Case studies: BMW South Africa and Yachting Partners International

BMW in South Africa

BMW seemed to benefit from tying in the print ads and the online ads. Both were part of the same campaign, something that allowed the company to create a common theme. When the target market was exposed to BMW ads, there would more likely be recall of the campaign. It takes a certain number of exposures for an advertisement to resonate with the audience, and so the use of online/offline for the same campaign increased the number of exposures to the brand, the campaign and the essential message of the campaign. The use of multichannel advertising is common for campaigns, and in this case was deemed essential for reaching the target market for a BMW in South Africa.

The target market for the campaign is young -- in their 20s and maybe 30s. The market is clearly white -- there are no black models in the ad presented, though maybe there are in other campaigns. The campaign appears to be targeted at an urban audience as well, which generally means Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban. The target market likely has a good education and has travelled, but also likely comes from a wealthy background -- most people that age cannot afford a BMW, unless their parents have given them a good head start financially. Thus, the target market is a relatively small number of people in their 20s and 30s, rich, urban, educated and white.

3. The success of the campaign can be measured in a couple of ways. First, there are basic measures such as page impressions, clickthroughs and those sorts of measures. This is not the sort of product that will be tied into a contest or other such promotion, so that it not going to help measure the effectiveness of the campaign. However, the online ads can, when clicked through, have a prompt where someone can provide a number to receive a text for more information. In addition, because the campaign is integrated, the company can measure its effectiveness in broad terms, such as vehicle sales, test drives, and through an examination of the demographics of buyers -- if the target market has increased in percentage of total buyers, then it is reasonable to conclude that the campaign has enjoyed some success.

Yachting Partners International

1. Technical considerations need to be addressed first, because they are the basis for SEO. Things like metadata are not on the part of the page that the user sees, but in a hidden part of the page. The quality of links is important, and it is necessary to ensure that the links on the page are not dead as well. Little errors like that on the technical side are going to have an impact on quality of the SEO. The technical side of things is what will determine whether or not the SEO is successful, so it is necessary that the company focus on technical issues first.

2. Headers and title tags are among the first things that a bot sees when it visits the page. SEO depends on bots looking at the page, and the keywords that are found in the earliest bits of text, of which the headers and title tags are included. These words, being at the top of the HTML code, are among the first things that the bot sees, and therefore contribute to the way that the site is indexed.

3.Site maps help the bots to deliver more links, and better quality ones. For example, the YPI link in the case does not appear to have a site map helping it out. For other companies, you might see something like sub-pages gleaned from the site map -- Investor Relations, Contact Us, and other such sub-pages. The site map makes it easier for the bot to index the site, so that when the site shows up on the search results, there are a number of sub-pages also visible, giving the end user a direct link to what they want without needless clickthroughs.

Southern Sun

1. A PPC campaign can provide good information to a company, because the advertising provider gathers information that is then transmitted to the ad buyer. This will include demographic information about the users who have clicked on the ads. This can be matched with the content of those ads. In the case, it was learned through the PPC campaign that South African consumers had a high recognition of the Southern Sun brand, but visitors from overseas did not. They instead were apt to click on ads that targeted that audience, such as for "Cape Town hotels." The implications for content are that where there are significant differences in buyer behaviour, the content of the site might be split. Even though the entire site is in English, for example, the content might need to be entirely different for visitors coming from outside of Africa, as they have different needs, and might not place much value on the Southern Sun brand.

2. A PPC campaign gives instant traffic, because the campaign involves placing the ads. Thus, the company can ensure that its ads are in front of the right eyeballs immediately. SEO does not deliver this, because there is a lag while the search engine learns about a site, and it can take up to three months for a site to recover lost status. This is what had happened to Southern Sun, as when it launched its new site it essentially lost the SEO "credit" it had built up and needed to restore that before SEO would be valuable to the company again.

3. Landing pages in a PPC campaign are critical. When the customer clicks through an ad, the company pays for that clickthrough. Thus, it wants to capture business, and the landing page is essential for that. The landing page needs to do two things -- it needs to impress the visitor so that he/she is enticed to buy, and they need to have the right links to make purchasing easy for the visitor. The point of the landing page is to convert someone who was curious enough to click on the ad to become a customer.

PNB & Idea Bounty

1. Banks can use social media the same way other companies do. Social media provides a means for banks to interact with customers, potential customers and the community at large in real time. This provides opportunities for promotion, public relations, and customer service. These can be across different platforms as well, as this is one of the main advantages of social media. Measuring success can include usage measures such as Facebook likes or retweets, but social media often allows a company to gather information about those with whom it is linked, so it can also examine the reach that it has, with social media. Campaigns can allow for the gathering of specific information.

2. Banks may be challenged with social media as a channel because there is significant risk associated with the pace of social media. There is no opportunity to edit or censor so there is the risk of controversial messages/posts, or there is the risk that the company will issue conflicting information. The company's reputation is still going to be tied to the content that is posted to its social media, so it is important that the company keeps those risks in mind, especially a large company like a bank that needs to maintain a professional image.

3. Some of the benefits of crowdsourcing for a company like FNB are to generate new ideas that it otherwise would not have generated. The thinking with Idea Bounty is that it would be able to generate new ideas at a relatively low cost relative to the value of the ideas. It is even possible that the person with the good ideas, especially if they have more than one, could be a valuable member of the company. But mainly the benefit is to broaden creativity and innovation, and do so at a low cost without adding permanent staff and without disrupting the company's operations and culture to do it.