Providing Guidance on Digital Strategy for a Leading UK Estate Agency Chain - Essay Example

Providing guidance on digital strategy for a leading UK e agency chain BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE Providing guidance on digital strategy for a leading UK estate agency chain Introduction A foremost estate agency leader has recently recruited the talents and expertise of the Director of Digital Strategy to improve its marketing position using several potential methods of marketing. The director will be producing the report to highlight the potential advantages and drawbacks of viral marketing, affiliate marketing, and search engine marketing. All three methodologies of promoting the estate agency chain have been utilised by many different businesses in a vast variety of industries in an effort to outperform competition in the markets in which they sell and operate. This report highlights the tangible characteristics of viral, affiliate and search engine marketing strategies, ultimately selecting one viable marketing strategy to enhance sales volumes and brand visibility of the estate agency chain. Viral marketing opportunities In 2007, web-based advertising of properties increased 70 percent from 2004 (Key Note Media 2010). This means that it is becoming common practice for estate agents to utilise the Internet as a means of expanding their brand presence and effectively promoting a variety of properties in this industry. Coupled with this dramatic increase, a recent survey indicated that 57.7 percent of consumers would actively search the Internet as an option when desiring to move into a new home (Key Note Media 2010). Furthermore, in 2010, the volume of consumers sustaining Internet access in the United Kingdom was listed at over 44 million (Digital Age 2012). This represents approximately 70 percent of the entire United Kingdom population (ONS 2012). Because of this dynamic and high volume usage of Internet technologies by many demographics, viral marketing represents a significant opportunity for improving the market position of this leading estate agency. Viral marketing is defined as an amalgamation of marketing tactics that utilise existing social networks and related Internet technologies to achieve specific marketing objectives or increase brand awareness (Boone and Kurtz 2007). It is a strategy that attempts to promote growth in word-of-mouth by passing on a well-developed marketing message that proliferates itself much like a virus to encourage social circulation of a marketing message or organization (NCTU 2011). Viral marketing provides opportunities to create thrill in consumer markets, or buzz, that facilitates positive gossip in desired market groups about the viral content observed or otherwise engaged with on the Internet. Viral marketing efforts generally utilise video clips, images, integrated marketing communications, e-mail messaging, or innovative web content in order to achieve viral buzz in desired consumer segments. Thus, it should be recognised that viral marketing involves labour and capital investment (of varying degrees) in order to create the excitement and word-of-mouth required to attain return on the marketing investment. To make viral marketing effective, the marketer must consider two important constructs. First, the messenger (medium) must be appropriate for the promotional campaign. Many organisations use market mavens, a type of informational specialist who remains on the social pulse of trends in the social environment with a well-established web presence and following for their expertise and contribution to trends-based lifestyles (Kaplan and Haenlein 2011). Market mavens are very common in the fashion industry, under the operating presence of a real-time fashion blogger, that facilitates buzz and general interest in new fashion trends and styles to give retailers and fashion manufacturers much more visibility and presence. Secondly, an organisation considering viral marketing as a strategy for gaining sales and brand presence must consider the message content that would be most attractive and motivating for desired target markets. This is one of the most labour-intensive and costly elements of a successful viral marketing campaign, as there must be appropriate humour, sophistication, or general innovative ingenuity in the message content that will strike a proverbial chord with market characteristics looking for estate agent services. In this industry, services and products are oftentimes homogenous and not easy to differentiate when focusing on product and pricing in the marketing mix. In today’s sales environment, the only non-replicable asset a business maintains is its brand image (Nandan 2005; Bennett and Rundle-Thiele 2004). Therefore, content should be aligned with the psycho-social characteristics of important target groups that will motivate an effective word-of-mouth response to ensure a viral spread of what has been observed or engaged with. Burger King is one company that produced a viral marketing campaign that could easily be benchmarked for its creativity and ability to motivate target consumers. Known as the Subservient Chicken project, Burger King developed a software program that allowed online users to command an actor dressed in a chicken suit to perform humorous activities in a virtual restaurant (Stack 2008). Such commands included directives to blow his nose, urinate on the sofa, or perform back-flips to the delight of the end user. The desired target market of Burger King is a male, youth-oriented market consisting of 18 to 30-year-olds that often maintains psychographic characteristics such as immature appreciation of unusual humour. Burger King was able to develop an appropriate type of interactive content that spread Burger King’s Have it Your Way promotion like wildfire in the UK and abroad rather quickly. By aligning the content of the materials with human behavioural characteristics, viral marketing became an effective promotional tool. According to Phillips (2008) the young generation is one where using a cool online avatar to perform cool activities creates perceptions of power in the user that ultimately sells products more effectively. Burger King completely understood the psychological constructs of their youth, male target market and was able to generate content that provided significant incentive to inform others about its innovation that assisted in rebuilding lost revenues for the fast food chain. Affiliate marketing opportunities Affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing strategy between one website owner and a second partner organisation or online merchant. The most common form of affiliate marketing is the pay-per-click strategy offered by such large companies as Google Adwords. In the pay-per-click contract, the owner of the website allows affiliates to link themselves to the site. When the consumer clicks on the link to visit the online merchant, the website owner is paid a portion of profits (Prussakov 2007). Commissions paid to the first party by the second party are determined by contractual agreements gleaned through negotiation with the two parties. Affiliate marketing also includes a pay-per-sale strategy model in which a second party is paid monies each time a tangible sale is made related to a second party advertisement allowed to be present on a website owner’s site (Gray 1999). This can also be coupled with what is referred to as pay-per-lead strategy involving commissions paid to a second party when a new client registers with the marketing organisation’s website as a direct result of advertising presence with the affiliate entity. Affiliate marketing represents a moderate difference from traditional affiliate programs, as there are still incentives involved that provide the motivation for affiliates to generate leads or improve sales volumes through referrals. Affiliates will generally set up what is referred to as the squeeze page website in which content is designed to foster incentive for desired target consumers to make a final purchase or visit the marketer’s website for further information. Affiliate marketing has distinct advantages to the real estate agency that does not maintain significant inventory volumes as there are very low capital requirements to start this affiliate marketing program, thus the business does not have to incur packaging and shipment costs that are common in affiliate marketing agreements. Additionally, since there are financial rewards associated with creative and motivated affiliate partners, it provides much greater enticement to work on behalf of the partnered agent to ensure their own revenue production. The main disadvantage of affiliate marketing is selecting an appropriate partner that will help to generate more traffic to the marketer’s website. For instance, in the estate agency industry, there are not a great deal of service providers that offer supplementary real estate-related services as the majority of property-oriented stakeholders are direct competition, solicitors, or conveyancers. Not all of these inter-dependent entities maintain a powerful brand presence online or even an interactive website to facilitate affiliate marketing presence. A secondary drawback to affiliate marketing is that the organisation will likely have to build these agreements with multiple affiliates in order to gain any significant return on investment. Having web presence on just one affiliate site will be insufficient for expanding brand recognition in this saturated market environment, therefore considerable labour will have to be allocated to identifying partners, developing agreements, and further evaluating and controlling the scope and relevancy of the partnerships. This could be significantly labour intensive for the agency and there is no guarantee that affiliate partners will be motivated to promote using good business sense that protects the reputation of the affiliate partner without some contractual agreement for more unilateral controls in the marketing process. Search engine marketing Search engine marketing is quite different from affiliate and viral marketing strategies. This type of marketing involves maximising a marketer’s presence in desirable search engines, such as Google or Microsoft’s Bing engine, through advertising and optimisation (SEO). Under this strategy, rewriting or adjustment to website content is conducted to achieve a much more visible ranking when the search engine returns findings associated with user keywords entered. To make search engine marketing work, keyword analysis and web research must be conducted to determine what the most popular keywords are as it relates to the marketers products, services or brand objectives (Chadwick 2005). Advantageously, the majority of contemporary search engine service providers provide metrics that describe the popularity of certain keywords or backlinks that have been indexed with the service provider. Using what are referred to as ranking algorithms, certain constructs of market saturation or site popularity can be analysed to determine what keywords or other associated strategies can be developed to improve standing when consumers are looking for relevant industry-related information important for the estate agency industry. A simpler, but generally most costly method in search engine marketing is a paid inclusion contract, usually referred to as specially-sponsored listings. Usually this consists of a one-time fee that is paid to the search engine service provider in order to display a more prominent, permanent display of the marketer’s website information for the purpose of providing more eye-catching consumer awareness during the search process. Sites in this process can also be submitted to a variety of directories maintained online to improve the likelihood that a site will be prevalent in the consumer search processes online. Therefore, without indulging in a detailed explanation of the technological aspects of search engine marketing, the main premise is to ensure that the marketer maintains a prominent and relevant display of its desired content when the consumer attempts to locate information in the search engine. For example, a consumer searching for affordable homes might put low price real estate, which would return a variety of agencies that have used these keywords. By examining the metrics provided by search engine providers or consulting with these knowledge sources, it is much easier to determine which keywords receive the most hits and then develop website content that will more effectively display the marketer’s listings over that of competition. The recommended strategy for the agency Based on all fundamental aspects of all three aforementioned marketing strategies, it would be most beneficial for the agency to utilise viral marketing to gain more market prominence, improve sales and secure a better brand image with desired target markets. Why was this strategy selected over that of alternative marketing directions? The real estate market is characterised by considerable consumer buying power, identified by Michael Porter (2011) as being a considerable risk for securing business profitability. The real estate market in the United Kingdom is saturated with many independent and corporate real estate companies that provide unique service offerings, varying pricing structures for services and estate management, and provide varying levels of service. Because of this saturation in the market with competition, viral marketing will provide the agency with a much stronger brand that is able to differentiate using viral content without having to rely on tangibles in the marketing mix such as product or pricing. First, loyal customers to a brand are more willing to pay premium pricing and also generate word-of-mouth (Chaudhuri and Holbrook 2001). Brand loyalty is best developed when a product or service is able to provide consumers with a perception of self-expansion (Zhang and Chan 2009), which should be defined as improving a consumer’s social standing, professional growth, or other emotionally-driven needs related to lifestyle. Estate agencies maintain many opportunities to appeal to the psycho-social needs aforementioned in a variety of consumer target audiences once the agency leadership understands what specific needs are desired by consumers. Search engine marketing and affiliate marketing might enhance visibility in the online environment, however it does not maintain opportunities to create long-standing, emotionally-driven relationships with desired target markets. For instance, there will be some markets, such as the high resource, well-educated middle aged markets, that will demand competence and strict detail to quality as a predictor of purchasing decision-making. Other markets, such as the lower-resource, younger consumer market might find tangible place (i.e. neighbourhood cleanliness or geographic proximity to retail centres) as the most critical dimension. This industry is marked with a very diverse and varied set of personal market characteristics, therefore creating content that will generate interest requires understanding these markets. It is recommended that before launching a viral marketing campaign, the estate agency conduct market research targeting random samples of consumers with varying market demographics and psycho-social characteristics. Blending qualitative and quantitative research tools, the agency should be targeting diverse markets to identify their emotional relationships with estate agents and the generic home selling process that will determine their interest and ultimate purchasing intention. Once profiles of varying and likely target markets have been identified, the agency should be developing online content materials that are strictly aligned with these findings. It is recommended that the business, founded on market research on market characteristics, develop a viral video befitting market behaviours and needs. For instance, if market research identifies that the majority of consumers that will be looking for estate agent services fit in the moderate resource, 25 to 35 year-old markets, then content should be placed on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook that is relevant to their psychographic characteristics. Market research would also identify the frequency by which desired markets utilise social networking as well as the type of content (e.g. entertainment, education, etc.) that appeals to them. The estate agency can then create agreements with social media providers or work independently to promote the video, either through using market mavens or by creating published advertisement indicating the new presence of web content related to the agency. Supplementing release of the video on social networking sites, it is recommended that the estate agency develop a website that links the viral video content and also promotes important elements of business philosophy that is relevant to the most prominent and likely market to produce revenue growth. For instance, if market research indicates that an older market with more sophisticated social and psychological characteristics will bring more visibility, content should be aligned with competence, sophistication, elegance or other desirable business traits for this market. The goal of the content should be to spark interest and enthusiasm with the market group. Unfortunately, this report cannot recommend specific content production that would benefit in the viral marketing campaign, as these findings must be supported by qualitative and quantitative market research studies. However, the business can benchmark some promotional efforts utilised by Apple, Inc., which is a leader in online social networking transparency, by using press releases to supplement launch of various viral marketing strategies. Apple has stopped telling consumers what they sell and, instead, now tell consumers what the business believes in (Goodson 2011). To make this viral campaign work appropriately, the estate agency must consult with internal stakeholders to identify an appropriate mission or vision that is aligned with the legitimate values held by the organisational culture. If there is flexibility in establishing a new focus on values and beliefs, then the organisation can develop supplementary promotional communications (either print or online) that further advance support for corporate values that are aligned with consumer preferences and needs for estate agents. If humour is determined to be a fair and justified selling feature when engaging with consumers that has worked traditionally, then humorous online content should be generated and supported by integrated, consistent marketing communications upon release of the viral video content. Follow-up for return on this investment would be tracking the volume of hits achieved for the content, the volume of labour allocated to performing evaluation and metrics on the viral content, and measuring whether websites or telephone inquiries have dramatically increased for the investment. Conclusion Though all three strategies do maintain opportunities for improving the agency’s business standing and brand reputation, viral marketing is more effective in building brand recognition and long-term loyalty. Clever, ingenious, innovative, and market-relevant marketer content will be necessary in this new campaign in order to improve the agency’s competitive standing. Search engine marketing and affiliate marketing are simply not effective for this particular industry since estate agencies cater to such a wide variety of markets with very different psychological, lifestyle and sociological needs. Viral marketing that is able to strike a chord with specific market characteristics will lead to better brand visibility and effective word-of-mouth and therefore represents the most lucrative marketing strategy for the agency. References Bennett, R. and Rundle-Thiele, S. (2004). Customer satisfaction should not be the only goal, Journal of Service Marketing, 18(7), pp.514-523. Boone, L. and Kurtz, D. (2007). Contemporary Marketing, 12th ed. United Kingdom: Thompson South-Western. Chadwick, T.B. (2005). How search engine marketing tools can work for you, Information Outlook [online] Available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FWE/is_10_9/ai_n15890934/?tag=content;col1 (accessed 17 February 2013). Chaudhuri, A. and Holbrook, M. (2001). 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