Marketing Campaigns And Avoiding Pitfalls

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

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Anupam Singh (1111173) | Sandheep Kumar VR (1111219)

Submitted To

Prof. Seema Gupta

IIMB

CCS Term 6

Ideas for effectively monetizing Internet Marketing Campaigns and Avoiding Pitfalls

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Contents

Internet Marketing Concepts

With the advent of the internet marketing media, the choices for the marketers to showcase their brands have increased considerably. Combined with the faster metrics to analyze viewership, targeting and on the fly content, online marketing sphere is a dynamic domain. The marketers feel a need to build on their capability to integrate with the internet paradigm. The learning points can act as gap fillers to help them better understand the internet medium and to devise strategies for tapping it.

The study of the various elements of advertising adds value to have a holistic understanding of the domain. The advertising scheme is based upon several components, which includes the keyword strategy. It is important to understand why the keyword strategy adds value for web advertisers. Keywords are very important for advertisements as they are used by search engines to find whether a particular website is relevant. Advertisers try to match the keywords with the phrases that they assume the potential customers to enter in a search engine like Google and Bing.

A proper keyword strategy is very important for the marketer. If the keyword is relevant to what the customer is searching for, the page containing the advertiser’s item details or the advertisement will be displayed. It is important to note that the advertiser may want the customer to see a particular page when a search query is entered or he may want a certain advertisement to be displayed that matches the search query. The second case is about paid search advertising while the first is the organic search results. The keyword strategy in both the cases is similar.

There are several key things that need to be considered why drafting the keyword strategy. The book also highlights these points. First, the keyword should be relevant to the product being sought for, the theme of the site, the core elements of the company, or the solution that the company or advertiser perceives to provide to the customer. Irrelevant keywords result in high bounce rates, customer dissatisfaction, loss of credibility and anxiety. The marketer should make sure that the keyword policy is taken care of. Keyword research is often employed to find the most relevant keywords. The competitiveness of the keywords chosen by the marketer can be assessed by online tools like Google Keyword Tool or HubSpot.

Secondly, it is important to design the web experience around these keywords and place them in locations that make it easier for web search engines to find them. By using a process called search engine optimization or SEO, the marketers can provide clues to the web designers to put the keywords in specific portions of the web page. Examples can be including the keywords in portions of the webpage like Meta, Head etc. The keywords should small, optimally less than 70 characters long. This helps in readability in web search results, and also is easier for the system to match with user queries. Tools like MarketingGrader assign a score to the website and help to find if it is optimized in the keyword strategy.

It sometimes gives a false belief that having keyword stuffing may help the website to get a higher rank in organic search results or in paid search listings. Web marketers should avoid keyword stuffing, which is having the keywords repeated all over the web page. The search engines are optimized to detect these and they disregard them. Also it is a bad user experience.

The SEO can be improved by having inbound links. Links that are inbound refer to other pages in the same website. Also if several other websites can point to the advertiser’s website, its page rank significantly improves. For example, if a company has a portfolio of products each of which have a website, they can point to each other internally and their page rank improves. Also including the keywords in the website URLs improves its rank significantly. A higher rank is directly related to the ease in which a prospective customer is able to locate the pages representing the brand. A higher rank is hence sought after by marketers to increase the eyeballs from the customers.

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Fig. The Internet Marketing Tree

Business blogging is one area which the web marketers can harness to promote their brands. The blog can be a component of the business website. It adds dynamicity to the web content. The added fresh content can promote higher ranking to the websites. This higher ranking promotes more visitors that can transform into more potential for sale. The blogs can be hosted in popular blogging platforms like Wordpress, Drupal etc. The blog post can be linked to the main website via a hyperlink. Successful business employ blogs a communication medium to further the brand promise to the customers. The information shared in a blog may include recent innovations by the company, newer products, a campaign or news about the industry that may impact its customers. Blogs usually have a comments section for the reader to share the viewpoints about the content of the subject matter.

Successful blogs have a strong and compelling title linked to the business or the brand. It is well written and formatted. Adding multimedia content like images, video, voice and graphics makes the user experience more enriching and the interaction more fun. Having links in text add authenticity to the web content and also provide a reference point to the reader if they choose to explore more. A call to action button that redirects them to a form or a purchase page is also handy in the blog.

The purpose of blogging in the business world is all about generating leads. These leads can be traced by the sales departments and converted into a sale if possible. To convert website traffic into leads, the following four steps are very important – 1. Selecting what to offer like free materials like eBooks, webinar etc.; 2. Creating call to action buttons. The calls to action buttons are those buttons that provide user some incentives to click them. The incentive can be a free downloadable eBook, a webinar, option to receive newsletter to gain further information or a form for further follow-up. The content of the blog should create interest in the user so that they are more willing to click on the call to action button. 3. Creating the landing pages. This page is where the user lands after click on the call to action button and it should be relevant to it; 4. The final step is to test, measure and iterate the entire process.

Promoting content through social media is also a very lucrative option. Social websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn provide tremendous opportunities for web marketers to showcase their offerings. For example in Facebook, a company can register to create a profile. A good strategy is to register the profile-name same as the brand name and to upload a profile photo that is the brand logo or a winning product. The company then can use this page to announce new product launches, new promotional campaigns, competitions to involve the users as well as a media to get feedback from the users. This needs to be monitored to avoid any hate comments being spread. The company can allocate resources part time to answer any customer query or concern that comes up on the website.

Monitoring social media is also very important. Google alerts for the products, brand or industry can be delivered directly to the web marketer’s mailbox. HootSuite can help marketers save keywords to find out what is being said about their brands. Social media monitoring tool by HubSpot can create filters so that conversations relevant to the industry be tracked.

HootSuite tool can bring all the online media channels that the marketer is using under one integrated platform. Using it, the marketer can track the hot discussions, high ranking keywords, activity in the various campaigns across different social media website etc. Using a unified interface, the marketer can interact with and address issues raised by users across a number of social media websites. It also has several analytical functionalities that can help to tract metrics like usage behavior, top impact keywords, polling results etc.

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Fig. The Social Network and Company

Lead nurturing is an important concept where the marketer needs to be constantly in touch with the lead to eventually convert them into customers. They may use a system to pre qualify them as potential customers. Once pre qualified, more targeted emails can be sent to them giving more information about the offering. As the customer lists loose 75% of their entrants in a year, it is very important to update this list periodically with qualified leads. The users that come to the landing page should have an option to enroll themselves to receive further promotional information.

Optimizing promotion for mobile marketing is also often integrated with e-marketing. With the increasing usage of Smartphone, marketers try to develop mobile friendly versions of the websites. The website use simple code to determine the medium by which they are being access and then it can choose to display a version of it optimized to the screen size for the device. Services like sms based promotions, service messages in collaboration with mobile operators, WAP based mobile internet advertising are also fertile avenues to explore for the marketer.

Internet Marketing Ecosystem

Internet is an information source that is accessed by 2.45 billion people worldwide. This amounts to 35% of the world population of 7 billion (2011). It is a platform to search for information, connect with people, carry out business activities or just to express oneself. The million dollar homepage started a revolution in display ads and showed the immense monetization capabilities in the online medium. Advertising on this platform provides an immense opportunity to advertisers to target their offerings to people. They can showcase their products that match the information the users are looking for in the internet. This increases the chances to getting business and also increases the popularity of their brands. Website owners may use their online real estate to host these ads and earn revenue.

With several billions of unique URLs detected by search engines daily, the information source is definitely vast. If the site witness traffic and users are exposed to relevant ads, the probability of the users to be influenced by it increases. The financial dynamics of online advertising are hence greatly influenced by the site reputation, traffic witnessed, relevancy etc.

Cumulative Annual Growth Rate of online ads is about 24%. US reported an online ad spending of about $31.3 billion in 2011 up from $26 billion in 2010. Advertisers invested about 7.5% in 2008 of their budget in online ads, which is poised to increase to 15-18% in 2012 (Yankee Group Research Report).

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Fig. Impact of Search in Online Advertising (Source: eMarketer)

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Fig. Internet Marketing Media Statistics (Source: eMarketer)

The key players in the online advertising market are highlighted below:

Advertisers – They have a product or service to offer and put up an advertisement to showcase it. Advertisers can be the actual producer of the good or service or they may be a third party representing the actual producer.

Publishers – Website owners who offer online real estate to host the advertisements are the publishers. They include search engines, news sites, blogs etc. The more popular the website, the more is the demand for an ad space and hence translates into a higher cut of the ad revenue for the publisher

Ad Agencies – Ad agencies are involved in generating the creative (the actual ad). They are hired on behalf of the advertisers or their representatives. With the advent of rich media ads, the agencies are delivering ads that are complex, visually diverse and immersive to the customers.

Ad Networks – To bring together the advertisers and publishers into a common platform where multiple publishers offer their real estate and multiple advertisers bring forward their ads, ad networks play an important role. It increases the market size and offers variety for both these parties. Both publishers and advertisers communicate with the network using a UI that tries to make their transaction seamless and smooth.

Ad Exchanges – Multiple ad networks are integrated using Ad exchanges. They act as a clearing house for ads. If an advertiser which belongs to ad network A wants to display an ad in an empty frame offered by a publisher in ad network B, the ad exchange facilitates it. The exchange puts up a markup on the cost to the advertiser for the service. It aids in market expansion and increasing the reach for both advertisers and publishers.

Users – They are the target of the advertisers. Users utilize the internet for their needs and are exposed to the advertisement. They may eventually buy the product or services offered by the advertiser and hence generate revenues for them. The objective of the advertisers is to maximize the conversion of the users into buyers of their offerings.

The world online ad spending is a showing a very positive growth trend. This growth is triggered by increasing internet usage in the developing countries. The following figures give the statistics for the US market.

US Online Ad Spending, 2010-2015 (billions and % change)

Fig. US Online Ad Spending (Source: eMarketer)

US Online Display* and Search** Ad Spending, 2010-2015 (billions)

Fig. Display Vs Search Ad Spending (Source: eMarketer)

The advertisements placed online are exposed to the users along with the information they are searching for, the page they are visiting or in an intermediate page or frame that is displayed before the actual page is displayed. The online ads are categorized as follows:

Floating ad: Moves across the user screen and floats over page contents

Expanding ad: Changes size and may affect the page contents

Polite ad: A large ad downloaded in smaller pieces to minimize the disruption of the content being viewed

Wallpaper ad: Changes the background of the page being viewed.

Trick banner: A banner ad that looks like a dialog box with buttons. It simulates an error message or an alert.

Pop-up: A new window which opens in front of the current one, displaying an advertisement, or entire webpage.

Pop-under: Similar to a Pop-Up except that the window is loaded or sent behind the current window so that the user does not see it until they close one or more active windows.

Video ad: similar to a banner ad, except that instead of a static or animated image, actual moving video clips are displayed. This is the kind of advertising most prominent in television, and many advertisers will use the same clips for both television and online advertising.

Map ad: text or graphics linked from, and appearing in or over, a location on an electronic map such as on Google Maps.

Mobile ad: an SMS text or multi-media message sent to a cell phone.

Superstitial: An animated ad on a Web page which uses video, 3D content or Flash to provide a TV-like advertisement.

Interstitial ad: A full-page ad that appears before a user reaches their original destination.

An ad campaign may involve several forms of advertising programs. It may depend upon the mode of display, the carrier of the ad or based upon user preferences. The advertising programs that are commonly employed by the advertisers may include the following either singularly or as a combination:

E-mail advertising - Legitimate Email advertising or E-mail marketing is often known as "opt-in e-mail advertising" to distinguish it from spam.

Display advertising - Display advertising appears on web pages in many forms, including web banners. These banners can consist of static or animated images, as well as interactive media that may include audio and video elements.

Affiliate marketing - Affiliate marketing is a form of online advertising where advertisers place campaigns with a potentially large number of small (and large) publishers, who are only paid media fees when traffic to the advertiser is garnered, and usually upon a specific measurable campaign result (a form, a sale, a sign-up, etc.).

Behavioral targeting – Online advertising can be targeted based on a user's online behavior. Cookies are usually employed. Depending upon past searches, site visits etc. a targeted ad is shown to the user.

Semantic advertising - Semantic advertising applies semantic analysis techniques to web pages. The process is meant to accurately interpret and classify the meaning and/or main subject of the page and then populate it with targeted advertising spots.

A display ad has a graphic associated with it that describes about the product. It may also be an interactive that allows the users to click on in, hover over it etc. Clicking or interacting with it takes the user to the page known as the landing page which has the details of the offerings from the advertiser. Sometimes the user may be exposed to several intermediate pages before the landing page loads. Clicking on the ad first leads to a call to the referrer page hosted by the ad network that records the click and metadata. It is used to record revenue, generate the metrics and other relevant information that may be communicated to the advertiser in an aggregate form.

A text ad in general is composed of the following parts:

Ad subject: Tries to lure the users’ attention in a short creative sentence. It provides basic information about the ad.

Ad description: Short description about the ad. It is no more than a couple of sentences.

Target URL: It is the URL of the landing page, where the user is directed to and hence interacts directly with the advertiser.

Display URL: It is the URL displayed to the user. It may not be the same as the target URL.

The revenue model deals with how the payment occurs in the online advertising space. The publishers or advertisers may opt-in for a relevant model to suit their needs. Several key revenue models are highlighted below:

CPC – Cost Per Click. The advertiser pays the ad network and the publisher when the user clicks in the ad

CPM – Cost Per Mille. It is the cost paid to the ad network and the publisher per 1000 impressions (number of times the ad is displayed to a user)

CPA – Cost Per Action. Payment is made when the user completion some action e.g. he fills an online form or completes a survey.

CPV – Cost Per Visitor. Payment is made when a user visits the advertiser website.

Cost Per Conversion – Payment is made when a user makes a purchase and hence a customer is acquired.

Fixed Cost – Payment is made for using a publisher frame for a campaign for fixed dates.

The general workflow for online ads follows the following steps:

The user enters the website URL in the browser to search for some information

The browser communicates with the webserver which responds to the request and the website starts loading in the browser

The website may have iframes for display of ads. These iframes point to the network ad server which stores the ads. The advertiser defines the ad campaign and stores the creative in the network ad server

The network ad server responds by choosing an ad corresponding to certain algorithms (which include revenue and relevance concepts)

The ad creative is inserted into the iframe and the page including the ads is rendered into the user web browser.

Sometimes large advertisers employ advertiser ad servers to contain the creative. In this case, the network ad server redirects the user browser to the advertiser ad server which responds with the appropriate ad to insert into the iframe.

The below architecture diagrams illustrate this scenarios discussed. The data flow diagram shows the flow across the advertiser, publisher and the user.

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Fig. The Steps in Online Ad Servicing

Classical Case of Internet Marketing – Molson Canada

Utilizing the power of social media has always intrigued the marketers. Integrating mashable has also opened up the opportunity for the companies to have a set of related information in a single location. Mashable take information from various sources like online maps, travel portals, photos etc. and display them in a single place related to a user profile. All these aspects showed potential to the Canadian brewer, Molson.

In 2007, the company decided to target the customers in the age group of 19-24 years. These young people were active on Facebook, were open about sharing their views and flexible to try out new things. They liked to party with friends and post pictures online. The updates done on their profile pages could be seen by all their friends who could then comment and like it. This led to envisage of an online campaign on Facebook called Cold Shots.

Different Facebook pages were created to represent the various Canadian universities. These pages were called ‘Dorm Rooms’. Here the participants belonging to the university could register themselves. Next they could upload their photos in full party mode to this dorm page. These photos could be ‘liked’ by students from the same university as well as others. The objective was to the find out the most happening party school in the country. A panel of judges would then see all the photos uploaded by students and choose one school as the party school of Canada and give an all expenses paid trip to the winning student, a weeklong getaway to Cancun, Mexico.

As the contest progressed, a lot of photos were uploaded to the respective university dorm pages. Many of these photos captured showed participants in objectionable and inebriated conditions. This led to a huge outcry from the university’s perspectives who thought the campaign to bring ill-repute to them. It showed students indulging in irresponsible binge drinking. Also it had a bad impact on the future career of the students as many of the prospective employers used to screen the candidates’ profiles over the social networks. Also many times the photos of several party people used to be pictured in the contest without seeking their explicit permission. This had privacy issues as well. Several blogs targeted the campaign and liked it to the possibility of it being linked to accidents, violent crimes and sexual offenses that may take place in future. The final nail in the coffin came in form of boycott of the campaign from the deans of several of the represented universities. Plagued by displeasure of the authorities and continuous protests, Molson had to withdraw the campaign much in advance and issue a public apology.

This case illustrates a classical mismatch between the online strategies wherein the company misinterprets the online medium to start a campaign that may not be accepted by all the members of the audience in a way it intended. Molson thought of the campaign to underline freedom, fun and choices aspect of the brand. The company also had the mission to promote responsible drinking. The online marketing plan had backfired and instead of responsible drinking, the focus had shifted on the promotion of binge drinking and irresponsible behavior.

The failure of the campaign was a result of several factors. The company had failed to carry out a detailed study of the potential of the social media. This included who all had access to the information, what can the channel be used for and aspects of privacy protection. The company also did miss out in carrying out a stakeholder analysis. They did not talk to the university representatives to get their opinion. The company did not take efforts to carry forward its motto of promoting responsible drinking. It did not analyze the contribution of collaborators in the entire online marketing plan. This included the friends of friends, distant relatives with internet access, company officials which may want to profile the candidate etc.

Molson failed to understand the power of social media. The information and user contributed content cannot be monitored at all times. It has potential to grow very big very fast. Also due to the power of connections in a social network, the information can spread exponentially. It is also not possible to come up with a plan that pleases all segments of the target market. The social media and online marketing are very dynamic elements where the impact is fast and strong. External elements like bloggers, online critics, tech enthusiasts, ethical gurus, organized bodies etc. all can have a say in the campaign. The company should do a thorough assessment of the stakeholders, risks involved, segment and target the audience and come up with a plan to have the maximum impact.

Social Media Marketing Awareness Cycle

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Fig. The Social Media Awareness Cycle

The impact of the social media on the targets can be studied in term of the awareness cycle. It lists the progression of the users as they evolve along the exposure cycle. The prospect pool consists of all readers who are exposed to the social media campaign. The exposure medium over the online channel can include blogs, social networks like Facebook, micro blogs like twitter, online ads in websites, and interlaced ads in streaming video sites like YouTube etc.

The user who has read and experienced the ad campaign belongs to the category of readers. Some of these readers will be interested in the message and graduate to become contributors. Contributors comment of the ad page, tag friends to it, hyperlink other related content in the ad page, ask questions to the poster etc. Collaborators have a higher engagement with the brand compared to the contributor. They interact with the brand on a regular basis and help the online marketer understand customer sentiment. They may be critics to particular aspect of the ad and give constructive feedback. The marketer can use this information to modify the information to make the ad more effective and meaningful to the audience. Leaders take brand contribution to the next level. They may start to blog on behalf of the brand, link it to their own web pages, answer questions on behalf of the brand etc. They may do it on a voluntary basis based upon their satisfaction with the brand or the thrill to support something that has semblance to their own lifestyles, attitudes or preferences. Leaders are brand advocates that proliferate the brand message among their own friends and community members. The networks of such brand leaders are very important in case of some online campaigns that have a potential to become viral.

6Ps and 5Cs of Social Media

The social media marketing mix can be studied in terms of the 6Ps that are addition to the traditional 4Ps of marketing. The people aspect is very important for experiencing and proliferating the online message. People add a personal touch to the information by sharing their own aspirations, ideas and experiences on the product page. The information published represents the value in the online marketing space. The information is present in the social media space on a 24/7 basis. The promotion aspect underlines the various social media tools that are used to promote the information to a larger network of audiences. The proximity aspect deals with the location specific information that can be attached to the social media message. The data shared on the social networks can be modified to better appeal to the local users by modifying it based on the local user’s customs, language and culture. These location specific details can be read by the online system based on the user’s IP address.

The social media marketing strategy can be looked in terms of the 6Cs. The content is very important in the social media message and it should be produced taking in consideration the viewer cultures in mind. It is the element that attracts traffic to the marketers’ online page. The information should be able to connect the viewer with the brand. The consistency of the brand image, brand message, user experience and visual elements should be consistent with the overall brand. The trust relationships and belief that viewers establish with the brand after experiencing its online marketing campaign represents the contract aspect. The conversational aspects of the social media campaign underline its collaborative nature. The information should be concise with the video blogs being in the range of 3-4 minutes and the online blog posts ideally about 500 words. Facebook brand pages should have a neat outline with clear conscious messages not spanning more than 5-6 sentences in each paragraph and should be written in a lucid language.

About Volkswagen

Volkswagen is a global automobile manufacturer based in Wolfsburg, Germany. It manufactures passenger cars, vans and buses. It was established by the German trade union in 1937. Today Volkswagen is the largest car manufacturer in Germany and the second largest in the world. The German word Volkswagen means "Car of the People" and its slogan "Das Auto" means "The car". The company had revenue of €94.7 billion in 2011, with an output of 5,271,776 cars.

Three of the iconic Volkswagen cars that figure in the top 10 best selling cars of all time, are still in production. The latest generations of Passat, Beetle and Golf are used throughout the world. The design, dynamics and engineering of these automobiles have changed along the times. Other marquee cars of the brand include Jetta and Polo. Volkswagen greatly sponsors motorsports events in different parts of the world including France, Germany, Brazil, China and Dakar.

The vehicles in Volkswagen stable offer a choice of technology. The clean diesel models run on low sulphur diesel. This model is extremely popular in the European market. It contributes to the reduction in greenhouse gases during operation. There are flexible fuel models launched in Brazil that run on a mix of gasoline and ethanol. The research to hydrogen cell powered Volkswagen vehicle is on. The company has launched all electric powered models like E-Up. The company has partnered with Sanyo of Japan to produce hybrid fuel vehicles. These vehicles would run on both gasoline and diesel or on gasoline and electricity.

The company focuses on preservation of environment in all its manufacturing efforts. The cars are tested vigorously to be compliant to stringent European emission regulations. The company continues to research on alternative fuels to power its cars. It avoids the use of hazardous materials in the manufacturing process, cuts down greenhouse emissions from its factories and tries to develop fuel efficient models. It was one of the first organizations in the world to apply the ISO 14000 standard during the drafting of its environment standards.

Volkswagen and Online Advertising

Volkswagen has been successful in online advertising. Holding a share of only 2.1% of the total videos created by online brands in 2012, the company has a share of 25.7% of all views and shares on the online media. The Volkswagen ad "The Force", shared at the time of superball, is the most shared online ad of all time. The ad contributed to 127% increase in online traffic to the company website and led to an increase in sales to 20,902 units. The following table shows the ad metrics of major automobile brands.

Table: Videos by major automobile brands (Source: http://econsultancy.com)

A pioneering approach to online marketing by Volkswagen came up in 2001, where it offered two colors of the Beetle model only to orders booked online. Only 2000 cars were made exclusively. The ad created for the same purpose helped people associate the unique colored cars to the online campaign.

The online marketing campaigns carried out by Volkswagen have helped it to carry out two specific purposes. It helps to read online marketing trends as well as helps to formulate tactics. According to Borrell Associates, by the end of 2012, about 40% of all advertisement expenditure by auto companies will be done in the online digital media space. Volkswagen can tap into this pie in a big way as it has already treaded the waters.

The "Das Auto" element of Volkswagen brand is consistent with its online campaigns also, be it the Facebook page of the Twitter feed account. The company regularly posts information in these media and has dedicated staff monitoring the discussion and posting updates and responses to queries.

The brand elements are consistent for Volkswagen across the advertising elements in print, television and online media. The viewers are exposed to the unique brand identity of each Volkswagen product which is consistent across media channels. Some of the campaigns are to familiarize the customers with the new models, some helps to push the customers further down the prospect-purchase funnel.

Some of the online ads of Volkswagen incorporate interactivity in them to add value. This includes dedicated websites for car models like Polo. Users can customize cars, change colors, have a virtual tour of the cockpit and take it on a virtual drive. The system can then seamlessly take user information to pass it on to the sales team to arrange a real world demo.

The ZOON campaign was one of the creative online media campaigns carried out by Volkswagen. It was an online immersive campaign created by the firm V-On on behalf of Volkswagen. It aimed to develop and foster a strong emotional connect with the prospective customers of the brand.

The campaign targeted youth in the age of 14-20, the group that will become the target customer in some years. The focus was on creating an element of freedom, fun and independence that could be got from driving a Volkswagen. The emotional connect was important to be established. The company took 2 years to develop the Zoon portal. It had communication elements to help users connect with each other. It had edited magazine content about cars, travel and other elements that youth like. The travel section contained details about the holiday spots in Europe, the pubs, beaches and other places to travel and have fun. It contained a virtual driving license program. It helped youth to prepare for the theoretical driving exam popular in Europe. The music section contained famous tracks, a DJ mixing section and live interviews with popular bands.

The campaign was a highly successful one and had unprecedented visitor to the website. 300,000 users regularly logged on to the portal. The company was able to carry out physical setups in VW Youth World and several programs in Berlin to further carry out the brand concept and interact with the target group. The whole campaign helped the brand to create and sustain a profitable relationship with its future patrons and product advocates.

Integrated Online Marketing Strategy for Volkswagen

Aspects of the STP

Volkswagen products are premium. The elements of German engineering are outlined in the production process, safety elements and stringent quality checks. The cars are priced at 5 lakh to 80 lakh rupees. The cars of the higher price range are fitted with the latest technology gadgets and the lower price models compete on the basic elements of fuel efficiency.

The customer needs in the Indian market context deals with the middle class interested in fuel economy, sturdiness of build and resale value. The higher income groups are more concerned with style, safety, pickup and new features like parking sensors.

The strategy of Volkswagen has been to primarily target the premium segment of the market. The mid market segments of the European market have also mapped to the premium market for cars due to the high currency conversion costs. The aspects of safety, style, ownership esteem and power are important for this segment. Most of the car models launched in India by the brand have catered to the demands of this segment.

Volkswagen positions its products at the top of the quality pyramid. Its cars are positioned as stylish, powerful, sturdy, safe and status symbols for the urban high income individuals. The products are associated with success, status and power position in the organization. The company aims to go for a premium pricing strategy.

The online campaigns can also incorporate this aspect in its promotional mix. Focusing on the styling of the car, details on the safety system, elements of research put into developing the car etc. are some of the key areas that the company can highlight in the campaign. Blog posts on the technical features, with an interactive element to clarify the doubts of the prospective customers can help. The online promotional videos, statistics and photos shared on social networking pages can also emphasize on the prestige associated in owning a Volkswagen.

Brand Meaning

The Volkswagen brand signifies car of the people that has been made by the age old excellence of German automobile engineering. The brand signifies history of car making, surety of quality, assurance of safety and a promise of esteem that can add to the social status of the owner. Volkswagen owners belong to an elite class associated to a premium brand. The online elements of can underline this aspect by being consistent to the overall message of the brand.

Product Meaning

The product signifies the social status of the owner. It is associated with success in career, bold choices, masculinity and penchant for quality. The product is stylish, up market and of latest design. The product is also seen as changing with times while incorporating the nostalgia of the old with the features of the latest technology (e.g. New Beetle). The web campaign also needs to be stylish, seamless and with a strong presence of brand symbols and message.

Blogs

Blogs are medium by which the company can disseminate information from its end to the current and prospective customers. The blogs can also be written by independent authors, automobile aficionados, research firms and amateur bloggers. There are several blogs for Volkswagen currently including Volkswagen owners’ blog, Volkswagen news feed etc. Each of these blogs caters to specific purposes.

The underlining element of the Volkswagen blog should focus on is very important. It includes the latest research and development the company is doing to make its products better. Information on safety elements and styling of new cars is a key. Blogs should also have a comment section to tract the viewer pulse. Ability to answer customer queries while ensuring brand promise is important. The blogs should be updated regularly and include press releases, customer feedback, user contributed content and communication from senior Volkswagen officials.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization techniques help the brands to come up more frequently and at a higher rank in the search queries put by users. There are several techniques that can lead to a higher rank for Volkswagen. The keywords like Quality, German, Premium, Safety, Pickup etc should be used extensively for the website. Also, there should be multiple websites for each of the car product. These websites should cross reference and have links pointing to each other. Also, the company sponsored blogs, Facebook and Twitter pages should also explicitly have links pointing to the product websites. While responding to the customer queries on these media, the associates should also attach a hyperlink pointing the user to the appropriate web page. The websites should have detailed navigation to help the user find the relevant page.

Paid Search

Paid search initiatives help the relevant ads to be displayed along with the organic search when the user enters a search query. Volkswagen can have dedicated campaign managers monitoring the paid search initiatives in Ad networks like Google Adsense, Google Adwords and Microsoft AdCenter. Keeping an eye on the most popular keywords, usage frequency, type of traffic coming from specific geographical location, demographic and psychographic information can help the marketer design more effective and targeted online ads that can be displayed to relevant search queries. Catchy phrases, user specific research, analysis of data on browsing habits and mining the "Big Data" across social networks can help the marketers design ads that are more relevant to the users in terms of their own needs and wants. Directing the click traffic to the landing page informing user about the latest products and features, gathering user data for a pre-sales engagement and lead qualification are important activities.

Impact of online advertising, sales and brand recall

To illustrate our understanding of the impact of online marketing, we would look at some of the metrics. If the visitor to a particular website sees an advertisement and clicks on it, he is said to ‘click through’ it. The CTR or click through rate is an important metric to access the success of an advertisement campaign and is often linked to the revenue and pricing models. It is interesting to find if the CTR led to a sales increase across a sample set.

Source: Nielsen

In the sample collected by Nielsen, we were unable to establish a relation between the CTR and sales. This indicates that though the user might click on an ad finding it interesting, the landing page content might not interest him. It is important for the brand in not only making the ad attractive and make the user click on it (generate lead), but also provide offering information in lucid term and captivate him to make a purchase.

The CTR is also not related clearly to any of the important ad metric like – ad recall, brand awareness, purchase consideration etc. Perhaps most of the users click on the ads which they find attractive in first glance and the interest wanes away when they find the landing page not suiting their needs.

This leads to one aspect that we have emphasized in our discussions so far. The landing page should offer content that suits the user needs. This can happen if the brand can capture user specific data based upon sites he has visited, keywords he has used in the searches, pages he has liked on Facebook, brand communities he is a member of etc. With universal login platforms being available from Facebook, Google etc. where the users can login into multiple sites using a single credential, this can be made possible.

Source: Nielsen

To understand whether online ads actually have an effect on the customers that are exposed to them, we would like to highlight the research done by the project group at Nielsen. Using about 500 online ad campaigns for measurement purposes, the company was able to find out significant positive correlation between the ad exposure and recall.

Source: Nielsen

There was also a difference about how the viewers perceived the ad to be Weak, Average or Strong. The ads that were perceived stronger had an element of creativity (The Force ad by Volkswagen), used current themes (World Cup Cricket), were jazzy and musical (KIA motors hamster ad) etc. Stronger ads are built after understanding what the influencers for the potential customers are in the current scenario. It can connect well to the viewers as it tells them their own story. High impact ads are also localized for the specific regions. These ads involve ample research of the target customer segment.

Brand rub-off in online advertising

The aspect of brand rub-off can come in the case where multiple product of the same brand are shown in a single advertisement. This is done for several reasons. The brand may want to use the single slot or page frame to capture different offerings it has. If the two products advertised are significantly different, it can try to attract different set of potential customers. The difference in the products can be the price, attributes and features. It is not a good strategy as the customers can discount the value of the more premium product as it shares space with the less premium product in the same ad creative. The less premium product can gain in value in front of the customers. This can impact the sales of the premium brand and lead to cannibalization and perception of equitable quality.

The aspect of brand rub-off can be taken care of by having different creative for each of the products. Here only the visitors who are interested in the particular product will click through. The ad creative can be used to give some really attractive insight about the product (like mileage, power etc.).

If the ad space is at a premium, the brand should take the initiative to segregate the product from the brand. The advertisement can focus on the brand and its promise, with a potential for the visitor to explore more if they click on it. For example, in the case of a Volkswagen ad, the visitor can be directed to a landing page wherein she can choose the details of each of the different products. They can then be directed to the specific product site or asked to fill up a form for a sales call or test drive.

Volkswagen has taken care in its advertising campaigns to avoid the element of rub-offs. The online creative is mostly designed around the Volkswagen elements of style, dependability of German engineering, safety and power. This is different from the creative of an FMCG company like P&G that shows a group of products in its online ad, with these products belonging to different categories. With a high impact purchase like automobile, the degree of segregation and avoidance of rub-off is essential.

Patterns in Online Advertising and Inferences

There are several patterns that can be identified in the online advertising campaign across automobiles. The brands are focused on interacting with the prospective and current customers. They try to engage them in a dialog. Compared to a monologue mode of the traditional advertising, the users who ‘Like’ the VW Facebook page can participate in several interactive elements. One common thread is on the polls where the brands ask users about their favorite color for a Volkswagen beetle. Here the company initiates a poll with some colors that the beetle is currently available in. There is also a possibility of the users to add a color of their choice to the poll options. The users can vote to choose their color. The company hence comes to know about the preferences even before they start producing the next batch of cars. This also helps them to estimate the future demand of specific colors. In the case of a user imitated color gathers significant votes and hence gains in popularity, the company may choose to incorporate it as a limited edition model.

Another noticeable aspect is that the communication for specific brands is influenced by the demographic and psychographic attributes. The community page for high torque, high power models of Volkswagen also have posts related to extreme sports, high adrenaline activities like bungee jumping etc. Whereas the brand communication for a family car like Vento has posts about family events, festival greetings etc in its wall posts. The same pattern is observed in the case of the blog posts for these brands. It is evident that the brand is using a different communication strategy while targeting specific segments. In the advertising for a collectivistic country like India, the online automobile ads focus on family values, togetherness, bonding and love. The advertising in an individualistic country like US, the ads focus on coming of age, independence, power and social esteem.

There are several aspects where the brand tries to engage the loyalists by asking them how they take care of their automobile. For example, a question like ‘How many times do you wash your Passat in a week’, tries to add a sense of pride in washing a Volkswagen car. This creates a feeling of ownership and pride in owning the car.

The latest ‘Get In Get Happy’ campaign of Volkswagen tries to link happiness with the experience of sitting inside a Volkswagen car. This ad is used for the SuperBowl 2013 event and it shows people talking in Jamaican accent and having a friendly and carefree attitude due to using this car. It touches the broader nerve that adds happiness of driving and carefree attitude due to fewer hassles in ownership of a Volkswagen.

In websites like VWVortex, the users can join as a Volkswagen owner, a company representative or an enthusiast who wants to know more about the brand. The interactions are structured in a forum format where in information about new product launches, information about parts and accessories, self help repair insights and campaigns are provided. The content is moderated by a VW employee but the new content is mostly added by the users only. The site helps to provide an opportunity to users to interact among themselves and clarify queries.

The web campaigns also use the opportunity to sell customized accessories for the loyalists and brand enthusiasts. There accessory can have a brand log, some statements that show esteem (‘I Own a VW’) etc. The viewers can also help in giving comments on the accessories in the design phase. Engaging volunteers to design the t-shirt is also an engagement these brands utilize. There are several online competitions online to make the viewers latched on, and goodies are given as prizes.

The campaigns that have been outlined above are not unique to the auto industry alone. We were able to notice similar patterns used in the websites, Facebook pages and blogs posts of other industries also. Be it a FMCG brand like P&G, software vendor like Microsoft or a cosmetics brand like L’Oreal, the strategies are similar. They all target engaging the customer, providing them an opportunity to have an interaction with the brand, provide suggestions, generate user content and participate in the online competitions to win goodies that further the brand exposure.

One element of web advertising should be on the focus to help customers choose an offering as easily as possible. Rather than inundating her with a lot of information, latest graphics and jazz; the elements that customer like the most is how easy is it to find the information that they need. The design elements should showcase the most basic information in easy to locate areas in the website and other more technical information can be located under specific sections. With the development of latest technologies, the websites can as the user a basic set of questions about their expectations, price range, and features needed etc. and help them choose a model. Also the website can remember the user specific choices in the past logins. A feature to locate the nearest retailers based upon the location utilizing the users’ IP address can also be very valuable.

We believe that the best practices for online advertising that has been discussed in previous sections can easily be applied in the initiatives of the automobile brands and in other industries as well. Making the information user specific, regularly updated, easy to understand and fun to interact will lead to greater success of the online marketing campaign.

Exhibits

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Exhibit 1: Growth Projections of Global Online Advertising Revenue

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Exhibit 2: US Online Ad Spending Projections (Source: eMarketer)

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Exhibit 3: Online Advertising by Sector in India (Source: Digital Strategy Consulting)

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Exhibit 4: German Car Manufacturer on the Internet (Source: Nielsen)