SEOs play a pivotal role in any ‘internet marketing’ scheme as they are responsible of keeping the website higher on the list of searches made over a search engine. A good SEO could always make a website look more attractive, user-friendly and could increase the traffic over the website, quite drastically.
“Promote Me’, would defiantly have to hire the best and most highly skilled SEO’s who could not only provide advice about the website, but could do the following as well
- Review the content of the website frequently
- Extend their technical expertise and advices over website development Content
- Keep track of the online business development campaigns
- Keyword research
- SEO training
Since the initial aim of ‘Promote Me’ is to increase traffic, skilled SEO’s would play a vital role in its success.
‘Promote Me’ would have the capacity of processing a sizeable amount of data for the customer’s ease i.e. ample computing power to bring the wait time for a query down. Such efficiency is expected to be achieved at a very low cost. Similarly, ‘Promote Me’, intends to offer its customers low prices for most storage space so that they may display their work, with no strings attached. Another core competency to look forward is ‘knowledge application’. If the information presented on the website is presented in a unique way, it may well turn out to be a great source of competitive advantage. Such advantage could only be derived by applying the most efficient data-sorting logarithms, effectively.
Hence, as long as the website provides value both to its users and the music industry, it would do well. It must also be mentioned that for a website like ‘Promote Me’, there is always an eminent thereat of emulators, however if there is enough synergy between the activities of ‘Promote Me’, it would be pretty hard to emulate.
Value Chain
Besides the main idea, “Promote Me’ is based on the accumulation of technological knowledge. We know that ‘value chain’ in a basic tool to understand the competitive advantage of a firm’s technology. The value chain is a basic tool to analyse competitive advantages and find ways to create and sustain them. It also shows total value activities and margin within and around an organization. (Johnson et al. 1999, Porter 1980). Linkages of each activity can lead to two competitive advantages: optimisation and coordination. (Porter 1980)
Networks, especially social networks, have an interesting aspect to them; their value is driven from the number of users. Contrary to the conventional notion of ‘demand and supply, in case of social networks, the more users demand the more valuable they get.
‘Promote Me’, will do most of the value chain. It would allow the user to create his profile, upload his music files, and also allow them to make changes to it. More importantly it would also allow the user to generate and integrate information regarding the music he desires to upload, review or listen to. With the use of knowledge applications, other users may provide additional value by rating the music files and leave comments over it.
According to Chen & Xie (2004) that propose online consumer reviews can serve as a new element of marketing communications mix. They can provide relevant matching information to all kinds of consumers, including those who fail to benefit from the information provided by the seller. For many products, this function is impossible or very costly to achieve by the traditional elements of marketing communications mix such as advertising or personal selling (Kotler, 2000)”.
SWOT analysis of ‘Promote Me’
Strategic Marketing planning is all about assessing advantages and disadvantages associated with an industry. SWOT looks at the internal (strengths & weaknesses) and the external (opportunities & threats) environments (Baker, 1996).
SWOT analysis enables us to coherently view the larger picture so that we may plan to focus on the strengths and exploit the opportunities, while trying to fix the weaknesses and threats.
SWOT analysis on ‘Promote me’ has given the following result as summarised in the table below.
Table ‘Promote Me’ SWOT analysis
BUISNESS MODEL:
Since it is not entirely a social networking website but promotes new artists and musicians and provides additional promise and value for its users. Initially ‘Promote Me’ is aiming at large membership sizes. Once that is established, the website could use the wide area of information it has on the users to develop a strategic marketing plan for placing the ads on pertinent pages and places.
A research of Myspace shows that 98% of American Myspace users correctly report where they live. And they tend to immediately report important changes in their lives such as getting engaged. This presents great marketing opportunities (The Economist, 2007). Facebook young founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said “On Facebook, we know exactly what gender someone is and exactly what age they are” (Story, 2007).
The members would have a dual role to play; as the suppliers and also as the customers. The profitability would largely depend on the number of ads that are placed over the website.
The marketing plan for the website would be simple; ‘Viral marketing’. It has almost been established now that the traditional ways of advertising have lost their viability and nothing really compares to ‘word of mouth’ or ‘viral marketing’. According to one study conducted by a word of mouth research firm, the Keller Fay Group, “people discuss about a dozen brands each day” (Story, 2006).
Facebook epitomizes the idea of ‘viral marketing’ as they have managed to accumulate a sizeable 59 million people; mostly through ‘word of mouth’.
In order to be distinctive in this competitive world, a brand needs a clear positioning, expressed through its name, identity and all aspects of products, services, behavior (Clifton, 2004), and needs to be both rational as well as perceivable. Creating and retaining cosumer loyalty isn’t easy merely through adding fancy new applications and attributes to the website. We have claimed ‘Promot Me’ to be built on an entirely new idea and we expect it to have a degree of ‘first mover advantage’ however, as stated before there is always a threat of emmulators. ‘Promote Me’ must keep thinking of creative ideas to differentiate itself from other websites and try to develop a strategy to make sure that its users start owning it. Hence the startegy must revolve around two ideas; emotional branding and differentiation. A part of the problem is resolved with the very nature of the website as it deals in music and Art; hence emotions and its expression.
According to Gobé (2001) We must develop an emotional connection by proposing customer centric and personal experience which moves brand from functional product to an emotional product. It also be kept in mind that with ‘Promote Me’, we are dealing with a very novel idea with a very minimal financial budget and hence ‘viral marketing’ would play a the success of the project.
Concentrating on the core product and using external resources
Regardless of the choice of strategy by ‘Promote me’ the nature of the product remains the same. Furthermore Zahra and Bogner (2000) have pointed five factors that affected software start-ups’, which could also be applied as parameters for a website like ‘Promote Me’;
- Level of R&D expenditure,
- How radical new products were,
- The intensity of product upgrades,
- Use of external technology,
- Management of intellectual property.
Once ‘Promote Me’ kick-starts, it must keep spending on R&D, as the key success element and the lasting core-competency for ‘Promote Me’ would be its ability to keep differentiating itself with the rest of the competitors. That would certainly include the ability of its application developers to keep coming up with creative ideas to enhance the amount of time spent by the user over ‘Promote Me’.
We know that ‘Promote Me’ is a radical idea. That makes it slightly hard to position, as there isn’t currently any other websites that offers both social networking and art promotion, simultaneously. The intensity of product upgrade would be an important feature because as already mentioned; ‘Promote Me’ would have to keep differentiating itself from other competitors. Management of intellectual property would be another issue that ‘Promote Me’ would have to look in, to win the trust of its users. The users that logon to review a particular piece (of music) would only be able to listen to it via streaming. Another aspect of the issue is to ensure that the submissions from the users end are original. This is precisely where the inclusion of industry specialist would largely help.
Table 4 The ten rules of radical marketing (Source: Hill and Rifkin, 1999.)
Critical success factors analysis for ‘Promote Me’.
We have used the critical success factors by using Johnson et al (1999)’s balanced scorecards with taking into account competence-based approach and external related factors approach (Table 5 and 6).
Competence-based approach is knowledge-based and looks at CSF from various dimensions, including employee’s technical knowledge and skills and managerial control system. (Jensen & Harmsen, 2001). The external success factors approach considers security, successful partnership, easy and affordable access and customer acceptance of the software as critical (Eid. et al, 2002).
Critical success factors for Promote Me:
Balanced scorecards combine both qualitative and quantitative measures, acknowledge the expectations of different stakeholders and relate an assessment of performance to choice of strategy. (Johnson et al. 1999).
MARKET ANALYSIS:
As mentioned earlier, ‘Promote Me’ is an entirely new idea. However ‘social networking’ is not something new and there are a number of very successful social networking websites available over the internet. All these websites are potential competitors for ‘promote me’.
The number of registered users of these ‘social networking websites’ are staggering. Consider Facebook, which claims to have more than 131 million users worldwide. Around 250,000 new registrations are recorded with facebook per day, since 2007. Similarly, there active users are doubling every 6 months, with more than half of active users returning to the website, daily.
Facebook’s key main feature/ core competency is its ‘Photo sharing application’, which is the number one photo sharing application available over the internet, according to comScore (BBC.com date access 15th march 2010). More than 14 million photos are uploaded over the internet, via this application, daily. More than 24,000 applications have been developed for facebook and an average of around 140 new applications is developed for facebook, per day and more than 95% of Facebook users have used at least one application built over Facebook. UK is Facebook’s 3rd largest market. Facebook is popular for its applications, user-friendly interface and competitive feel (BBC.com, date access 15th march 2010).
Another major name among social networking websites is ‘MySpace’, which has recently been taken over by Facebook, in terms of registered users. MySpace has more than 110 million active users around the world and on the average around 300,000 new users signup for MySpace. There are more than 8 million artists and bands over ‘MySpace’.
MySpace generates revenues by placing ads. It has a huge set of data and the ability to process the data to efficiently use its affiliated ad network. In fact it is only second to Yahoo in its ability to exploit ‘behavioural targeting’ and selecting ads in accordance the user’s given data. Like Facebook, Myspace also has a very efficient photo-uploading application and around 8 million images get uploaded through it, every day. Similarly 60,000 videos are uploaded over MySpace TV, every day.
Porters 5 , Model
In order to have a wider perspective of the social networking industry, we can use the Porter’s five, model.
Barriers to Entry:
The initial target of any social networking website is to create ‘economies of scope’. However, there is a considerably large capital requirement to achieve that especially if the entrepreneur’s idea isn’t radical enough. Hence, the barrier to entry is relatively strong. ‘Promote Me’ comes with an entirely new idea and it should have a specific degree of first mover’s advantage.
The Power of Supplier:
In case of ‘Promote Me’, the industry specialists hired to judge the quality of uploads, can be viewed as suppliers. For a similar new company, the power of supplier would exist at a medium level. ‘Promote Me’ must have ties with a large pool of industry specialist so that the power of suppliers is reduced.
The Power of Buyers:
The users of the website are the buyers in this case. Their power is quite high, as they always have the choice to shift to a similar website.
Threats of Substitute Products:
As mentioned before, there is always a threat of imitators and once ‘Promote Me’ is launched many similar websites would be spawned, making the number of substitute products higher. ‘Promote Me’ must keep differentiating its products and keep producing new applications so that the users, who too are creative artists, stick to the website and develop a close affinity with it.
Rivalry:
There is indeed strong rivalry among the competitors and they do regularly imitate each other.
Hence, the level of competition in the industry is pretty tough.‘ It is up to ‘Promote Me’ to keep its customers loyal so that their base number grows through ‘viral marketing’.
Market Research
In order to ascertain the exact need for a social networking website like ‘Promote Me’, we developed a questionnaire. The sample size was 200 and it was put forth to our target segment (aged 15-26). 50% of the respondents were male, while the rest were female. The research was mostly qualitative in nature, while it was conducted over the internet. 50% of the participants were from the UK while the others were from other parts of the world. Most of the questions were dichotomous in nature.
• 188 people out of the 200 (94%) stated that they were already using another social networking website. The rate was 96% for the respondents living in UK.
• 100 out of those 188 (53%) respondents stated that they visited a social networking website at least once in the day. The rate was 58% for the respondents living the UK.
• 174 respondents the 200 (87%) thought that a website promoting amateur talent should be set-up. The rate was 90% for the respondents living in the UK.
• 180 out of 200 (90%) were of the view that the website should incorporate both social networking and talent promotion features. The rate was 87% for the respondents living in the UK.
• An overwhelming 183 out of the 200 (91%) respondents opined that industry specialists should be a permanent feature of the website. The rate was 95 for the respondents living in the UK.
• 128 out of 200 of these respondents were amateur artists. The rate was 70% for the respondents living in the UK.
• 107 out of those 128 amateur artists believed that they would like to post their work over the website.
• 80 out the 200 of the respondents believed that they would be willing to pay a minor subscription fee for the registration of the website, if they like it.
This marketing research, however limited in scope provided great insights. It ascertained the fact that there exists great demand for a social networking and talent promotion website like ‘Promote Me’. Most people liked the idea of the inclusion of industry specialists. That is exactly where ‘Promote Me’ could differentiate itself from giants like Facebook and MySpace.
‘Promote Me’ must try to develop a speciality and remained focus on it. We know that most people value the idea of ‘fair reviews’ from Industry specialists. This should be established as ‘Promote Me’ unique selling point and it also must be ensured that it remains to be its unique selling point. Fierce competition would come from all corners (especially from already established giants) and ‘Promote Me’ should be weary of it. The only way to handle such competition is to create customer loyalty.
Conclusion:
As our marketing report suggest, ‘Promote Me’, stands an outstanding chance of doing long-term business, as long as it concentrates on ‘innovation’ and creativity. We have to understand that we are dealing with amateur young artist from different backgrounds. The Onus remains on application developers to create the most advanced applications on one end, and on SEOs to keep working over, to increase the hits of the website. Certain innovations work better than others and we know pretty well that some of them could absolutely ‘fire-back’. In order to have a close grip over the pulse of the customers/users, ‘Promote Me’ should keep conducting research; especially in case of new applications.
Hence, ‘Promote Me’ potentially has great power, which should be unleashed if implemented correctly.
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