Getting Started on a Digital Journey: Part 2

This is the second article in the series ‘Getting Started on a Digital Journey’, where I attempt to showcase how to write a basic digital marketing plan. I have taken an imaginary internet and telecommunications service provider in New Zealand as an example. Let’s call them Company A. They offer residential services with low-cost broadband, landlines and mobile.

Read the first article here: Getting Started on a Digital Journey: Part 1

Analysing the product portfolio and competitive benchmarking 

For the residential business portfolio, the services that are offered are shown below.

Product portfolio of Company A for Residential customers

How networks work? The image below shows how network is handed over to the customer in the NZ market and the distribution of network providers across various regions.

Content to Consumer data journey (TCF, 2015) and the distribution of network providers

Competitive Analysis

NZ Broadband market share Source: Statista 2021

There are two sets of telecom operators in New Zealand

a)     Brands with lot of value-added services

b)     Smaller players providing vanilla broadband services

The consumer expectations from the larger operators, in addition to basic broadband services, is value added services such as:

-         OTT subscription

-         Free landline

-         Sports or Music subscriptions

I have assumed, Company A is in the ‘Other’ category of players and is a smaller player, and its competitors are primarily the no-frill, smaller broadband service providers. A quick competition scan on Similarweb is shown below. It is seen, Competitor 2 is the market leader in the small size telecom network provider category and Company A has many areas of improvement in its key performing indicators (KPIs).

Competition scan on SimilarWeb and identification of competitors (imaginary companies)

SWOT Analysis

The image below highlights a score of 3.9 out of 10 on overall customer feedback for Company A, where Competitor 1 is 8.3, Competitor 2 scores 6, and Competitor 3 is 7.5

Customer review summary of Company A and identified competitors on Broadbandcompare (imaginary companies)

Facebook presence analysis for Company A and the identified competitors (imaginary companies)

The image below is a screenshot of fibre broadband plans available for a city address, where Company A’s plans appear among the last 5 options with filters for price and star rating, whereas all the other identified operators appear above it.

Search appearance in Broadbandcompare with price and rating filter (imaginary company)

Customer Reviews on Google for Company A

SWOT Analysis for Company A

Strength

- Company A has broadband plus products, in the small operators’ category with mobile and calling cards that others do not.

- Reliable high-speed network support across New Zealand including remote areas

Weakness

- Weak customer support score (score 2.7)

- Low website traffic (Similarweb)

- Low engagement and follower count on Facebook as compared to competition (Facebook)

- Lowest rank in price-rating comparison among competition (Broadbandcompare)

Opportunity

- Showcase no-frills but highly reliable service as compared to the bigger players

- Offer one-window solution that other smaller players cannot deliver

Threat

- Telecom market consolidation

- High investment technological advancements like Hyperfibre and 5G

Observations from the Market Analysis

Observation 1: Website traffic to the Company A website is the least among its competitors. However, once visited, the users spend more than 2 minutes on the website which is the second-best time as compared to competition, with the industry best of 4 minutes. Low website traffic has also been identified as one of the major weaknesses in SWOT above. Moreover, the company offers a bouquet of products from broadband to calling cards. Lowest bounce rate of 30% among competitors, support that once the users come to the website, they engage with the website more than they would with others.

Observation 2: Company A does not engage with its customers on their only social media channel on Facebook, and uses the platform to report outages. Whereas, all the other competitors, treat the platform as a community with engaging and interactive posts (photos and videos), announcing special offers and celebrating festivals. The competitor audience sizes are not only larger but are more engaged.

From the above observations, two short-term objectives are identified.

-         Increase traffic to the Company A website, improve brand awareness

-         Increase Facebook engagement by creating interactive and engaging posts

Analysis of Target Audience

Acquisition Customer Persona to drive website traffic:

Many new home renters and expats look for cheaper, no-frill broadband connection and look for smaller operators. Aged 25 to 35, both male and female, living in bigger cities like Auckland or Wellington. Mostly first-time jobbers in this country.

Maria Gonsalves (imaginary person from thispersondoesnotexist.com Imagined by a GAN)

Maria Gonsalves, Female, 28 years, lives with partner and a 2-year-old son in Auckland

Profession: Recent Masters’ graduate, first job in a finance firm, partner is a Uber driver and a part time student

Interests: Visits Mexico once in 3 years, exploring NZ, movie over weekends

Background: Hard-working, money-savers, have shifted to NZ on a work-visa

Achievements: Recognized by university as a high-performer, moving up in life

Goals: Create a life for her family in NZ, excel in first job

Value: Work hard, have fun with family over the weekends, time equals money

Frustration: Internet and mobile service is so expensive compared to Mexico

Retention Customer Persona to create engaging conversations on social media (Facebook only):

The existing customer base is primarily aged 55 years or more, both male and female. Residing in smaller towns and rural areas. The basic expectation from the internet provider is uninterrupted services as getting a repair organized is a very tedious, and time-consuming matter.

Jane McKenzie (imaginary person from thispersondoesnotexist.com Imagined by a GAN)

Jane McKenzie, Female, 62 years, lives with husband in Napier.

Profession: Trained Nurse, works 4 days a week, husband earns pension.

Interests: Travel once a year, knitting, loves to bake a cake for grandchildren when they are around. Son married with family in Wellington. Daughter in Sydney.

Background: Disciplined, hard-working, independent and drives her small Toyota Yaris to the hospital. Not experimental.

Achievements: Proud of her children and grand-children. Have led a meaningful life through her profession.

Goals: Live peacefully, renovate the house, save for a retired life.

Value: Gives importance to her children’s opinion.

Frustration: Calling up more than once for repairs, impulse buying, people lying

Communication Plan to achieve the two objectives

Before I illustrate a basic plan, let me explain the various media options that are available:

Paid - Any form of external marketing activity that allows paid placements.

Search Engine Ads – Display and Search ads through Search Engine or Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing. A prospective customer searches for internet, on a search engine, such as Google. A list of search results show up, of which the top 3 or 4 are paid search ads. There could be paid ads in the form of shopping ads too, or as the last few results of the search page. I will cover ads in more details in a later article.

Following that search the prospect then visits some other unrelated website with Google Ad Sense activated on it, and see banner ads linked to their search. These are display ads, re-targeted to them. Also, when the customer visits sites like neighbourly.co.nz, trademe.co.nz or broadbandcompare.co.nz they see ads listed by the Company A, that maybe in addition to the search engine display ads. This is critical to the business objective 1 identified above. 

Owned - Owned media includes the digital marketing channels over which a company exercises total control, such as its website and social media.

Always On (part of Owned) - Depicts high customer centricity when the brand is available to interact with its consumers 24X7.

Email marketing campaigns, blogs on the Company A website, social media posts on Company A’s social channels – Facebook in this case, are all part of the owned media platform. In the objectives defined above, this form of media to be used to encourage positive conversations about the brand and talk to both the buyer personas identified above. These interactions will also lead to generating positive or negative earned media for Company A.

In the example shown above, Company A’s FB messenger chat is rather generic and not exactly 24X7 but during office hours only. It is also not available for all website visitors, only to those logging on via Facebook. FB Messenger agnostic chat bot integrated on Company A’s website, is therefore an obvious solution here.

Earned - Marketing created by a company's customers, online audiences or other third parties. It may promote a brand without cost by people who love the content. It can also have a negative impact on the brand when a user writes a bad business review.

Currently, Company A has very poor reviews in most of the review platforms, as illustrated above with an example from broadbandcompare.co.nz and on Google reviews. Also, reviewing Company A’s Facebook page comments, it could be seen that most of these are customer complaints for long wait times on the IVR, poor responses, or no action taken on fault complaints. This platform is for both acquisition customers who are exploring options and looking for reviews from existing customers and for retention customers who want to compare their experiences with others and decide if they want to stay connected. This platform is important for prospective investors and employees too who are considering an association with the brand.

The other form of this media is the news or PR generated, both positive and negative press about Company A.

Identifying Marketing Platforms

The infographic below helps identify appropriate platforms for acquisition or retention and maps it with objectives to meet.

Objective 1

Objective 1

Objective 1

Objective 1

Objective 1 & 2

Objective 1 primarily

Objective 2 primarily

Objective 2 primarily

Mapping platforms with business objectives

Examples of Key messages to meet the outlined objectives as above

The key message targeted to the identified audience profiles are designed to achieve the business objective set out above.

Objective 1: Increase traffic to Company A website 

Addressing Buyer Persona need / frustration: Internet and mobile service is so expensive compared to Mexico

Possible Key Message: Unlimited broadband at unbelievable prices!

- Special offer on International calling cards as joining bonus

- Hassle-free installation

- Join or Switch now

Objective 2: Increase social media (Facebook) engagement

Addressing Buyer Persona need / frustration: Calling up more than once for repairs, impulse buying, people lying

Possible Key Message: Where hearts are always connected, why should your internet not be?

- Fastest resolution to complaints

- We are always on, so that you are always connected

- Share your ‘happy to connect’ stories with us

I will illustrate how we can convert these key messages to ads in separate articles on Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing. So keep reading if this helps :)

Measurement Metrics

Achievement for the two objectives identified above may be measured with separate tools that are designed specifically for website analytics and social media performance during the campaign period.

Measuring Objective 1: Increase traffic to Company A website

To get a complete understanding of web metrics and to look at the site’s overall health, Google Analytics can be used. This can indicate who is visiting the site, from where is the traffic being generated, how many pages are being viewed for how long. It can also demonstrate how prospects become customers when the conversion goals are correctly mapped with the signup funnel goals.

Example of Google Analytics dashboard for illustration only

Measuring Objective 2: Increase social media (Facebook) engagement

Facebook insights is a free tool available to the admin of the page and provides metrics about the posts and their engagements. Audience analysis that includes demographic and psychographic breakup provides an understanding of the followers. A paid tool in Brandwatch Analytics offers a number of interesting metrics such as, reach, likes and ‘People talking about this’ (it is a metric to show how many people have created ‘stories’ from a post). Topic clouds and sentiment analysis can discover which individuals and posts are driving more engagement.

Example of Facebook Insights and Brandwatch dashboards for illustration only

It is identified that Company A hardly had any social media presence and engagement and the website traction is the least among its competitors. The SWOT analysis shows that even though the brand has a larger bouquet of product offerings compared to its competitors, it is unable to leverage its presence due to low customer satisfaction and not clearly defined brand imagery. The marketing plan proposes to achieve two SMART objectives of increasing website traffic and creating more social media engagement. The two objectives cater to both acquisition and retention customers. The strength of the plan lies in achieving two quick solutions that are like low hanging fruits and highly doable.

I will publish a series of articles on my digital learning journey on LinkedIn. Do come back if you want to continue reading.

Here are a few places to start your learning journey... for FREE!

academy.hubspot.com

learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage 

semrush.com/academy

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