This part will focus on the general information that will help in guiding the development of integrated marketing plan. It will focus on brief overview of Hippies Adventures, the industry it operates, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It will also explore the current marketing strategies used by Hippies Adventures.
Hippies adventures is an adventure travel company with its head office in Sydney Australia. It offers travel services. It was formed in 2017 and hence it is still at infancy stage of development. Consequently, it lacks many things as far as marketing is concerned. Currently, Hippies Adventures lack official website and virtually all key digital marketing tools.
Hippies Adventures operates in tourism and adventure industry. This is one of the most viable industries in Australia. Domestic tourism is a very large market in the country (58 percent of the total), although between 2012 and 2013 the number of tourists from China, Singapore and the United States increased more significantly, with interannual growth of 17, 13 and 7 per one hundred, respectively. In addition, Australia is the country with the highest spending per tourist in the world.
The regional governments of Queensland and Western Australia territories are implementing strategies to attract foreign investment. Tourism accounts for 17,000 million dollars annually and 221,000 workplaces for Queensland, a region visited by 20 million domestic and international travelers a year. Queensland offers investment opportunities in luxury hotels in Brisbane, ecotourism products, tourist attractions; both for new plant projects and for infrastructure renovations. In Western Australia, the hotel sector of the city of Perth is presented as a safe investment objective, since both occupancy ratios and income per available room are the highest in Australia.
Despite viable business opportunities, Hippies Adventures is likely to face strong competition. The top ten competitors as per the Yelp ratings include Skywalk, My Adventure Travel Sydney, Bonza Bike Tours, Go Local Tours, JTB Australia, Ozlntro, STA Travel, Student Flights Sydney, Tdh Travel Agency and Direct Link.
One of the Hippies Adventures strengths is that it covers virtually all the necessary packages. Sites book travel tickets, trekking packages, hotel booking and significantly more adventure services for their clients through web-based apparatuses and phone.
The key weakness facing Hippies Adventures is that it has not optimized its online booking site. Compared to some other travel agents in Australia. In fact there site seems to be nonexistent because it can’t appear in the search engine. Competitors have not only active sites but also very optimized sites (Beautement, Sasse & Wonham, 2009).
Hippies Adventures is likely to enjoy a number of opportunities related to the macro environment. In Australia, there is enough infrastructure to support tourism in Australia. For example, it is envisaged that the capacity of the aviation sector will be between 40 and 50 percent higher in 2020, responding to the constant increase in passenger traffic.
Despite the opportunities, there are also some possible threats. There is likelihood that the government may create travel agencies that are run by the state government and such agencies may bring high competition because their rates may be extremely low.
Hippies Adventures has completed 1 year of successful business in the field of adventure business but still have many challenges. It has been using offline tools to generate leads. This means that there is a lot of opportunities for Hippies Adventures. Hopefully, by integrating digital marketing into its marketing plan, the Hippies Adventures is likely to reap a lot of benefits
The current services offered by Hippies Adventures include Sites book travel tickets, trekking packages, hotel booking and significantly more adventure services. The customers can be segmented geographically. Consequently, there is domestic segment and the international segments. The value proposition for Hippies Adventures is to be the best travel agency in Australia. Hippies Adventures has positioned its services to be reliable and cheaper with special focus on quality and safety guarantee.
As stated, Hippies Adventures marketing strategy is to create messages that fly, and then maintain long-term relationships with your customers: this is the challenge of integrated marketing communication. To achieve this, Hippies Adventures will need to be consistent and credible (Okazaki & Taylor, 2013). However, this requires a long-term effort and the combination of a number of factors. Firstly, it has to identify all the marketing gaps. Based on assessments, Hippies Adventures have several marketing gaps that needs to be filled. These gaps are attributable to the fact that the company is using offline marketing techniques for generating leads. These include inadequate digital capabilities in the business plan and marketing plan, inadequate training for employees on digital marketing strategies, low conversion rate in the Hippies Adventures website especially the end-end online order and end-end delivery. Additionally, we discovered that the online presence/website utility/creative design needs a lot of improvement in terms of navigation and the content. In terms of SEO, Hippies Adventures attained a score of 14 out of 20 and this means that there is a lot to be done in aspects such as creation of active website, on-page optimization, off-page optimization, technical issues and the customer service. Hippies Adventures scored 12 points out of 16 as far as social media is concerned and this shows that there is a lot to be done to improve the score.
One way of filling these gaps is by adopting integrated digital marketing. A key feature of digital marketing is an integrated and integrated approach to the use of digital technologies in the promotion of the brand. The main communication channels are used in aggregate with each other to achieve a better effect. At the same time, they can be combined with traditional offline channels (outdoor advertising, TV and radio advertising), and use non-traditional promotion channels (for example, advertising in video games and mobile applications). Integrated digital marketing will enable the Hippies Adventures optimize its marketing goals. For example, Social media marketing will help Hippies Adventures establish long-term relationships with their customers and receive prompt feedback from them. Today stands out in a separate direction of marketing, which includes a lot of tools and tactics.
Additionally, integrated marketing will increase the chances of achieving content marketing. The independence of buyers is growing every day. 60-80% of the way when making a purchase they pass independently, relying only on the content (Liyakasa, 2012). Independent buyers are looking for answers to their requests. And, in order for your company to be the best, it should approach the creation and promotion of content integrated. Based on the experience of customers, on their awareness of the product, it is necessary to create that content that will sit in the mind of the consumer. The consumer should feel himself as one with the brand to build a constructive dialogue. This will help useful content. And the more constructive communication and justified expectations, the greater the increase in requests and, as a result, sales can be expected.
Digital marketing is a rather vague concept (Denisa & Jaroslav, 2013). What is the focus of most brands before the new 2018 and beyond? Representatives of digital marketing companies IBM, Xerox, Adobe, Verizon, 3M, eBay and many others recently talked about their priorities in digital marketing for 2016. This information can be useful to many companies in order to set their priorities correctly. Here are 3 main areas that have been singled out by virtually all companies. The first principle is story telling with help of data. It is necessary to focus on an integrated approach to customer experience. Information and statistics should inform consumers through unsurpassed stories that will remain in their hearts. The second principle is interactive digital experience. This entails creation of unique integrated digital content is the main task of digital marketing. At the same time, content should be highly personalized. The third principle is having useful, lively content. It is important to remember that content should be useful, stable and alive. It should be available on many devices and in many applications.
Firstly, before proposing digital marketing plan for Hippies Adventures, it should be noted that users go through several consecutive stages before becoming customers. Some pass the funnel faster, others – more slowly, others – jump through the stages, and the fourth do not reach the end. The first stage in the funnel is traffic generation (Thomas, 2002). It all starts with attracting users to the site with the help of SEO, contextual advertising, targeted advertising in social networks, cognitive and advertising posts in third-party blogs, video advertising (Harris, 2013). At the stage of attraction and the top level of the funnel, the content should be aimed at solving the problems that your target audience faces. This content is either an entertaining format that is relevant to business topics, either purely teaching and applied – without trying to sell anything. The second stage entails conversion of traffic into leads . After the users came to the site, they get to the top of the sales funnel – TOFU. At this stage, teaching articles, videos and e-books will help you get leads. The third stage entails “cultivating” leads . After a person has registered or filled out an application, he may not be ready to make a purchase or an order. Your task is to establish contact with him and develop in him the desire to become your client (Smith, 2015). Additional relevant TOFU-content plus MOFU-content (cases, webinars, “white papers”, demo videos, detailed product descriptions, reviews) will help here. The fourth stage entails conversion of leads into sales . At the bottom of the funnel, the user is close to becoming a customer. An important role here is played by an accessible description of the transaction process, as well as competent and timely consultations. To achieve all these stages, it will be necessary to apply a combination of different digital marketing tools such as social media marketing, SEO tools, Search engine marketing, content marketing, email marketing (MadisonLogic 2013).
Social media marketing represents one of the best digital marketing tools that can increase Hippies Adventures sales significantly. Latest report of the Adobe 2018 State of Digital Advertising Report answers all the most difficult questions from the sphere of advertising in social networks. According to the Adobe report, advertising in social networks attracts three times more new visitors to retailers’ websites than existing customers as compared to the figures for the end of 2017. In other words, people pay attention to this format of ads and click on it more often than ever.
Social media marketing According to the Social Media Examiner Facebook has 2.23 billion monthly active users. Facebook is the undisputed leader in the industry of paid promotion in social networks. 72% of marketers most often use traditional Facebook advertising (7% prefer advertising in the Messenger). Then Instagram follows, 31% of respondents choose to advertise on this platform. LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter have 13%, 12% and 11% respectively (Jenna 2014). Pinterest and Snapchat ranked last in the ranking.
Social media will help Hippies Adventures attract not only millennials generation but also generation Z. According to the 2018 State of the Digital Advertising Report, 50% of representatives of the generation Z (18-19 years) and 42% of the millenials (20-36 years) consider social networks the most suitable channel for advertising. These platforms offer effective targeting tools to employers, so users note the high relevance of ads. This is especially true for young people, as they are more likely to look for new products or services in social networks.
To reap the most benefit, Hippies Adventures will have to create creative ads and update the social media pages almost daily. The social media ads should have multimedia content such as video showing some of the experiences about the adventures. More and more people, especially among youth, turn to social networks in search of products and services. Streaming video advertising can be a new solution for brands that are interested in attracting representatives of generation Z and millennials (Talonen, 2013).
Hippies Adventures should also focus on best images. As in other social networks, Facebook has a difference in efficiency between different formats of content (links, videos, images). Surprisingly, according to the research, images (and not videos) attract more involvement in the social network.
By adopting the social media marketing, Hippies Adventures will not only attract new customers but also promote the engagement of customers in the company’s site. It should be noted that social media ads, especially those related to Facebook allows one to connect the ad with the website (Almeida & Carneiro, 2006).
Search engine marketing serves one key function- traffic generation. According to SEMrush, the main source of traffic for the largest online stores Amazon, Apple, Home Depot, Walmart and Target are direct visitors. And this is understandable, because such well-known brands are widely heard (Weichel & Huizingh, n.d.).
For a small online venture such as Hippies Adventure such a strategy to attract traffic is ineffective. Therefore, it is better to choose the second most popular option – search engine marketing. In this case, visitors will go to your site from search engines.
Currently, Hippies Adventures do not have anything related to search engine because even its website is not active. This means that the first thing is to create an active and operational website. Then by analyzing queries will allow Hippies Adventures to understand what and how users are searching on the network. To find the right keywords for services offered, Hippies Adventure can use the free Ubersuggest tool. Some of the suggested key words include “Best travel agency in Australia” “Comfortable travel agency in Australia” “Affordable travel agency in Australia” “World-class travel agency in Australia” and “Hospitable travel agency in Australia”. This is because potential customers often search for something that is best, comfortable, affordable and hospitable (Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014). Search engine marketing will help in filling the marketing gaps identified because it will enable international customers know about the existence of the Hippies Adventures.
SEO is a key, if not decisive, component of digital marketing (Kirpekar, 2015). Many companies lose huge opportunities if they create good content that no one can find. Hippies Adventures ought to know that her potential customers are actively learning and are looking for solutions to their problems long before they contact Hippie team.
The purpose of search engine marketing is to lead the potential customers to the site (Enache, 2014). However, every site is ranked in the search engines based on how each page has been optimized. That is why it is common to find different companies offering the same services located at the different pages in the search engines (Google 2015). In order to ensure that the Hippies Adventure site appears on the first page of the search engine, then SEO would be invaluable tool.
To optimize individual pages of Hippies Adventures site for search, it would be crucial to use one or two of the most relevant keywords in the following places:
Paid and free SEO tools will help Hippies Adventures easily enter the required data. Optimization can take anywhere from one to several days. With optimized pages, Hippies Adventures will get many traffic to the site.
The consumer has long ceased to be a naive boy from the 1990s, which is easy to vaprat literally any product with a beautiful “label”. Today, consumers are much more resistant to aggressive sales, before buying they conduct a competent study of consumer qualities, read reviews and weigh prices. People want content to help them make the right decision (Google 2015). However, they no longer like direct sales. Business needs to inform consumers through surveys or even educational videos, selling them expectations from their product or service (Rowley, 2008). Being useful to your audience, content marketing allows business to interact in a unique way with a potential customer. Thanks to informative articles and videos you will become a recognized expert of the industry and gain credibility. Also it is worth considering that the content in blogs can be rassharivat through social media. By publishing readable and informative materials, you can count on a significant expansion of the audience through this channel (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014).
Unfortunately, marketers find it difficult to reach the business and demonstrate the true value of content marketing. Often skeptics deprive themselves of the benefits of good content, because the proposed articles, manuals and videos do not match the classic sales funnel (Yasmin, Tasneem & Fatema, 2015). This is a fatal error. Quality content does not have to sell the product: it helps potential customers find you, become interested, and then fall in love with your brand. Although this may seem a complex and slow process, the business must use content marketing. By tracking the statistics, you can better know the target audience, find out its tastes and preferences. Content is not only a “bait” for customers, but also a tool for collecting valuable marketing information (Durham & Blanco, 2015).
Consequently, once Hippies Adventures have optimized all existing pages of the site for certain keywords, the next important thing start creating content on product pages, categories, blog. According to a survey of 2,500 B2C marketers, more than 53% of specialists use content marketing to increase sales. 63% of them found it effective.
Email marketing is another important feasible suggestion for Hippies Adventures. Email marketing allows the company to keep in touch with customers, inform them about important events and motivate them to commit actions. The specialized services will help Hippies Adventure with this: Mailchimp , Aweber , iContact , VerticalResponse or GetResponse. Through email marketing, the company will collect email addresses of visitors and regularly promote services, content and news.
There are many assumptions about how to calculate the effect of marketing. But we advise Hippies Adventures to rely on three main models that will help you calculate the impact of marketing on the business.
AttractivenessA
This typical metric includes:
Passion
How do consumers work with your content? The notion of enthusiasm includes:
Conversion
How do you track information coming from consumers? How do you use it when communicating in the future? To which indicators can you turn to show the impact of content marketing on sales? The concept of conversion includes:
Conclusion
Based on the analysis, it is apparent that Hippies Adventures have a long way to go as far as integrated digital marketing is concerned. Firstly, the findings revealed that Hippies Adventures still rely on the offline marketing strategies. In fact it lacks an active website. The analysis recommended that the company should adopt digital marketing strategies such as social media marketing, SEO marketing, search marketing , email marketing and content marketing. The ultimate goal is to collect a lot of traffic and convert them into sales. The reason why we recommended Hippies Adventures to adopt variety of digital marketing is because with the user it is necessary to “contact” at every stage of the search. This thesis is proved by a study conducted by the authoritative agency Nielsen. Its purpose is to study the behavior of a person who wants to buy a car. The authors of the study came to the conclusion that the user who initially decided to buy BMW, acquires Toyota RAV 4. The study further revealed that the behavior of the user is nonlinear. Instead of immediately finding a dealer’s site, ordering a test drive and buying a car, he studies several sources and makes a choice long enough. It also revealed that only 33% of buyers as a result have bought that car which searched initially. Hippies Adventures ought to bear in mind that if your business is in a highly competitive subject, you must present your company on all popular sites and services with integrated search.
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