Executive summary

Digital marketing strategy entails a multifaceted approach through which organizations use to market their products and services using online means. This analysis evaluates the content marketing strategies by a travel company called Hi World Love Travels. Through content marketing strategies, the firm intends to enhance its business performance and positioning in its target markets by attracting, converting, closing and delighting customers. The development of the strategy is based on the SOSTAC (Situational analysis, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Actions, and Control) framework. The framework will be used to evaluate the performance of the firm’s BlogSpot http://hiworldlove.blogspot.com/ with a view of developing content for marketing the organization. The analysis makes use of marketing management literature to evaluate and suggest strategies for improvement in the business’s content marketing strategy.

Introduction

Content marketing strategy entails the various techniques that organizations use to create and distribute relevant and valuable content that is aimed at attracting, acquiring and engaging an audience that is clearly defined. The main intention of content marketing is to drive profitable customer actions. Content marketing has been around for many years with the most notable form being that of distributing guides of corporate products and services through brochures. Modern content marketing is mainly through news feeds and newsletters, E-books, videos, blogs, games, and apps among others.  The main objectives of content marketing strategies are to engage the target market or audience of organizational products and services. It also aims to motivate the audience to take actions, maximizing returns on investment and reaching out to the right target audience or market. Content marketing strategies involves a number of marketing activities that together form the digital marketing strategy. These activities include the following: branding, social media, branding content, video production, email marketing, web design, designing applications, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Management) among others (Chaffey, D., 2012).

Essential parts of the content marketing strategy include attracting, converting, closing and delighting customers. Content marketing strategies utilize customizing analytics, and setting up key performance indicators dashboards. It also entails creating SMART objectives to use in prioritizing improvements and how to create a content sales funnel that generates traffic, leads, prospects, and customers. This requires building awareness using various online marketing techniques that attract visitors to the business’s site. Principles that guide content marketing include developing customer persona, creating an engagement cycle, developing the brand story and developing content marketing channel and plan (Ozeum and Azemi, 2018).

Analysis

This content marketing strategy will utilize the SOSTAC framework to evaluate it.

The analysis entails a situational analysis which evaluates the position of the business at present. It also involves the objectives which define where the business wants to be through the content marketing strategy, the specific tactics to use to achieve the strategy, the actions required and control measures to monitor and evaluate the performance the content marketing strategy (Chaffey, D., 2012).

Business profile

http://hiworldlove.blogspot.com/ is a travel blog created by Hi World Love Travels. Hi World Love Travels is a premier global travel and leisure company that coordinates customers who want to travel to various leisure destinations across the world. The firm has been using traditional marketing channels and is using this content marketing strategy to enhance its brand awareness and increase customers. It also helps to retain the existing customers and improve its engagement with customers on online platforms through the creation of unique personas.

Situational analysis

To effectively outline the content marketing strategy for Hi World Love Travels, this analysis will collect information regarding the business’s internal organizational resources as well as its external environment. The internal and external environment will put into perspective its macro and micro environments. The context of the internal factors amounts to the operating environment while the external factors entail the remote environment. The analysis of these environments will give key insights about the current marketing situation of the organization and thus help set the objectives of the selected content marketing strategy based on the prevailing strengths and weaknesses of the firm.

The operating environment of the business entails its customers, intermediaries, other local businesses and suppliers including its competitors. On the other hand, the remote environment entails technology which includes tablets, mobile communications and other social media channels which are very popular. It also includes the integrated economy through the internet and its use of content marketingimproved. Other elements of the remote environment include managing society regarding how to build trust, reliability, honesty. In addition, use of green initiatives and other strategies to make the business popular through its website and make customers to create a better perception of it (Ozeum and Azemi, 2018).

Five forces analysis

The five forces model provides competitive forces of analysis that include competitive rivalry, bargaining powers of suppliers, bargaining powers of buyers, threats from substitute products and barriers to entry. Despite the simplicity of this model, it is a powerful tool at can be used to understand the competitiveness of the business environment as well as identifying the potential profitability of content marketing strategy.

Competition rivalry

Competitive rivalry in content marketing is very high. Firms use a variety of strategies to aggressively attract customers through high-impact marketing strategies. However, the firm can differentiate its strategies by positioning its content marketing message to the target customers.

Bargaining powers of suppliers

This power is low because of the many alternatives that firm can select in driving its content marketing strategy. The switching costs for various digital marketing channels are low and the firm can integrate its BlogSpot by linking it to many other channels which are used in digital marketing. The firm can also shift to an easy alternative.

Bargaining powers of buyers

The bargaining power of buyers is medium to high because of the influence and discretion that buyers have when it comes to consuming organizational products. Buyers in the contemporary markets are also becomingly increasingly tech savvy. Buyer switching costs are also relatively low. However, because there are many customers, the firm also has considerable power, hence, reducing the influence of this force.

Threats of substitutes

This threat is high because of the many digital marketing channels through which content marketing is done. There are also many search engine and website optimization strategies which firms can use to develop their content marketing strategies.

Threats to entry

Threats to entry are low. Many organizations can start and operationalize their content marketing strategies. There is not much regulation by authorities as the strategy is one of the many strategies that firms use to market their products and services. Despite the dynamic nature of technology, the technology can be easily be updated by the firm (Michaux, et al. 2015).

Customer and product insights

Customer and product insights entail how the firm interacts with the customers and products respectively through content on its BlogSpot. It encompasses understanding how and why organizations engage in various customer activities and its significance in understanding customer behavior. With the new BlogSpot, Hi World Love Travels interacts with customers through marketing content on both its online and offline touch points. For the existing customers, they interact through Google advisor, responsible travels and a host of links on travel. The firm also uses e-mails and other social media channels such as facebook, twitter, instagram and trip advisor to display content that markets its products to target customers. Offline interactions mainly occur through word of mouth, website interactions, phone response and drive by’s and other responses for repeat bookings. Concerning the product insights, the BlogSpot offers the unique selling points that are marketed by the company. For instance, being a travel company, some of the unique selling propositions include location, luxury and green initiatives. To effectively draw customers into the business’s website, the firm strategically communicates its online presence through all online channels that are used in the digital markets (Chaffey, D., 2012).

Competitor’s analysis

The analysis of competitors is significant in the strategic planning process of the content marketing strategy. Through the analysis, the business will gain some insights on how to evolve its new content marketing strategy basing on what competitors are doing. At present the firm has direct, indirect and in-line competitors. Concerning online presence, Hi World Love Travels’ main competitors have online presence that is lowly ranked than it on the Google searches. In addition, the firm utilizes a well-articulated mix of online channels for marketing. The channels include online public relations, social media, e-mail marketing, online partnerships, and search engine marketing through which the firm displays its content. The business’s website is also well build to enhance customer relationship management, service and informing customers and thus improving significant purchase decisions. The analysis of the business in relation to the Business-to-Business service industry  has been vital in managing key accounts. The firm has also optimized its content marketing strategy by influencing different customer segments (Michaux, et al. 2015).

Justification of the strategy obtained

Content marketing strategy is an effective medium through which businesses can reach their potential markets. Through the internet and globalization of international business and travel, the world has been reduced into a global village. The access of the internet has made it possible for anybody to access information regarding a business from any part of the world as long as there is an internet connection. The objectives for using content marketing strategy by Hi World Love Travels achieve thought leadership which helps the organization to increase its brand awareness. Other objectives include attracting new customers, retaining the existing customers and increasing its engagement with customers using online platforms.

The justifications for these objectives include the need by the firm to improve its online engagement with customers especially through internet channels. Through this engagement, the firm expects to improve communication with new and existing customers on social media. The strategy will also help the firm in tracking the use of BlogSpot insights as well as search engine analytics. The actions to take include engaging and offering incentives to encourage people to review the organization’s marketing content online. The relevance of the strategy is that it will help the firm to sustain its business position and the implementation of the strategy can be evaluated and tracked through the near future. Further, the strategy will encourage new customers into the business. This can be measured though Google analytics and organizational data on customers. The actions to take include creating ‘ad campaigns and content’ for the target customers providing content for areas whose returns are below expectations. The relevance of these actions is that they will increase the required web content, tap into it and generate more conversions to the benefit of the business. The strategy can be implemented in the coming months and can be accurately tracked (Chaffey, D., 2010).

Evaluation of the strategy

The use of content marketing strategy can enhance the business in achieving various strategic directions. All these strategic directions will enhance the performance of the business both in the medium and long-term. For instance, through the content marketing strategy, the firm can enhance its penetration into the markets. This can be easily achieved as the marketing strategy will use the existing products and the existing markets. Specifically, through the digital marketing strategy, the business will improve its engagement with the current customers and subsequently improve its strategic position. Other benefits that the firm stands to get from the strategy include market development strategies whereby the firm will use the internet to target new customers segments and new geographical markets. The strategy can also enhance the diversification strategies of the business by improving both related and unrelated businesses, upstream and downstream integration. The content marketing strategy will also improve the market penetration strategies of the firm through the use of internet to increase its market share by competing more effectively using online channels. The strategy also improves customer loyalty through value-addition to existing products and migrating customers through influences on customer buy journeys (Ansoff, H., 2017).

Suggestions for strategy improvements

To achieve the overall objectives of the digital advertisement strategy, the firm needs to use various tactics to enhance its performance. To increase engagement, the business needs to use a multiple channel approach in order to integrate all the existing channels through which the business’s website can be accessed. For instance, the firm can use the prize-draw incentives by running social media competitions that can generate quick fans for the firm, build the email list, drive quality as well interested traffic into the company’s website. The firm can also build its website into a kind of a chain through which all the touch points for engaging customers and the business process at every point through provision of access links and information about the website. Thirdly, the firm can also place the “call to action” prompts that will link the organization’s website to the social media through social media widgets on the homepage to engage customers as soon as they get to the site. Other strategies for improvement include search engine optimization, on-page optimization and use of other influencers to positively rank the organization’s content (Alford, P., 2012).

Conclusion

The use of content marketing strategies is the way to go for contemporary businesses. Using effective content marketing strategies helps businesses to define the buying journey of their customers by addressing buyer personas, preferences and content needs by customers. This analysis evaluated the content marketing strategies of the organization using the SOSTAC framework. The content marketing strategy addresses various issues that the organization needs to generate and manage market leads, event marketing, building traffic, social media marketing, email marketing, customer service and market automation among others. Successful use of digital marketing strategy requires a review of the organization’s websites to ensure that its capabilities have all the important touch points, key performance indicators, marketing metrics and establishing its return on investment. Core capabilities to consider include customer experience, integrated communication with customer, buy-in by organizational management and ensuring that the marketing content is structured and properly organized. The content marketing strategy should also be informed by research on consumer behavior, marketing channels and what competitors are doing. It should also be based on objectives that are aligned to the online strategy of the organization, communication differentials that encourage customer use and channel integration. Through these, the organization can effectively hit on its sales targets and channel leads, growth, retention and conversion of customers, prioritize on its audiences and content optimization.

 References

Alford, P., 2012. Technology and Marketing : A changing landscape.

Ansoff, H., 2017. Strategies for diversification. Harvard Business Review, pp. 113-124.

Chaffey, D., 2010. The RACE Digital Marketing Improvement Framework. [Online] Available at: http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/race-a-practical-framework-toimprove-your-digital-marketing/ [Accessed 14 March 2019].

Chaffey, D., 2012. Digital Marketing. In: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. s.l.:Pearson Education.

Michaux, S., Cadiat, A.-C., & Probert, C. (2015). Porter’s five forces: Stay ahead of the competition. Place of publication not identified: 50Minutes.

Ozeum, W., & Azemi, Y. (2018). Digital marketing strategies for fashion and luxury brands.