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DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN

 

CITY ROOMS, Flat share Company

Chosen customer segment 

City Rooms’ ideal customer segment would be anyone who needs a room to rent in London who doesn’t mind flat sharing or house sharing. With letting negotiators from all over the world, they speak over 7 languages, so there’s an agent for everyone. Younger people are usually more likely to be happy in a flat sharing environment so that would definitely be part of the ideal customer segment. City Rooms’ have double rooms and single rooms. So single people and partners are also part of the customer segment.

Defining reach for City Rooms

City Rooms aims to increase reach and acquire 25% more clients by December 2019.

Reach for City Rooms involves building awareness of their brand and service and increasing revenue through flat sharing. The use of online media helps build traffic through Facebook and the company website. It involves maximising use of promotional posts to increase reach on website and clients coming into the office to rent a room.

Opportunity

City Rooms define the audience potential by reviewing effectiveness of current social media using software like Google analytics and Facebook analytics. They look for opportunities to increase reach by analysing impressions on certain posts and using the results to decide what to post on the Facebook page. They check how many existing customers are actively liking, commenting and sharing posts, and work out how to increase impressions through discounts, offers and contests, etc.

Strategy

City Rooms’ strategy to get sales is simple. They post relevant content, such as videos of rooms available, and then share the posts to flat share groups on Facebook. This increases views on the videos and also attracts potential new customers. City Rooms tries hard to spread the phrase, “City Rooms is one of the most prominent accommodation providers in the most vibrant and fashionable areas of London.” 

Action

City Rooms optimise content marketing to support key digital communications by posting relevant content, and inciting potential customers to call the company. Agents converse with potential customers and will show them around rooms and explain the benefits of being with City Rooms. City Rooms have a specially trained reception staff who answers all phone calls and makes sure the calls are being forwarded to the right team.

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After the marketing campaign, City Rooms aims to increase conversion rate by 30% by December 2018.

City Rooms converts by driving engagement on the website, phone calls and social medias. Customers insert their details into a contact us box on the website, and City Rooms then books a time for them to go to the office and meet an agent. Customers agree on a room to rent and agree to terms and conditions and then sign the contract.

 

Opportunity

By posting relevant posts consistently on social media, City Rooms create the opportunity to increase conversion to sales. Potential customers see offers and posts about City Rooms on the various social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, and these boost sales for City Rooms. They also analyse the data on Facebook by checking which posts drives the most engagement and creating more posts in that way to increase engagement.

Strategy

City Rooms use email marketing to contact potential customers with offers and discounts. Along with updates to current tenants. Visitors fill in the contact field on the website with their name, number and email address if they are interested in renting a room. This is how City Rooms drives sales through email marketing. They could also use mobile text marketing by sending short texts like, “Rooms 20% off this weekend!” this is because many people don’t check their emails, and short texts are also more likely to get the recipients attention and would lead to more sales.

Action

Potential customers for City Rooms research online, before they come into the office for the offline purchase. The process is designed in such a way, it aligns to the ROPO behaviour (Research Online -Purchase offline). In order to streamline the process, City Rooms have all necessary paperwork ready, with rooms cleaned and available to be rented out as soon as the previous tenant leaves.

The digital marketing mix and the current offline mix are integrated due to the fact that visitors to City Rooms’ social media accounts and website will request to be contacted by filling in their details. City Rooms’ agents will then contact potential tenants via phone call, which is classed as offline, and the customer will then have a meeting with the agent in person, who will show them the room and sign the necessary papers. 

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Justification

City Rooms’ senior management could focus on financial metrics that directly affect revenues and profits such as revenue metrics which is when marketing brings an impact on company revenue.

Marketing program performance metrics; the increased and combined contribution of individual marketing programs.

Efficiency instead of effectiveness.

It is important for City Rooms to ensure they pay attention to the effectiveness metrics, and efficiency metrics. They may make a mistake, for example, 1000 impressions on a post are no good if they aren’t interested in the service. This means that it is also vital for them to make sure they focus on quantity and quality factors. There is no point uploading 10 posts a day that aren’t well designed and relevant, whereas by uploading fewer posts but of better quality, they are more likely to increase the conversion rate from online to offline (online posts to offline telephone calls, which then lead to potential customers becoming tenants). However it is also important to note that quantity is important. If City Rooms post one, well designed post a day, there is less likely a chance of it being seen by many people. Whereas 3-5 posts, scheduled to post at different times of the day, are highly likely to be seen by the potential customers.

The key metrics that City Rooms should utilise to measure the performance of the digital marketing plan are:

Average selling price - Prices can be changed throughout the year due to rise/fall in demand, changes to the markets etc. It is important to measure this so City Rooms can learn when the best time is to rent out rooms and what price is best for that time period.

Retention rates - This is important because a company needs to know what posts on social media are working. It also helps to learn what pages are doing well on the website and what needs to be changed.

Blog subscribers - Blogs are a great way of measuring how many active followers a company has. If City Rooms post relevant posts regularly, the blog subscribers will increase and it will show them how many people are reading posts and are interested in the company.

Facebook monthly users – Facebook is City Rooms’ largest social network with the largest following, and it would be advisable for them to check Facebook analytics, as roughly 30% of total sales come from the company Facebook page.

Average discount – If City Rooms analyse and keep an eye on the metrics for average discount on prices, it would help them gain an insight on the pricing strategies that work best in certain times of the year. If they pay a landlord £100 a week for a room, and their usual price to rent a room to tenants is £250, they may not get that sale in certain times of the year, like after Christmas, because people don’t usually have a lot of money afterwards, whereas if they look at the metrics and have a discounted price of £200, they are more likely to rent out more rooms, thus increasing profits.

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Benefit of monitoring and measurement of digital marketing activities

Monitoring and measuring digital marketing activities can benefit City Rooms in many ways:

Planning for future success by measuring digital marketing activities and analysing conversion rates and return on investment, City Rooms can find out what activities are working and are increasing sales, It’s not just about finding what works fine, it’s about finding the BEST way, and by utilising this information City Rooms can improve their profits for the future.

Maintaining financial integrity and honest and trust. City Rooms’ manager’s care mostly about revenue and profits and sales, by measuring these financial metrics they can improve the credibility of the company. Financial integrity is about honouring the promises someone makes to themselves or other people concerning financial matters, it is important to pay off loans, debts and keep a good credibility, especially one like City Rooms.

Measure strategically how much it costs to get a customer. Customer acquisition cost is one of the most important metrics to measure due to the fact that it tells the company how much they spend for a customer and it can help them to forecast how much they should be spending to meet their targets. For example if they work out that it costs £5 on average to get one customer, they know that if they spend £100 they will get 20 customers.

City Rooms can benefit by monitoring and creating an environment to succeed and win. By implementing marketing technology they can use staff and marketing assets more efficiently. If staff are motivated and well trained, they are likely to work harder to get sales. They can also train and hire experienced staff that are knowledgeable about technology and like to experiment with new marketing techniques that are unique and no one else uses.

City Rooms managers can also manage and build a culture of continuous improvement. This can be done by keeping a close eye on analytics and building momentum by acting on insights and developing a process that brings together marketing-and-measurement to the business objectives like “increasing conversion rate by 30%”. With so many different platforms this is an easy job as long as they analyse figures correctly. For example City Rooms’ can set up Facebook ads to automatically post a new ad every week, based on specific data like ‘age of the customer’, ‘location’ and ‘interests’.