Digital Marketing and HMV

This report aims to discuss the various facets of the utility of digital marketing and how it is effective for the survival of a renowned music company HMV. The marketing strategies of the company needs a big change due to reduced revenue as it has been losing the competitive advantages than its rivals (Hmv.com, 2018). Marketing is an act of connecting with the customers where the companies convince the customers for buying their products or subscribe to their offered services. Marketing whether digital or traditional, is essential key activity that all the business around the world must partake in because no trade can survive without an effective publicity or marketing (Arvidsson et al. 2014). Digital marketing however is carrying out actions by using any types of electronic media for promotion of goods and services. This is basically an internet based activity that the companies or brands use to sell the goods to their customers.

The world is living in a digital age where any company if thinks not to participate will abolish in no time. Millions of people spend most of their time searching the social networking as well as other digital platforms. This report discusses the important of digital marketing investment in the company, use search engine tactics, utilise various digital media platforms, methods to target key audiences, steps for designing various marketing campaign and finally describing the measuring toll for strategy success.

HMV needs to incorporate the digital marketing strategies to introduce new changes in their company and services. There are many reasons that can facilitate the company to gain competitive advantage in the market and gain popularity which HMV use to enjoy previously.

1. HMV needs to make appropriate use of befitting digital marketing strategies in their business module because the company needs an active participation in the lucrative and persuasive online market place.
2. Digital marketing is not only a fast growing power in the current setting of marketing but will definitely surpass all the traditional methods of marketing which the company has been following.
3. The company needs to grab the most important advantage of the digital marketing strategy which provides the company capability to engage with multitude of customers without even utilising their customer services.
4. The conversation associated with the digital marketing ranks higher than other any other modes of marketing.
5. Marketing and the cost for advertising have proved to be the toughest financial burden for the businesses but big industries like HMV must not have much trouble in their marketing and advertising (Atkinson 2016). However, marketing through digital platforms can offer more affordable and penetrating alternative than the traditional methods used by the company. Theses create much impact though cost way less.
6. HMV needs to have a substantial return on their investments. For doing this, it can take assistance of email marketing or advertising campaigns on social media platforms instead of traditional methods (Jain, Ahuja and Medury 2015).
7. The needs to cater to the mobile consumers as the usage of smart phones is fast expanding. The company can utilise the mobile marketing method and create brand reputation among the new generation mobile users.
8. The consumers now a days are have transformed into the researchers. They buy any product or apply for many services, only after conducting a detailed research work. HMV has a brilliant reputation, which will allow it to earn people’s trust.
9. The company needs proper structure of CTA service through digital marketing, the company will be able to utilize of successful techniques to allure the individuals for making a positive move. CTA will also help the customers to sign up and download anything from the website, subscribe as well as purchase (Järvinen and Karjaluoto 2015).

The companies operating in the current world needs to peruse the new technologies to help their businesses and find proper customers. The competitive companies like HMV which has a brilliant brand awareness in the international market need to take advantages of every tactics of search engines. Most efficient techniques are being changed as the search engines change or adjust algorithms (Kang, Tang and Fiore 2014). these search engines use complex programs that ensure that the visitors get worthwhile and reliable content. This is the reason why most of the renowned digital marketers utilise search Engine Marketing strategies for improving their website visibility amongst their competitors in one hand and gain more customers for their business. 

• For making an effective and successful SEO strategy, HMV must make a list of keywords because it is the heart of the SEO. Compilation of a list of near about 10 keywords associated with the service that the company provides will work.
• The company needs to create keyword focused pages because trying to get one page to rank for a handful of keywords will be impossible. Moreover, the number of web pages created should be coinciding with variety of offerings and locations of the business.
• Setting up blogs can be an incredible way of ranking the key words that will engage the users also. These blogs help to write for the targeted audiences which ultimately reveal the trends and the preferences of the customers.
• All these previously mentioned steps focus on the  on-page SEO tacticsbut  off page SEO primarily focus of the link building plan which ultimately helps in different ways to attract inbound links to the company’s  website.
• Constant updating and ever-involvement with the SEO practices is absolutely necessary to stay on top of the SEO news (Xiang et al. 2015).
• Finally, the company must measure and track the SEO success. tracking indexed pages, leads, ROI, inbound links, keywords, and your actual ranking on SERPs help to recognize success and find areas of opportunity.

Steps to design effective online display:

1. Proper research before running the campaigns is vital for the digital marketers. There is a need of running campaigns for improving the quality of the advertising copy. The company needs to research the choice and requirements of the target audience so that their online display ads can efficiently connect with their audience (Yasmin, Tasneem and Fatema 2015).
2. At the time of designing, the company needs to use rich media so that they can attract the target audience because in compared to the static banners, the media, flash, pre-role banners as well as video banners attract more people.
3. The digital marketers aim to design effective online display ads, must invest in most effective and creative approaches (Kannan 2017). They can use basic A/B testing for finding out which innovative one is performing best, and then invest in the most effective ad.
4. The company needs to write catchy call to action or CTA that will help HMV to stay ahead of their competitors.
5. Testing of the ad copies for running the campaign is important step of effective online display campaign (Killian and McManus 2015).

Search Engine Marketing

Steps to design effective PPC: goal setting and choosing effective platform is essential for designing efficient PPC also. Beside these, the company must allow these following steps.

• After choosing right platform and setting goal, HMV must target audience for exact geographic location to optimise the campaign for particular device type, wireless systems and operating systems (Kladou and Mavragani 2015).  Geo targeting allows the company’s ads to appear in the location that the customers select which ultimately helps in focusing ad campaigns on the locations full of prospective customers that helps in increasing ROI. Device targeting helps in reaching customers on any devices and target any online customers.
• The company needs to create an effective list of core keywords that will be constantly refined and expanded (Young 2014).
• Writing an effective ad text will help HMV’s ads to achieve success because an effective ad text consists core keywords, attractive discounts, promotion as well as a call to action.
• The company must install conversion tracking code to define the most profitable keywords that leads to click and conversion.
• Bench marking is important because keeping eye on the competitors will help HMV to strategies more effectively.
• The company must add ad extensions which provides extra benefits for PPC advertising (Mackey, Cuomo and Liang 2015). On the other hand, ad scheduling helps to optimise ad strategy.  

1. Before beginning the filming, the marketers need to consider the goals to accomplish that mainly raise brand awareness.
2. Proper selection of medium and platform is essential because television ads are not the sole option of the companies. Hence the marketers use tools for tracking proper data and test multiple social networking platforms then maximise its content to make it effective for video campaigns (Leeflang et al. 2014).  
3. Reviewing all the technical aspects in the company’s marketing campaigns is very necessary. Incorporation of video requires a degree of technical care. Aspects such as frame rate, resolution and load timing affects the campaign success largely.

Targeting the market audience is mandatory of the companies applying for the digital marketing strategies. For doing so, the company can display advertises in their websites. The people who will browse internet even casually, will be served display advertises regularly. HMV can convey such marketing message in variety of forms which may include image, banner ads, texts, video overlays, and flash displays (Järvinen and Karjaluoto 2015). Online marketers constantly try to deliver their right messages at the right time so that they can reach most number of web surfers. Displaying advertises in the websites, is all about reach explicit demographic segments where the marketers gain knowledge about the audience preference so that they can identify that specific segment and target to reach them. 

Google’s Audience Solutions offers an incredible opportunity for identifying as well as targeting the audience as it creates scopes for the companies to complete control over broad targeting, frequency of marketing messages communicated and methods of spending money in the process. To begin the process of targeting audience the company’s advertisers can start by properly understanding as well as analysing the current set of site visitors that they can do by leveraging remarketing (Doric, Primorac and Kozina 2016). It is a method of showing ads to the people who visited HMV’s site already and going to other sites which are included in Google Display Network. This method allows advertisers to collect data about the popular websites included in Google Display Network.

With the growing importance of the content for commercial success online, the content requirements a strategy for ensuring that it supports marketing. There are several steps how the company will be beneficial by using content marketing strategies. First, content marketing will help the company to build trust (Medina, Coelho and Bellido-Pérez 2017). HMV can create and publish quality content, relevant in the field of their business which will ultimately help them to build greater cohesion with the public. More cohesive and quality content is created for feeding public, more the company will have expertise and popularity.

Secondly, the company has a power of an established brand which they may utilize in influencing their business decisions of buying public. Content marketing highlights unique identity of the brand. Thus the strategy can use viral contents such as videos, blog posts, pop trends and audio. The company will have a unique voice for their business that will resonate with their target audience which the company aims to serve.

Targeting Key Audiences

Thirdly, for HMV it is essential to use the digital medium through search engines which may change their business landscape. As the buyers no a day have become researchers, they do not purchase or avail any service without studying about the product or service before making purchase (Levy and Gvili 2015). These people basically conduct researches in search engine. Therefore, the content written about the service must weigh heavily so that the people get convinced.

Fourthly, the content marketing identifies potential buyers and attracts them as this type of marketing effectively levels the playing field the business of the company.  With a well-planned content marketing campaign, the company can change the situation easily.

Finally, application and extension of the content marketing strategy the business of HMV will be benefitted and produce great content to reach the customers.

As this world keeps on changing, but there are same patterns or fundamental laws work in the background. Therefore, the digital marketers follow some laws and guideline while they take advantages of search engine marketing.

1. The company must remember that content is key to SEO, SMO and PPC
2. Keywords cannot be translated
3. Search trained native speakers need to nurture SEO, PPC, SMO
4. HMV must follow centralisation with the local tentacles for the best practice
5. Search engine marketing guides and needs the companies to start virtually next to their customers through the system of geo-targeting.
6. The company needs to track market differences
7. Logistics as well as delivery times for the company are some important factors too
8. The company must take care of the methods of payment by constantly checking their payment systems. These are absolutely critical.
9. The brand must build trust through cultural relevance as we as dealing with the environmental factors
10. Input methods are to be taken care of that drive behaviour including all types of digital devices 

Both the content and social media marketing can help in the growth of the company’s initiative to digitalised its marketing. Both these aforesaid media have conductive connection with each other. Hence the marketers need to incorporate both of them in their marketing strategies.

1. As HMV has a great reputation in the market and has social media followers, it must develop some policies which will take care of the sections like comment, questions along with feedbacks in the pages.
2. HMV ca promote the name of the brand and their business in the social media pages and find out what the people sharing knowledge about their business (Medina, Coelho and Bellido-Pérez 2017). The marketing should be so apt that the customers must think of the company whenever they need help or have any query.
3. The company through social media must create rapport with their customers. Because it is the main reason of use g the social media platforms. Through these engagements, the company will be interacting with the potential customers and knowing their preferences.
4. Every company that use the social media platforms for their marketing, must make the audience feel special with the content so that they remember to choose the same company every time. Building stronger bond with the existing customers will be able to welcome new customers.
5. In the social media platform, the company can tell about its email list where the company will be asking the followers to sign up for the email newsletters (Charlesworth 2014). A call to action and promoting about offers attract more customers within limited time.
6. Social media is the best distribution channel of the content that the company wants to share among its customers. HMV will be able to attract new customers by sharing its completing and unique contents that include email sign ups on the social media.
7. One of the most efficient ways for using email marketing campaign is by offering exclusive values to the subscribers like email-only content, free giveaways and discounts (Medina, Coelho and Bellido-Pérez 2017). It is the method of teasing the social media followers that will be beneficial for the company.
8. These types of marketing, helps the marketers to easily analyse the performance of the company. It is highly efficient in gathering leads as well as converting them to their customers.
9. The company can promote its landing page through straightforward promotions, incentives and special offers. These incentives can be valuable for attracting the customers’ engagement and having two sturdy online marketing mediums, therefore incentives become more influential (Davcheva and Benlian 2018). This offering can be seen by many people on the social media networks and build a hoard of potential customers.

However, if judged between the efficiency of the email and social media marketing, Emil marketing is more effective that social media platforms. From the perspective of overall performance, it has been identified that most of the customers believe that Email marketing is better at driving traffic and direct conversions. Email marketing has more reach than that of many social media platforms (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2016). It has higher click rates as well as higher conversion rates than any other marketing channels. It provides the scope for direct conversation with the customers which ultimately results in conveying messages more clearly. It has better ROI and easy to build. Most importantly the email marketing is a winner over social media because the viewer is much more in the social platforms but email marketing has more buyers.

The company while utilising the digital marketing techniques will come across many hurdles and face problems in maintaining efficiently in website performances. However, it is the prime priority for HMV as there is much online rivalry (Doric, Primorac and Kozina 2016). It denotes the speed of downloading web pages and displayed in the web browser of the clients. Web performance optimisation aims to increase the web performance. For improving website performance, the company needs to follow few steps. Such as

1. Website analysis. Analysis of the meta sets or the keywords, visible text and code for determining how well the company is positioned for the search engines.
2. Competitiveanalysis:  Examination of the content keywords as well as current engine rankings of the competitive websites for determining effective engine locating strategy. The company can pick top five outcomes in Google list results to start this process. 
3. keyword nomination: by developing prioritized lists of aimed search terms associated to the company’s customer base as well as market segment will help HMV.
4. Keyword analysis:after nomination, the company needs to identify targeted lists of the keywords (Qian and Law 2016). After which competitive lists and other industry sources will be reviewed. Using the preliminary list for determining the indicative numbers of the recent search engine queries will help in identifying the number of websites, competing for each phrase.
5. Creating pagetitles, meta tags and search phrases: the company can create titles and meta tags to establish the page thee and its direction. Selected keywords must be integrated into the website source codes along with the existing contents on the designed pages.
6. New sitemaps: developing new websites makes indexing easier for the search engines. Therefore, the company needs to create both HTML and XML versions for these will help in submitting Google as well as Bing webmaster tools (Quinton and Simkin 2017).
7. Submitting websites to the directories: it is one of the best and fastest way to get the links back to the company’s site naturally. Links get the site indexed by the search engines. However, to avail this, the company must submit their URL to the directories such as Yahoo, Business.com and DMOZ.
8. Testing and measuring: after these mentioned methods are completed, the company must analyse their search engine rankings as well as web traffic. This will help in determining the efficiency of their implemented programs, including assessment of each keyword performance (Royle and Laing 2014). The company must test the results of changes as well as keep changes followed.
9. Maintenance:  Ongoing addition along with modification of the selected keywords as well as website content are essential to incessantly improve the company’s search engine rankings so that the growth does not stagnant or decline from negligence. The marketers must review their link strategy then ensure that their inbound as well as outbound links remain relevant to their business.

Content Marketing Strategies

In traditional marketing the measuring of success was somewhat simple as this could be measured through the increase of revenue and sales but in digital world, the marketers can have numerous metrics to measure their success. Growth in sale and revenue is however major for all the firms but in this case brand engagement, visibility and increasing social following and organic searching results are also very important for the firms (Doric, Primorac and Kozina 2016). However, these metrics do not only show returns on investment in a simple way but the digital marketers have to take help from the problems convincing decision makers for increasing content marketing as well as search marketing. For measuring suggests of digital marketing the marketers use numerous tools. Some of the measuring tools are-

1. HubSpot:  this tool provides an all-in-one approach to the inbound marketing as well as automation which uses logical process for taking the marketing initiative a systematic course. Starting from running campaigns, monitoring and tracking entire process. The marketer through dashboards can see their websites, calls to action, social media channels ad websites are being operated, the number of visitors, have visited their pages and compare them with the competitors. Hubspot has simple SEO tools for helping the marketers to check their rankings, traffic from the particular keywords. It also provides feedbacks along with support to make most of the campaigns.
2. Google analytics: this is one of the most used as well as simplest tools for the web analytics. The marketers can see the basic and at a glance information on main analytics dashboard and delve more deeply. It provides all in one package like Hubspot but focuses on different areas (Ryan 2016). This tool is used to report on pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns because it integrates straight with  the AdWords, and the marketers can use ecommercereporting that monitors sales activity as well as performance. Marketing has made easy as this tool monitor and report of the bounce rates, page views, conversions, visitor acquisition as well as segmentation.
3. Hootsuit: it is mainly used to manage multiple social media channels from most popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn to the niche applications like Tumblr, MailChimp and Reddit. The marketers have opportunity to constantly switch between the applications without any password. This particular tool, offers real time analysis of the social media metrics, include their followers, engagements mentions and other facilities like clicking and linking the contents (Blázquez 2014).  It is easy for the marketers to check the performance of the social media teams in replying the messages. This tool makes it easy to demonstrate ROI of the social platforms through its reporting functions. It discusses various market segments by discussingbrands and judge mentions either positive, negative or neutral among the various groups. This helps in creating brand awareness by increasing engagement that increasing downloads or sales. 
4. Mixpanel: it helps in understanding mobile devices as the most of the web users are preferring web using in their mobiles and tablets. This is the reason why the digital marketers have caught up with the smartphones (Thomas and Housden 2017). Starting from usage, layouts, engagement and loading times work quite differently in the mobiles. Hence most of the analytical tools do not have capabilities to measure mobile matrices properly especially when the mobile users connect with the company through applications rather visiting their websites. Mixpanel on the other hand, allows the marketers to measure the ways that people use their app as well as sites. It monitors whether people are coming back using those app or websites after their first visit (Batra and Keller 2016). HMV can use this tool as most of their consumers are mobile users. Hence using Mixpanel the company will be offered with the simplest method of conducting A/B testing in their apps along with the websites. Thus, it will help in directing to measure the efficiency of the new plans.
5. Salesforce: as marketing and sales cannot exist in separate sections. Therefore, to measure success tritely, both the departments must be working together, sharing same information and speaking same language (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014). This is one of the most used customer relationship management (CRM) tools which pull together all the customers information into one place. It does so by allowing both the sales and management teams to plan together as well as optimise the customer journeys along with and see the ROI of the marketing activities. 

As it is essential for HMV to utilise the digital marketing to enhance its online offering the company needs to take some vital steps by altering some of their strategies and include new and updated methods to revitalise its popularity as well as business. In the process of reviving the company’s chief business that is selling films and music, the marketing directors have to bring its websites up in order to make it more competitive that chief rivals Amazon and Apple’s iTunes.

First, they must eliminate the barriers of among the loyalty scheme of HMV and its customers. They have to make it as simple as possible so that the customers can set up their online accounts and registration for cards (Doric, Primorac and Kozina 2016). This will help the company to collect information about the client’s preferences and them market accordingly.

Secondly, the company must amalgamate the physical media formats with the new digital files. This is how HMV will be able to reach both kind of customers but in this process there are mush hurdle (Blázquez 2014). The company has to make their suppliers convince that though it will increase cost per sale but provide scope for providing a unique sell point.

Thirdly, simplification of the website is essential where the company has designed the categories by the file formats and give clue such as music, DVD, films and downloads but the customers will prefer the design based on the content of the files.

Forth, the company needs to conduct a severe digital marketing but must follow the customer orientation. It needs to be led by the choice and demand of the customers and diverse platforms will give the company attempt to choose the target market as well as go beyond only the youth-oriented target market. Through market segmentation, will help HMV to build genuine customer orientation who will not just listen but feel their content. Developing as well as maintaining intuitive connections with their consumers will be fruitful for HMV, if it wants to survive in the competition.

Comparing Email and Social Media Marketing

Conclusion:

Therefore, it can be concluded that traditional method of marketing has proved to be ineffective in this fast growing technological world. Hence the company needs to strategies a strong digital marketing strategies to regain the popularity of HMV. All the successful businesses are becoming increasingly mindful about these facts. Hence they are trying their best to leverage this popularity of theses social networking platforms and promoting their services and goods. The concept of digital marketing is basically connecting with the customers at any place and anytime. Therefore, most of the companies have found these digital medium to have huge prospect because their customers gather there online and can pursue their movement directly. Therefore, this report has discussed the methods of designing marketing tactics and website optimization techniques which will help the company greatly. 

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