GUIDELINES FOR WRITING UP YOUR TEAM'S DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN
The goal of developing a DMP is to help you evaluate and summarize your learning and performance in the simulation. You are required to write up a marketing plan in three sections per guidelines provided below. Your DMP must be submitted in the form of a (12 point single spaced) Word document to the Digital Marketing Plan folder on the Blackboard website.
USE BULLETS TO SUBSET EACH SECTION OF YOUR REPORT. BE CONCISE AND ACCURATE. BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS MUST BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND
WHAT YOU MEAN IN AS FEW WORDS AS POSSIBLE. The final report should contain the following sections (suggested page length single spaced):
1. Value Proposition and Target Markets (1-2 pages)
2. Marketing Goals (1/2 to 1 page)
3. Content Management and SEO Strategy (2 pages)
4. Search Engine Marketing (PPC) Strategy
5. Email Campaign Strategy (1 page)
6. Social Media Strategy (1-2 pages)
7. Web metrics (1-2 pages)
8. Executive Summary (1 page)
Value Proposition (1-2 single spaced pages): Describe your value proposition with a specific focus upon value-in-exchange and value-in-use. Develop the following Value Creation and Value Capture Table (see below) and include this in your plan. Elaborate the table with a narrative.
Value-in-exchange: Note that value-in-exchange implies that the product is evaluated prior to purchase / experience by the customer. Value is inferred from product attributes, brand / company image and reputation, and testimonials / peer reviews.
Differentiating attributes: Identify and describe the differentiating attributes (or attribute combinations) of the product that would attract the aforesaid customer segment. Note that each attribute identified must be described in terms of competitive parity (equal to or superior to competitors) and its value capture potential (above market, average, or below market potential).
Perceived Benefits: Describe the perceived benefits derived by customers (e.g., convenience, prestige, savings, etc.)
Solution: Describe and link the solution to product quality, pricing, and product attributes. Provide a cost benefit analysis.
Value Capture
Strategy: Describe how you intend to capture value, that is, through pricing (e.g., premium prices), market share, brand equity (e.g., loyalty), new revenue streams (e.g., social business) or other (e.g., driving competitor out of the market, reducing cost of capital in financial markets, increasing product recommendations and word- of-mouth, etc.)
Potential: Provide a subjective evaluation of the likelihood (i.e., probability) that the capture strategy will work - you may use labels such as high, moderate, and low.
You need to provide explanations that relate your Value Propositions for targeted market segments to your
1. content strategy including the development of landing pages, customer engagement, and organic search,
2. search engine strategy, including the identification and refinement of Keywords and Ad Groups
3. email strategy including the development of appropriate text and headlines that capture the attention of your target audience
Target markets (1 single spaced page): Consider answers to the following questions:
i.) Who are your site's targeted visitors? What online newspapers/ trade journals / content interest sites do they visit for information? Develop a segmentation strategy, describing the different audiences you hope to engage through your site.
Consider developing personas to represent typical customer segments1. Where are they geographically located? What language or languages they speak?
ii.) What keywords are used to look for products such as the one you seek to promote? Provide information on demographics, and membership in social communities. What when, and how do they frequent social media platforms? Where do they hang out? How do they use consume social media?
iii.) What are their informational needs? Why would they visit your site? What would motivate them to stay engaged?
Marketing Goals (1/2 to 1 single spaced page): Define your Marketing Goals clearly separating these into marketing and other business goals. Ensure that objectives are quantified and measurable wherever possible (e.g. 5 % growth in market share over the next five years). Provide details and rationale for pursuing target markets, segmentation and positioning decisions, and emphasize points of difference between the firm's products / services and those of its competitors.
Explain why your business is focusing on these specific target market segments. What makes these segments more interesting than the others that you've ruled out? Why are the characteristics you specify important?
Think about sales, market share, market positioning, image, awareness, and related objectives. Remember to make your objectives concrete and measurable. Objectives that can't be measured can't be tracked and followed up, so they are less likely to lead to implementation. The capability of plan-vs-actual analysis is essential.
Financial objectives are very different from marketing objectives. For example, a financial objective might be to increase profits by 10%, while the associated marketing objective to attain the profit goal might be to increase market share by 3%.
Marketing Plan Objectives should be
a. relevant to the marketing function. For instance, although increasing traffic to your website may be the desired outcome, the marketing goal can be stated as "increasing awareness, and / or interest, and /or positive attitudes towards the "brand."
b. directed at specific target markets of interest to the brand and reachable through your website. For instance, an initiative aimed at attracting visitors from Europe may be of limited interest to the company due to lack of a presence or distribution centers in Europe, or lack of sufficient infrastructure. The company may have greater interest in attracting customers from some states / regions within the US. Remember to define your target markets specifically - this makes it easier to track progress towards your goal.
c. measurable by the tools available at your disposal. For instance, you may believe it is useful to have a goal such as "increasing the number of relationships with visitors to the site." However, this is difficult to measure. Simply logging the number of times a visitor visits the site is not evidence of a "relationship." One would need to monitor their interactions, purchase behavior, engagement with the site and user communities, etc.. A more appropriate goal might be "to increase brand associations and engagement of the abc segment." This is measurable by counting the number of suggestions received, new requests for information, peer ratings likes, shares, etc.
d. important for decisions about the brand. The point of the exercise is to generate information that would allow company executives to reinforce what they might already be doing or more importantly change things so as to improve communications, distribution, change pricing strategy, etc.
e. stated in the following format: "To increase/stimulate/change xyz by a% within the next 123 months." For instance, you may state a goal such as "To increase awareness of the product line among visitors from the states of NY, NJ, and PA by 10% within the next three months."
i. As raising product awareness is clearly desirable and an outcome of the marketing function of a firm, it is appropriate.
ii. The goal is specifically directed at the geographic markets of NY, NJ, and PA. This allows managers to coordinate other marketing efforts within the region to create synergy and increase their impacts.
iii. Progress towards this goal can be tracked by the tools available to analyze website visitor activity. For instance, you could measure the amount of time spent by at the website as a proxy for interest / awareness. Google Analytics can be used to provide this information. A longitudinal analysis of the average time spent on the site at the start and end of a three month period is a good proxy of the change in awareness of visitors.
iv. Clearly, increasing awareness is a key brand objective - especially when a product is being introduced into the market.
Content Management and SEO Strategy (2 single spaced pages): At the outset, pay attention to the quality of site design, layout, and ease of navigation. More importantly, prepare an outline describing specific types of content (video, podcasts, mashups, etc.) that you intend to incorporate into your site. Provide justification for the inclusion of each content type. How will it attract, engage, and / or retain visitors?
Content Management (1 single spaced page): Pay attention to the following:
a. Text: Besides product specifications, what other types of information are customers seeking? Consider the informational needs of the
different target markets you have identified in the earlier section (e.g., men will have different needs from women, individuals will differ from businesses, etc.)
b. Video: Consider who would develop these videos, articulate why they would appeal to your different target market segments, and describe the number and length of videos.
c. Peer / User reviews: Consider testimonials from satisfied customers or a forum to invite reviews on your website. What type of endorsements would you seek?
d. Social sharing: What types of social media platforms are appropriate?
e. Podcasts: Are podcasts appropriate for your website? Would you develop these, curate them? Why would they appeal to your target audiences?
f. Display / Search ads: Is it appropriate to have display or search ads on your site? How would they enhance the quality of the experience for visitors to your site?
g. White papers / Case studies: Are there industry white papers or case studies that would be of interest to your readers?
SEO strategy (1 single spaced page): Describe your SEO goals for improving rankings, traffic, and conversion. Develop a table in the following format and use the table to develop the narrative:
Search Engine Marketing Strategy (1 single spaced page)
Describe the different types of keywords (e.g., explicit, problem based, symptom based, etc.) for your search engine marketing strategy.
How did you identify and refine your keywords and ad groups? Provide some examples of long tail key words deployed in your search campaign.
What are some examples of successful keywords and ad groups that worked well for your different product lines? Provide one example of each: best performing ads and worst performing ad. Analyze the reasons for the success and lack thereof your search ads (hint: see slides on Correlating
Keywords with the Buying Funnel and Themes that get Attention). Use the simulation reports to support your answers.
Email Campaign Strategy (1 single spaced page): Evaluate the efficacy of your email campaign using performance reports. How did you relate your content strategy to your email campaign? What types of headlines worked? Which ones did not and why? Use the simulation reports to support your answers.
Social media marketing strategy (1-2 single spaced pages): Identify appropriate social media platforms and describe your awareness and engagement strategy.
How will you identify, engage, and co-opt influencers? What are your plans for increasing inbound traffic from social media platforms and engaging potential visitors to your site? Develop a table describing the following elements of your social media strategy.
Use the following table to develop your narrative in a bulleted list format:
Performance and Web Metrics (1 to 2 single spaced pages): Describe the key performance indicators that you used to track the number and pattern of visitors to your site.
Identify the key performance indicators and key web metrics you used to judge the efficacy of your site and how these were used to develop a report on your site's performance. The most important consideration is linking your KPIs to the marketing goals that you set up for the website.
Prepare a list of the metrics you used, the time over which they were used, and the goals they allowed you to monitor. Prepare a table in the following format (Sample KPIs in the table below are only for demo purposes) and then explain each metric in the narrative that follows:
Prepare a chain ratio analysis on an outcome of interest (e.g., sales, number of likes on Facebook, etc.) for this section of your plan. A chain ratio analysis allows you to engage in scenario planning. A chain ratio method is simply a method used to estimate size of a target market (and thereby revenue potential) by multiplying a base number by a chain of related percentages. For instance, consider the following chain of events that can provide insight into onsite revenue generation:
Executive Summary (1 single spaced page): Although this is the first section of your report, it must be written at the very end, since it summarizes the contents of your plan - since you do not know what is going to go into your plan at the outset, you will write this section up at the very end. Here are some tips for writing a concise and accurate executive summary:
a. Explain the product, its benefits, value proposition, and market environment (no more than 2 to 3 sentences).
i. Include your value creation strategy (which you prepare as an assignment in Interactive Module #2) should be one of the logical routes to accomplish your marketing objectives.
ii. Include your positioning statement. This immediately communicates your value capture strategy.
b. Summarize your recommendation and explain its applicability to the product line.
c. Ensure that you have summarized the key takeaways in terms of your digital strategy (content management and SEO, search engine marketing, social media, analytics; 1 sentence for each)
d. Provide evidence to support your recommendation. Why do you think this will work? Use similar cases from the same or other industries (2 to 3 sentences).
e. Supporting Evidence: In this section, you may include figures, tables (obtained from analytics), videos, mashups, etc., that you may have created to help support different parts of your recommendation
Attachment:- DIGITAL MARKETING SIMULATION PLAN.rar