I finally tasted Keogh’s Crisps!!

We have spent a lot of time speaking about Keogh’s Crisps.  This week’s challenge was to create a blog for them.  It was a fun challenge for a fun product.  You would think that people selling crisps would not bother with blogs and that they would be better off doing sampling in shops and creating brand awareness this way.  I tried the Atlantic Sea Salt & Cider Vinegar crips and found them extremely tasty with a nice crunch to them: http://keoghs.ie/keoghs-hand-cooked-crisps/altlantic-sea-salt-cider-vinegar.html.  THey are mentioned here on a “Taste of Ireland” youtube video

I can’t believe how many followers they have on facebook. http://www.facebook.com/keoghsfarm .  They sell online and everything is sold through the Facebook page and primarily to the USA which is fantastic.

The website is clear, concise and friendly.  I like the text they are using as it is casual and open.  I LOVE the meet the family section and I will be using that for our website for a “Meet the Team section”.  I am going to organise a photo shoot with all of our drivers and get the photographer to take a photo of them in front of a tour bus and then take a picture of each driver individually.  Similar to the Keoghs when we roll over the image on the page it will state the drivers name, how long they have been with Dublin Bus, how long they have been a tour driver and an “interesting” fact about them.

Analyse this!

4th December Week 11:  Stephen O’Leary from O’Leary  Analytics

Analyze this

This week we had a very interesting presentation from Stephen O’Leary who set up O’Leary Analytics 3 years ago.  Stephen was highlighting the importance of monitoring brand presence through social media.  He mentioned that brands have to monitor talk online and that so many opportunities are missed by not having a presence particularly regarding complaints.  If Brands are present on these forums they can quench fires and engage directly with customers hopefully switching them to become loyal customers.

The areas brands should monitor are:

1. Social Media blogs   – I came across these blogs that I will start to monitor for my brand: http://blog.discoverireland.com   http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ireland/County-Dublin/.  I will also start to engage more with bloggers.  I actually had a contact this week who wants to set up a travel blog.  How do I monitor these people?  Are they really starting a travel blog or looking for free tickets?

2. Twitter – I have stayed away from Twitter to date as I felt that it was not where my market “was at” .  However after doing some searching and monitoring I think Twitter will be a good place for www.dublinsightseeing.ie to be.  The people who use it are tweeting looking for information in Dublin and asking what they can do.  I need to be there to respond to their questions and recommend our tours.

3. Message boards- in particular www.boards.ie which he says is the most underutilised forum by brands in IReland as people made purchasing decisions on a wide range of products such as sausages to ferraris through this medium.

4. Forums: I spend a lot of time on www.Rollercoaster.ie myself so I should have been more aware of how popular these sites are.  I will also check out www.magicmum.ie and http://www.eumom.com

5. Wikis : a wiki is the simplest collaborative content management system that could possibly work.  A blog is a popular form of wiki.  Popular blogs can be extremley influential.

6. Youtube : I personally search regularly on youtube to see if tourists have uploaded videos of their bus tour.  These are great for the facebook page as they are coming from an independant source.

7. Flickr : To date I have not used Flickr as a tool for monitoring my brand.  I thought that it was all private and that I could not access these images.  I will take a look at this to see if I can use images.

8. Facebook: I have Facebook pages for the tours.  I need some further development on both pages and have to look into running competitions to increase the likes and awareness. To date ads have still not worked.  It is easy to analyse.

It would be great to be able to employ an agency like Stephen’s to spend some time showing us where our market is at and where best to spend our budget.

Mailchimp – So simple even a monkey could do it!

27th November Week 9:  Owned Media – Permission based marketing

I LOVED this evening’s class.  The theory was about email marketing which was really interesting and we had a practical session using Mailchimp http://mailchimp.com which I found great.  The mailchimp site is easy to navigate and it was interesting working in a group of people who use it regularly and know their way around the site.  Prior to this class I presumed that this work was largely carried out by agencies who acquire data bases and send out ezines, emails, e-newsletters etc on a client’s behalf.   Following the class I realised that I can do it myself and that once I get started it will not be too time consuming.  This is the newsletter we set up in a few minutes in class http://twitter.us5.list-manage1.com/subscribe/post?u=cb4cb1eae542ac5cb7c3a2575&id=1463b079e1 

According to an Irish Digital Sentiment survey carried out by the Marketing Institute in 2012 email marketing campaigns and blogs/social marketing are the top 2 channels for online marketing.  This came as a surprise to me as I would have presumed that PPC was the top channel.  Email marketing offers the highest conversion rates and obviously is a low cost option.  This throws up a number of questions for me in my job. 

1. Why am I not doing email marketing

A: Lack of time is a major factor here but if this channel is so important then I need to prioritise where I am concentrating my digital efforts

2. How can I start?

a: We currently have no facility for people to give us their email addresses.  We have a database of people who buy our tickets online.  We will have to implement some software updates firstly to put a tick box on the page asking for permission to use emails and secondly to change the database so that we can merge the emails and send out group mails.  I have put a request into our internal department asking for these changes to be implemented.

3. What type of email marketing can i do?

A: the first campaign I can do is to do follow up emails.  I will send out satisfaction surveys to see how people enjoyed the tours, where they are from, how they heard about us, what we can improve etc.  I will combine this with a survey on the street asking people to provide their emails and with a tick box on the sheet and we can start to build a database of the people who did not book their tickets online.

I will talk to staff in the Tourism Ireland offices about being included in their newsletters and will start to write articles for them to publish to their offices worldwide.  They have active databases of people who have a genuine interest in Ireland and travelling to Ireland/Dublin.

While we get some repeat business on the Hop on Hop off tour and the Coastal tours where I would see me getting most benefit from would be the Ghostbus tour as there is a large percentage of local people who take this tour and they tend to repeat it.  I would sent out emails from Mailchimp with images of the tour, any new additions to the tour and images people have taken with orbs etc.  I could incentivise it and ask for other people’s ghost stories and give prizes for the best stories.  i would integrate this with our Facebook page too.

Given the nature of our business it is important that we provide mobile options to people.  A large percentage of people will book their tours online when they arrive in Dublin.  Some even do it outside head office to avail of our online discount.  Our current website is not a mobile website and this is something we are working on.  Mailchimp has a mobile campaign option which is fantastic and might help us to engage with our market on the move: http://mailchimp.com/mobile-friendly-campaigns/

I found this lecture very beneficial and I am looking forward to putting it into practise.

Earned Media – the biggie….

27th November 2012

This is the form of media that all marketers strive to achieve positively. It doesn’t matter how fancy your website is, how much you spend on SEO and PPC or facebook advertising if no one is looking at your brand or communicating with you there is something wrong.
If your customers are your channel and they are doing the work of informing people about your product then you should clap yourself on the back! Positive word of mouth is priceless for marketers. This is the most credible form of media. There are of course negative aspects to it. There is no control over what people can post, type or video about your brand. You must be prepared for negativity and think about how to respond if it goes viral in a negative way. It is also hard to measure as you can’t measure clickthroughs etc. It is important that you are online and aware of where people are talking about you. It is important to listen to what customers are saying and when possible to respond to them.
In my line of work Trip Advisor http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g186605-d195416-Reviews-Dublin_Bus_Tour_Green_Bus_Hop_on_Hop_Off-Dublin_County_Dublin.html
is a valuable media tool for me. Customers post reviews once they have taken the tour. In general the feedback is really good and we currently have a 4.5 star rating out of 5 which is great. We cannot afford to become complacent though and continue to monitor the site and provide training for our front line staff to ensure our customers are satisfied with our product. What is great is when people post a comprehensive review and explain a particular product or ticket that found to be of great value and advise others to buy it. No amount of advertising in airline magazines, brochures, or posters can explain this to a customer better than someone who has just spent time in the city and recommends it. I respond to all reviews online and try to get to the negative ones as quick as possible so that I can discuss with the complainant off line to see how we can help them and where the system broke down for them.

Responsive Design

Week 3:

We covered responsive design in this lecture.  I had heard about it before in conversations with our IT department who had just been on a course and were interested in implementing it.  As part of the plan for the overall revamp of the work website I felt that having a responsive website or sites was the way to go and was going to update our brief to include this.  Currently we have a lot of customers coming to us with reservation numbers on their smart phones and we cannot accept them.  I thought with a mobile site that this would make the process easier on everyone but I have changed my mind.

During the lecture we viewed responsive sites from Porsche, Nike and I took a look at Yoox myself.  The sites are great but it is quite obvious that these are huge players in the market with massive budgets who can afford to invest in these funky, cool sites.  I found the Nike Fuel band site a bit of a waste of time but it does look great.  Personally I think the AIB mobile site is excellent.  I use it all the time and never use the original website any more.  They are a good model for a mobile website that is functional and beneficial to users.

From a work point of view I have realised that to become “responsive” it requires separate briefs for each site application.  If I was to look for a mobile site I would be increasing my workload, increasing the cost of the site and I am not sure if the increase in revenue would justify this.  Also with a mobile site the expectation there is that we have technology at the front office end to redeem vouchers, print tickets etc from this mobile site.  This functionality is not available to us currently and would only be available at a huge cost.  I usually look to similar operators in cities such as London and New York to see what they are doing as they would usually lead in this field. At present they do not have mobile or responsive sites so I think I can concentrate on building our new website being confident that I understand what a resposive website is and that it is not for us at the moment… Watch this space though!

Here is a short video from IBEC discussing “What is responsive web design”

Paid Media €€€€

The first part of this lecture related to different types of ads.  I just called every ad on a website a “banner ad”.  I am now more aware of the different names such as an” Island”, an “MPU”, rich media ads, peel backs, floating ads etc.  It is really really mind-boggling but  great to be learning how to communicate on a level playing field with agencies, advertisers etc.

I don’t work with an agency I deal direct for all my advertising so realising that I can request tracking codes is great but I am not sure about the cost.  I will look into Google DFP to see if we can go down that road as a tracking tool would be so beneficial to us.

What I got most out of todays lecture was the practical element looking at the Facebook advertising. Facebook has seen the most growth in terms of any media channel. I look after our Facebook advertising and to be honest I have been winging it.  I have put up numerous campaigns and gained nothing from them so I was obviously doing them wrong.  I knew it was possible to delve deep into audience demographics and target really specifically but I wasn’t 100% sure how to do it.  We did a group exercise on this and I found I gained a lot of insight from other group members on how to target more precisely.  After the class I set up a few ads on the facebook page.  I need to spend more time on them and do some more research but I am definitely a lot wiser than I was on Tuesday morning!!

https://en-gb.facebook.com/business This link is quite useful.

Most people search for needs not brands!

Week 6 30th October

There was a lot in the class this week.  The most beneficial section to me was the follow on to Facebook advertising.  I look after the facebook accounts in work www.facebook.com/dublinbustours www.facebook.com/ghostbustourdublin and was really interested to learn more about advertising on it.  I run a number of Facebook ads and created a new one after last weeks class.  I am definitely doing something wrong as they are not generating anything for me.  I think the spend is too low but I am not sure how to increase it.

Annemarie mentioned bit.ly https://bitly.com/ which is really interesting.  It tracks links to the website.  We are constantly being asked to put links onto our website and we get reciprocal links back to ours.  We also advertise with a number of publications and they always say now that they will include an ad on their website.  With Bit.ly now we should be able to track all of this which will be really useful in negotiating advertising rates.  I joined up to Bit.ly and discovered that our site had received 4 saves and 18 clicks.  Not fantastic figures but I found a great site called www.travelmuse.com that features us quite highly and I will be in contact with them over the coming weeks to see if I can provide them with more information.

I have to admit that Facebook competitions is a section that I have purposely avoided since setting up the Facebook accounts.  It is hard enough to find the time to manage the Facebook pages without having to develop competition apps.  I have no choice now but to check it out in order to run the account properly and to get the best possible outcome from all of my Facebook activity.  I have had a brief look at the competition guidlines on www.facebook.com/pageguidelines.php and am also going to sign up to Northsocial.com to run some basic competitions.  I am hoping that by doing this it should generate more interest.  Northsocial say that they can manage and analyise all projects which would be fantastic.  They even provide video demos to help out.

What am I doing?

This blog is about my course in Digital Marketing. As a busy mom in full time employment I cannot believe I actually signed up to attend college twice a week! So why did I do it? Well I work in Marketing and as we all know the marketing landscape is changing rapidly. I want to keep abreast of what is going on and be able to make desicions going forward that will benefit my job and enable the company to keep up to date in the changing environment.
The blogs will be based on lectures by Anne Marie Boyhan and guest speakers over a period of 12 weeks on the topic – Digital Marketing Measurement.  I hope to show over the posts what I am learning and how I will be applying it to my daily work.

Paid Media Measurement – “HITS” is dated!

Week 4: 16th October

The finance guys probably love this!  For generations and still to date there is the ongoing battle between the fiance department and the marketing department.  Finance is looking at the black and white figures and want to see a return on their investment.  Marketeers can’t always tell if their campaigns have been succesful or indeed if a large campaign suceeds it is hard to tell which element of the campaign generated this.  Nowadays with everything going digital and so much information to hand it is easier to measure your online campaigns.

This lecture was really interesting.  There are elements to it that we are currently doing in work and others that we have not gotten around to yet for various reasons.  It was interesting to learn what Irish Marketers are doing online (amas.ie)

1. Email campaigns are the top at 67%
2. Blogs & Social Networking at 63%
3. SEO is at 59%

It was scary to think that I am only at no. 3 really with the SEO,  we are currently doing this and doing it well as we are at the number 1 position for our keywords.   To date we have not done many email campaigns, Facebook is active but there could be a lot more done with it.  It is clear that we need to invest time and money into ezines, newsletters and blogs to increase our profile online.  Our target market likes to research, they like to know what to expect when they arrive in Dublin. They like to research the venues they will be visiting.  This can be done really well in an ezine and blogs.  We can get the venues to provide us with interesting information, facts and images.

POEM!!  A good way to remember and focus when doing an online campaign

P – Paid media – We do a small amount of paid media with banner ads, facebok ads, PPC and paid search.

Owned Media – We currently have no blog and our website is being ravamped.  The new look website should result in an increase in sales

Earned Media – in our line of business this is vital for us.  Trip Advisor is vital for us and it is vital that our satisfied customers post reviews and tell people about their experiences.  Dissatisfied customers should be contacted online through trip advisor and queries dealt with off line.  Earned media is valuable in any business as it is based on genuine experiences.

I won’t ever mention “Hits” Again in relation to the website.  We were given information on how to measure “Reach”.  www.irelandmetrix.ie & www.alexa.com are sites I have gone back to the office with to do more research on.

I didn’t realise previously that it is possible to get the audience dempgraphics from a site.  this will be great going forward when I am negotiating prices etc for advertising. Most print ads I place now also include an online presence.  This always sounds like I am getting something extra but now I know where to look to see if it is worthwhile.

Failing to plan is planning to fail!

2nd October 2012 Digital Project Management

A digital project usually involves lots of different elements and a large amount of input from different areas within a company. Therefore it is hugely important to plan it out in advance. If the project is not mapped out and planned in advance it can end up falling apart at the seams fairly quickly and possibly either not happening at all or being abandoned half way through.
To avoid this remember the iron triangle cost quality and time
Firstly although it seems like common sense you need to devise a project plan. The project scope is all of the work required to deliver a project. At the outset clarify what the product scope or the end result will be. What should it look like? What should it do etc. In my case I require a complete overhaul of the website, front and back-end. It should look like the existing brand and use images of the buses, tickets, places we visit etc. The end result will be that we will have a fully functioning website with a shopping cart to allow multiple purchases, an agents log on facility with an inbuilt invoicing system, and the option to add on other operators tours. It should be responsive to mobile as many of our customers are travelling and will have smartphones with them.
it is important to sit with stakeholders to get their input. if we plan to offer this to tour agents then we need to see what they require. Speed at the time of booking is important so we do not want to build a specific function for them that is too time consuming and not conducive to sales for them.
Budget is an area where lots of projects fall down. As the digital area is fairly new and constantly changing it is important to keep a tight eye on the budget. From the time a project is approved until it ends many technological changes will have arisen and the “client” or even other stakeholders may like to add features to a site etc and not consider the costs involved. These can always be included at another phase.
Testing is a major issue with digital projects and can sometimes be overlooked or not enough budget is allocated to testing. Time should always be allowed for testing. It should be extended to outside the project group. Allowance for various rounds of testing and bug fixing should be incorporated as well as setting test tasks and centralising bug information gathering. A good idea is to use bug tracking software and this should be incorporated in the initial specification.
Don’t forget to include everyone involved and include them in the relevant stages. the client, the designer, project manager, content creator, marketer, coder, stakeholders. Communication is the key here so once you include everyone and plan out the project it should run smoothly.