• Use bullets, however each bullet should represent a key finding that is significant and important to the business – keep it relevant. The bullet should form a complete sentence and should explain why. There should be no doubt as to why you have included this point.  Remember there is nothing here that has not been included somewhere in your “Where are we now” section. No surprises here, but rather an opportunity to articulate what is important.

 

• SWOT should not exceed 2 pages. Your SWOT, if done correctly, should lead to the next section which will focus on strategy, then detailed recommendations.   Your strategies should become obvious to you once this SWOT is complete.

 

• Remember:

 

• Strengths and weaknesses are internal to your company: things your company is good or bad at, areas where they hold competitive advantage or are at a disadvantage.

 

• Opportunities and threats are external to the company: changing technology (e.g. online streaming video wasn’t good for video rental outlets), social changes (e.g. people getting busier and having less free time), legal developments etc.

 

 

Whew!  End of Part I. 

PART ii – website strategy and tactics

 

 

1. organizational (Business) goalS – VERY IMPORTANT!

 

What are the top-level goals the business is trying to achieve? For example, are they trying to improve brand awareness, attract more customers during slow periods (e.g. bar/restaurant trying to generate more business Mon-Thurs), increase repeat sales to existing customers etc.

 

Goals should be specific, measurable and time-limited: “Increase new-customer (first-time) purchases by 15% by End of Year.”

 

Ideally your company has told you its real near-term goals; if not, recommend your own based on what you know about the company and its current situation.

 

1. General Website OBJECTIVES
   1. The overall digital marketing plan must support the Organizational Goals above but are there any objectives specifically for the website.
   2. For example, begin (or increase) online sales/revenue, reduce customer support cost, increase customer acquisition (e.g. leads)
      1. Example of an acquisition objective: “Acquire 5,000 new online customers within the next 12 months.”
      2. Example of a cost (or profit depending on the wording) objective: “Save $20,000 per year in administration costs by converting 10% of our customer base to paperless billing within 3 months.”

 

1. online value proposition
   1. Ensure the business has a strong the Online Value Proposition.
   2. If the existing OVP is great, that’s fine – explain why it is already good.
   3. If not, recommend a new OVP. This must be clear and should ideally be supported by a unique strength/advantage of the business
   4. Clearly explain and articulate what your competitive differentiating feature(s) is for your business i.e. what is your market position? Then translate that to your online presence. How you will communicate your value proposition on the home page? Explain, and then come up with your tag line (2 sentences max) that clearly explains this to your web visitors.
   5. This value proposition must be clearly articulated on your new home page (make sure of this in your improved web design)

 

• tARGET mARKET
  1. If the target market is already appropriate for the business and complete, you described it in Part 1.
  2. If the business should be focusing on different customers – or if it could go after a new segment – describe in detail who these ideal customers are – how old are they, what level of education do they have, how much disposable income, where do they live, what do they do for fun, what are the most important problems you can solve for them etc? Your recommendations should include a plan to attract these new customers.

 

• Monetizing the website – i.e. rEVENUE STREAMS
  1. If appropriate, specify any direct (e.g. selling products or services online), advertising, affiliate marketing, etc. AND Indirect (eg. collection of personal information for future marketing purposes such as lead generation, email marketing, etc…)
  2. Be creative, but also be realistic; not all business can monetize their website; many companies use their website to get new customers, provide information about their products and services, maintain a relationship with their customers but NOT to directly get money. For example, restaurants require customers to come to the physical restaurant, but they can sell gift cards or souvenirs (e.g. clothing, beer glasses) online.

 

• communications STRATEGIES and objectives
  1. Answers: how are we going to get there?
  2. Provides an overview of the strategies that will help your business meet the website objectives you have included in the above section.
  3. You will have specific objectives that will hold you accountable for your strategies
  4. Structure your thoughts by completing the table below – this completed table is expected in your report and will guide your recommendations/plan (but your recommendations will provide more detail and explanation).

 

 

 

Communications Strategies and Objectives

 

Here are some examples to get you thinking. It’s NOT for you to copy word for word.

 

	Website Design	SEO	Social Media	Online Advertising	Mobile	Email
Strategy:	Revise our current website to improve content, navigation,______etc, to improve the user experience.	Drive qualified traffic to the website by improve organic rankings for profitable keywords (_______) by focussing on ________…   Develop a fully optimized Google Places Page that ____ to _____.	Develop a highly engaging _____community of __________. Create compelling, engaging content for the community that can be leveraged across social media platforms.   Foster a strong environment for user-generated content…   Incorporate POEM strategy as well.	Build awareness of _______ by using  Google Adwords to drive qualified traffic to the website.	Create a fully optimized mobile website (smartphone, tablet, etc.)  focusing on ___information our customers require.   Build and promote a mobile application that ….   Purchase paid search ads on Google Mobile for _____ to ______.	Execute a permission email  marketing cross sell campaign of X product to X existing customers.   Use permission marketing to build long term customer loyalty and relationships.
Objectives:	Revise the _______ by X date…etc.	Improve our SEO position for _______________ keywords from X to X by X date.	Build a  community of X  _________  by X date. Create and optimize branded profiles on X social media platforms by X date.	Achieve a click-through rate of X and a conversion rate of X within X timeframe (corresponds with adwords campaign)	Increase traffic from the mobile search to our mobile site from X to X.   Reach X app downloads by X date.	Increase average revenue from segment of existing customers from X to X by X date through the cross selling of X product, achieving an overall response rate of X.
Metrics: Link this to your major objectives. You will then have specific metrics under your tactics.	-time it takes to complete a task, time spent on site, pages visited, etc.	-website traffic, rankings, etc.	-referral traffic, size of community, etc.

 

The completion of this table is important. If done correctly, it will guide the rest of your plan.

 

 

1. Communication Strategies

 

1. website design – IMPORTANT!
   • New Home Page – include a mockup of your new home page and ideally a mockup for at least one other main page of your website (pick a significant page)
   • Include all the content for the home page. Use the best practices you learned about in lecture.
   • Powerpoint is probably the easiest tool to mock this up, but there are others if you know them (e.g. Photoshop or specific wireframe tools). I am more interested in how well you have incorporated what we are learning in this class and how well you have thought through the experience your website delivers to your target audience, not having your website look like the real thing from a design point of view
   • Video tutorials on how to design web pages and posters in Powerpoint or Publisher.
     • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MSPa62HW18
     • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT4PcbUq15k
     • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpfO5F7irA4
   • Explain your key changes – any new navigation, new site organization/structure, new look and feel (images, colours, content) etc.
   • As before, a good way is to have callouts/arrows pointing to the changes you make to the previous website

 

2. Search Engine Optimization

• What changes/upgrades (if any) are required to the website to improve on-page SEO?
  • Recommend improvements to page titles and descriptions, URLs or page names, image ALT text, website structure etc.

 

• Make recommendations to generate more back-links from other sites. How can you reach out to other sites, bloggers, reviewers etc?

 

• Google Places Listing should be a subsection – include details on how this will be optimized

 

• Review Sites should also be a subsection – include details on the sites you will set up profiles on and how you will work to encourage reviews

 

3. Social Media

• Blog Section should be in this section – all details following lecture material
• Suggest you have a section on each platform, along with tactics, and metrics for each
• Having fully optimized profiles for your platforms is important
• Use the POEM Framework (Paid, Owned and Earned Media) as much as possible when describing your tactics
• Explain how you will leverage your content (website, blog, etc.) on the social media platforms. In essence you need to explain your content for each platform. It is not acceptable to use the same content across all platforms.
• Explain how you will promote sharing – how will you encourage customers and viewers to forward your content or tell others about you
• Explain how you will use a Social Media Management Tool to help you manage your social media efforts
• Explain how the social media activities will integrate with other digital marketing activities in your plan
• Explain how the social media activities will integrate with other traditional marketing activities
• Create a content calendar for all your social media activities – an example of what content will you post to the various channels over a sample month or so

 

Connections with your Community – Tips

• How will you connect online with your community?
• Engagement Steps include – Listen – Share – Comment – Create – Curate
• What tactics will you implement at each step?
• Examples: e.g. join groups, post comments on blogs, solve problems/challenges raised by the community. If your site can add additional value, comments should include links to your content such as blogs, Website pages, etc… This must be authentic, and provide specific value.  Will the link help to further answer the question or add insight into the challenge the community is facing?
• Designate your company’s “experts”/“thought leaders” who will comment, engage and provide value.

I would recommend having a section on on-going social media activities, and then a section on social media campaigns where you can be creative – these are extra pushes to help meet your objectives. A unique contest is one idea.

Include a social media content calendar.

Social Media Advertising should be a subsection of your social media section.

Social Media Customer Service should be a subsection.

4. PPC Online Advertising – Adwords
   • For at least one PPC campaign (set of related product and services and the associated set of keywords), include the
     • keywords
     • sample ad(s) – remember, make the ad compelling – what is going to make people click on your ad instead of the one above/below it?
     • landing page(s)
   • If PPC advertising is one of the key recommendations, create at least 2 campaign themes (products or sets of keywords) with corresponding ads.

5. Affiliate Marketing

 

If affiliate marketing is a worthwhile channel for your company, explain how you will run the affiliate programme.

 

• What influencers would you target (bloggers, reviewers, shopping engines, coupon sites etc.)?
• How will you support them (What training/information will you provide? Do they need samples to review? Do they get early access to new products?)

 

6. Permission email Marketing – Every company can probably benefit from email marketing for something – lead nurturing, relationship/loyalty building, re-activation.

• Tactics to build and grow your email list.
• You will then build at least one email campaign for your company, more than one if email marketing is a significant part of your plan. If so, the emails can be different offers for different customers (see below) or a sequence of emails to the same customers.
• You decide if the email is to be directed to website visitors (i.e. non-customers) or existing customers, what the email offers and so forth.
• Create at least one email landing page, more if email is a significant component of your recommendations.

 

Email Campaign Summary must include

• Objective: Specify the Email campaign objective(s); common objectives include:

 

1. Customer Acquisition – You have a list of website visitors who have given you permission to market to them. They have shown an interest in your company or product. The objective of your email is to convert these visitors to customers. You have basic information on file as these visitors have registered on your site.
2. Cross-Sell – Your customer has purchased from you in the past. The objective of your email is to sell another one of your products.
3. Upgrade – Your customer has purchased from you in the past. The objective of your email is to sell a higher-priced version of the same type of product.  Of course, there will be additional features and benefits for the higher-priced item.
4. Re-Sell – Your customer has purchased from you in the past. The objective of your email is to re-sell the customer on the same product or service.
5. Traffic Building – The recipient of this email may or may not have purchased from you in the past. You decide.  The primary objective is to build traffic to the physical location.  Secondary objective is to build traffic to the Website.
6. Loyalty – In most cases, there will be an element of loyalty building in your email – just keeping in touch and reminding the customer about your company and products.

 

• The Offer: Outline in detail what you are offering in the email. Is it a hard or soft offer?
• The Test email (if applicable): Explain what you are going to test (see below for what you need to explain here)
• Segmentation and Database Fields: If you have (or could get) more detailed data on the customers (e.g. age, sex, purchase history), how would you use this to create more targeted emails?
• Tracking: How will you define success? What are you going to track? (Relate to conversion).

 

Email(s) and Landing Page(s)

• Initial Email – format as if I were to receive it from your company
• Test Email – ideally include a different version of the email to A/B test, especially if email is one of your key recommendations. Explain what you are testing and why you think the change is relevant.
• Corresponding landing page for the initial email. You can use PowerPoint to create the landing page with exact text, graphics, etc.  Feel free to use the shell from your revised home page Website to create the landing page.  Make sure you focus on how to optimize your landing page for conversions

 

Product can be a physical product, an intangible, a service, information, an idea, a donation, registration for an event, etc.

 

 

7. Mobile Marketing – If specific mobile marketing (e.g. an app, SMS coupons, SMS campaign etc.) is worthwhile, explain your recommendations.

 

 

• offline marketing

If applicable, briefly discuss any offline marketing initiatives that you are recommending to drive traffic and how they combine with the online marketing strategies (e.g. how online and offline support each other, how customers move between online and offline channels).

No need to struggle on this one – if offline marketing is not required and you aren’t recommending any, just say so.

 

• METRICS

Each section should explain what metrics you will track to determine effectiveness. If you chose to include the metrics in each section (preferred), then you do not need to have this as a separate section of your plan.

 

• CONCLUSION

 

Wrap up your report in one paragraph.

 

FORMATTING: In addition to content, you will also be marked on formatting as follows:

                                               

• Report cover – includes all pertinent information; good use of colour
• Each page has company logo
• Table of Contents
• Executive Summary and TOC not included in page numbering – Page 1 is the Background and Description of the Website
• Headings – consistent, headings should not be at the bottom of the page with no text beneath the heading
• Tables or Columns that exceed one page have headings repeated at the top of each new page
• Page Breaks in appropriate spots (relates to heading and tables points above)
• Clear labels and explanations of all screen shots, graphs, images etc.
• Paragraphs, indentation and spacing to make it easier for your audience to read and understand your report; good use of white space
• Bullets are used appropriately to break up long paragraphs and to highlight points
• Business writing – concise, professional
• Sourcing for all stats and research – reference to footer at the bottom of each page is fine
• Spelling and grammar – Remember: in business you’ll be judged on how you present your ideas and information as well as the ideas or information themselves
• Lastly, overall look/impression of report – level of overall professionalism.