TV Shows online marketing activities

Interest in Australia TV shows? Take a look at their online marketing activities and see how they communicate with you!

Online activities
Marketing activities	MCA is a cooking show on Channel 10 for home chef to show their talents and compete with each other. Its online marketing is to encourage audiences to come to the show’s website to see the recipes, letting people catch up with the series by uploading previous episodes on their website. Furthermore, MCA have a large range of social network connection with high level of activities on these networks, showing the pictures, memorable moments of the show, information about latest products, which also create more interaction with the fans and food lovers. Mini contest also usually be held on Facebook for fans to compete and win prizes.	MKC is another cooking competition similar to MCA on Channel 7, but its online marketing activities are fairly less. Compare to MCA, MKC Facebook page only have around 557,000 followers, which is about one third of MCA fans. Moreover, although having similar website activities, MKC only offers Facebook and Newsletter for fans and audiences to follow and interact with, which will not likely to be as effective as MCA.	The third show I want to compare is The Voice Australia on Channel 9. The show has news articles for people to follow on the latest information, tours and special guest of the show. It also use Twitter as the main communication channel to the audiences as it encourage people tweet about the performances of the participants and post it on the show in real time. Besides Twitter, The Voice Australia also uses Facebook and Instagram to reach out the fans. The site usually post funny moments of the coaches, highlight performance of the contestants, and new songs of the coaches and top performer in the last seasons.
Domain	On a page of Channel 10: http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/masterchef	On a page of Channel 7: https://au.tv.yahoo.com/my-kitchen-rules/#page1	Independent website: http://www.thevoice.com.au/
Content	Social media channels show activities of the show winners, having mini games on the network with various prizes.	Cover page promote the popular/new show of the channel. Post pictures of the show and the link on the status.	Cover page promote the popular/new show of the channel. Post short video clips and cover picture of the show.
Connection, community, communication	Facebook, Twitter, Beamly, Instagram, Pinterest. Have different social networks for audiences to interact with. “Food Hub” and “Social” pages on its website to retweet or share the pictures of the fans and audiences.	Facebook, Newsletter is the only two communication channel with the community. Sometimes the show post some competition event for audience to participate and win prize on the website	Facebook, Twitter, Instagram is the main communication channel of the show.
Cross promotion	Promote main partner is Coles, the places and restaurant that the competition held in, and a number of other partners: http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/masterchef/partners. Other shows of Channel 10 are also be promoted at the footer of the page	Y!7 TV, Yahoo7 features (News, Finance, Games…). The show’s main partner is also Coles, and further companies: https://au.tv.yahoo.com/my-kitchen-rules/21266555/partners/#page1	Besides Channel 9, The Voice Australia also partner many companies such as Ford, Qantas. Vodafone…  The list can be found here: http://www.thevoice.com.au/extras/partners.html

References

Master Chef Australia, viewed 22 September 2014, http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/masterchef
Master Chef Australia Facebook, viewed 22 September 2014, https://www.facebook.com/MasterChefAU

My Kitchen Rules, viewed 22 September2014, https://au.tv.yahoo.com/my-kitchen-rules/

My Kitchen Rules Facebook, viewed 22 September2014, https://www.facebook.com/MyKitchenRules?ref=br_tf The Voice Australia, viewed 22 September2014, http://www.thevoice.com.au/

The Voice Australia Facebook, viewed 22 September2014, https://www.facebook.com/TheVoiceAu

Marketing Communication Strategy: Social Network

Social networks are growing faster than ever, and they have brought many new opportunities for businesses to optimize their brand reputations, and taking the lead in the market. Today I will compare three picture centric social networks, and how they can be used as a part of an integrated marketing strategy.

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks at the moment. It is a network that specified for smartphone users, with the features of taking pictures, edit them in various ways, and post them on the network. The pictures will instantly be linked to other popular social network such as Facebook or Twitter so that the user’s friends can also see it. Besides those, Instagram also let users in its community follow each other, tag peoples into photos and videos, let they comment and “heart” (like) the photos similar to other social network. The difference of Instagram in comparison to other social network is probably their target users, which are smartphone users mainly; and the pictures that users share are more personal, compare to Flickr or Pinterest. Since Facebook bought Instagram in 2013, the network has welcomed even more users and it has grown to become top 8 of the most popular platform in 2014 (Stelzner, 2014).

Pinterest is another commonly used social network with main feature of uploading, and sharing pictures. At first, it can be seen that Instagram and Pinterest seems to be similar at photo sharing platform; however, there are a number of differences between these social networks. Pinterest’s images can be linked to other landing pages, let users “Repin” the content to optimize its reach, and the “Pin It” button to allow users to share the photos they like from anywhere.

One interesting thing about Pinterest is that more than 80% of its users are women (Moore, 2014), and they are more active compare to men.

A bit different from other two social networks, Tumblr is a platform for microblogging with short content that readers can capture the whole idea of the post within a few seconds. It let users share almost anything on its platform. Text, photos, quote, links, music, and videos are all included. The network also let users customize everything on their page/blog, from the colours to the theme’s HTML. Its users are also able to write long-form blogging as normal blog sites, but they are not very common. Another distinguishing feature of Tumblr is that it is a land of animated pictures (GIF), which is something that other social networks have not been able to compete. According to Smith (2013), Tumblr users are generally young and very engaging by spending a large amount of time on this network.

Social Network for Businesses

For businesses, social networks are the new communication channel to gain advantages in the market. Not only that business can increase their exposure to the market, but they can also boost traffic to their websites, develop loyal fans, gain market insight, improve sales and search rankings on the internet. For social networks with visual-content sharing platform such as Instagram, businesses can create a photo sharing contest of users who had a trip, a picture with the company’s product, or simply a selfie contest. It would increase the engagement, as well as the brand awareness of the community towards the business’s brand. With Pinterest, things would be a bit more difficult for men targeted businesses to focus, as 80% of the users are women. However, to fashion companies, Pinterest is a gold mine as it delivers them the perfect place where their targeted audiences gather and have conversation. Businesses using Pinterest can share the new product on their website and let the people do the word of mouth marketing via “Pin It” and “Repin” buttons to their friends to see. Tumblr would be a social network for businesses to engage with their users easier even when they are considered to be not appealing in other social networks, as they communicate and interact with young, engaging audiences, and they also can customize their page to become more likable for the users. In overall, each of the social network has different features for businesses to take advantage of, depend on the type and use of business, they can apply different marketing communication strategy.

References

Instagram, accessed 14 September 2014, http://instagram.com/

Pinterest, accessed 14 September 2014, http://www.pinterest.com/

Tumblr, accessed 14 September 2014, https://www.tumblr.com/

Moore, RJ 2014,”Pinners be Pinnin’: How to Justify Pinterest’s $3.8B Valuation”, The Data Point, viewed 15 September 2014, http://blog.rjmetrics.com/2014/05/07/pinners-be-pinnin-how-to-justify-pinterests-3-8b-valuation/

Stelzner, MA 2014, 2014 “SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETINGINDUSTRY REPORT”, viewed 14 September 2014, http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2014.pdf

Popular hotel booking sites, and the customer behaviours towards e-booking.

How familiar are you with hotel booking websites? This post will gather information about 4 commonly used hotel/travel booking websites, show you the similarities and differences of the services they provide, as well as identifying the traces of how customer choose their hotel in the e-market era.

Being the world’s largest online travel company at the moment, TripAdvisor is created with the aim of assisting people around the world to design their trip via the reviews and feedbacks of previous travellers from difference places. Not only that, TripAdvisor also delivers customers the ability to book airline tickets, compare hotel offers from different travel agents, vacation rentals, destination services to differentiate their business…  The main company’s website alone is currently ranked #199 in the world and #73 in the US (Alexa.com), which shows their current status in the online travel industry. TripAdvisor also has branches websites in different countries that are specified to meet preferences of customers globally, which has made it stand out compare to other competitors.

Different from TripAdvisor, Booking.com does not offer extra services besides booking hotel room and watch reviews from the website. However, Booking.com is ranked #96 globally, which is much higher than TripAdvisor (Alexa.com, 2014). The reason is probably because it only has one main website, rather than having many branches compare to TripAdvisor. Furthermore, the website allows free cancellation on most rooms’ customers’ booked, and instant confirmation when they serve which makes it likely to be attractive to the market. The site also divides hotels into different categories for people to identify and choose easier base on their needs. which is another strength that this site has.

Similar basic function to TripAdvisor, Trivago identify ideal hotels to the customer’s needs, letting people compare the hotel rates globally from 209 booking sites at one time. From the website, Trivago only provides comparison system; no differentiate services as Booking.com and TripAdvisor. For review option, the site only let people rate through their semantic differential scaling method; comments are not applicable through the site. This is probably why the site is only ranked #5200 in the world. The reason is because maybe they only focus on customers who want to access hotel booking only, resulted in narrowing the range and types of customer visiting their website.

Unlike other 3 mentioned sites, Wotif.com mainly focus on Australia hotel travel booking rather than focusing on the global scale, although it still provides information about the hotel booking information of many places around the world. I would say that because according to Alexa.com (2014), Wotif.com traffic rank is at #10,340 in global scale, but ranked #171 in Australia. The site will provide richer information about hotels and sites that are rarely or non-listed by other international booking website such as TripAdvisor or Booking.com. By doing this, Wotif.com will focus on domestic destination and the customer in the country, rather than expanding its focus internationally.

What can we learn from this?

From the 4 examples, it can be seen that customer choose to trust online review, online rating system and the reputation from the site and the hotel that are recommended. Saberwal (2014) shows that 46% of the customers watch reviews on the internet before making the hotel reservation. This explained why TripAdvisor and Booking.com stay on top of other hotel booking sites. Moreover, having the ability to compare prices between popular booking website is widely adopted and implemented by most of the booking sites at the moment. Bakar & Hashim (2008) research also reveals that price is the main motivation factor for customer.

References

Alexa.com (2014), tripadvisor.com, Site Overview, available at: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tripadvisor.com.au

Alexa.com (2014), booking.com, Site Overview, available at: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/booking.com

Alexa.com (2014), trivago.com, Site Overview, available at: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/trivago.com

Alexa.com (2014), wotif.com, Site Overview, available at: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wotif.com

Bakar, AR, Hashim, F (2008), “The Determinants of Online Hotel Reservation among University Staffs”, Ibimapublising, Vol.4, viewed 7 September 2014, http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/CIBIMA/volume4/v4n3.pdf

Saberwal, A (2014), “How are travellers currently using online hotel reviews?”, Commeasure, viewed 7 September 2014, http://www.commeasure.com/blog/how-are-travelers-currently-using-online-hotel-reviews#.VAw7HfmSxmw

Fly Me To The Moon Cover (Piano + Cajon)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T6Q7Ya7JSQ

5Is: What are they?

Marketers have been familiar with 7Ps, or marketing mix, to create strategies to satisfy the consumer’s needs. However, it is usually applied for mass marketing in an aggregate market. It shows the behaviours towards customers that companies should follow (Chaffey & Smith, p.53, 2013). What about interactive marketing? Or marketing 1to1 in other word?  Some people think that 5Is of Pepper & Rogers (cited in Chaffey & Smith, p.53, 2013), is probably more suitable for interactive marketing in the modern age (Chaffey & Smith, p.53, 2013). I will explain the terms and demonstrate them by 2 websites (Dell and Microsoft) that I found to apply this concept. 5Is are:

• Identification: Has detail knowledge on who the customers are
  • Dell let customer create their account through their emails, or other social media accounts. Dell can see who sign up, accessing their public profile from those social media websites to build the customer database

• Microsoft uses customers’ feedbacks from their Office 365 program to gain insight of who the customers are and what they need.

• Individualization: Customized of tailored product for customers based on their needs
  • Dell let customers has the option to customize the company product to their need, as well as inform customers different types of product base on the using purpose (for work or for home use)
  • Microsoft shows customers the already-tailored product for typical individuals that they have researched in advance.
• Interaction: Have conversation to understand the needs of the customers
  • Dell and Microsoft both have live chat option with their tech expert to figure out the customers’ needs and assist them with their shopping.
• Integration: All parts of the company be driven by the information of customers
  • Dell and Microsoft all have feedback option for customers to tell their shopping experiences on their websites to be able to detect the flaws in any part of their system, and perfect them.
• Integrity: build, gain, and keep customer’s trust through non-intrusive marketing so that customer would be more willingly to share their information for the company to use.
  • Dell has a whole page just to give customers information about their company’s security and privacy to reassure customers about their purchases.
  • Microsoft does not seems to have anything that reassure the security of the transaction on their website, probably because they are confident about their security level and most of the customers have already trusted their companies. Instead, they have free shipping and return policy in anything occurs to the delivered product.

 

Reference:

Chaffey, D, Smith, PR, 2013, “Extending the mix”, EMarketing Excellence, 4^th,  Ed, p.53, Routledge

Some Types of Business Models in Today’s World

This article analyses the meaning of business model, examines two of its types, and gives examples to clarify the concepts.

Business models, according to Chaffey and Smith (p.103, 2013), are models “describe the process by which business is conducted between an organisation, its customers, suppliers, distributors, and other stakeholders”. Basically, it is about how you and your company do business and generate money. In this article, I will talk about two types of business models: online revenue models with the example of Twitch TV, and intermediary models with the example of Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Online revenue models, as the name said, are business models that make profitable revenues from online activities. Normally, one business applies one online revenue models; however, nowadays, many businesses combine several models together in order to maximize their profit from various revenue sources. Twitch TV, a leading live video platform and gaming community, let people stream their game, watch and making comment in real time as the stream go on. It has most of the best gamers in the world streaming via its channels. So Twitch has applied revenue from CPM display advertising on site model, an online revenue model that generates profit from showing the advertisements on the site.

It display ads on gamer’s stream to produce revenue, and it also combine affiliate revenue model by giving streamers the control of the ads. The more viewers they have, and the more ads they play, the higher they will earn via commission rate.

Another source of revenue that Twitch earns is from the subscription of the viewers to the streamers. Twitch let viewers have the option of subscribing to the streamer’s channel with a certain amount of fee and Twitch get a commission from it.

Another type of business model is intermediary model. It is the model that provides analysis tools or service for media owners to interpret customer behaviour, figure out the search terms that are likely to excel the media owner’s company awareness if used, possible partner sites or media buys. Salesforce probably is the perfect example for this model.

Salesforce is a company provides Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to enrich company relationship with their customers, and one of its most popular products is ExactTarget Marketing Cloud. The software can access data from many popular social media websites, blogs, and forums to know what people are talking about; use listening tools to gain insight on trending topics and terms from those sources that can potentially be used to promote the company’s business. Moreover, Salesforce partners with the many of the world best insight companies to analyse the demographic of the customer, emotion analysis, sentiment, topic advocates… to help its clients publish highly targeted, personalized and relevant content to different customers. The software also has the ability to interact with the customers, or the community through polls, mini contests, sharing stories from the customers to others via social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Reference

Chaffey, D, Smith, PR, 2013, “Introducing to e-models”, EMarketing Excellence, 4th Ed, Routledge

 

What’s up!

Hi, my name is Duy, and I like marketing, LOL, guitar, piano and some other cool stuffs. Hope to make some new friends here. Cheers 😛