9. 9 Month
Digital Strategy Timeline
Month 1: Confirm strategy,
implement changes to website,
work on social media accounts
Months 2 & 3: Create
advertisements
Months 4 & 5:
Internet marketing
Months 5, 6, 7 & 8:
Develop a new mobile
application
10. - Change in # of Sales
- # of followers on Social
Media Accounts
- # of clicks to the
Mercedes-Benz Website
Editor's Notes
Today I will be presenting my digital strategy for the Mercedes-Benz brand.
The new digital strategy for the Mercedes-Benz brand will be tailored towards middle to upper class individuals, who are 30 years and older. This is the target audience I chose to focus on because Mercedes-Benz is a luxury car brand, with customers who tend to be middle to upper class older individuals with well-established careers. Because of our chosen target audience, the content we post and use for this digital strategy will have a sophisticated tone and will have a high level of class.
I was able to find that from January to November of 2011, Mercedes-Benz’s USA division was allocated a media budget of 210 million dollars. I believe that is would be fair for Mercedes-Benz to give 20 percent of the advertising budget to the digital strategy division of the company.
Mercedes-Benz will have an account on each of these nine social media accounts. In the current strategy some these platforms are not very active and do not post often, we will be changing this. These accounts will provide a continuous stream of posts and interaction with consumers. On the Facebook, Google+, and Twitter accounts the posts will be composed of pictures, facts, and videos. The remaining accounts will compose Mercedes-Benz related posts based on the social media website.
Moving onto social media advertising, I will be focusing on four different social media platforms, these include: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. I have chosen to advertise the Mercedes-Benz brand on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter because each of these platforms include detailed profiles that each user makes when they create their account. This is useful because I will be able to find and target the specific people that Mercedes-Benz’s target audience is made up of. I chose YouTube because it is a unique and we are able to use video advertisements on this particular platform.
The current Mercedes-Benz website is an effective, well created website. One thing I will add is a greater prevalence of key words (vehicles, innovation, design, classic, sports, events, and lifestyles), which will create a better search engine optimization for Mercedes-Benz. Next, inbound marketing will be focused on. Although Mercedes-Benz does already utilize inbound marketing, I will create more customer interaction, which will cause greater visibility for the brand. In relation to targeted websites, we will be advertising on car enthusiast and business websites. I chose these two categories because I believe these are common websites that our target audience visits.
Continuing with Internet marketing, the next area we will focus on is an official blog. Currently there is not an official Mercedes-Benz blog. In this digital strategy I will be creating one, focusing on the Mercedes-Benz brand and information about their new cars. Continuing, I will be changing the current structure of email marketing. Currently Mercedes-Benz sends a bimonthly email; I will be changing this to a weekly email (sent to subscribers). This email newsletter will be tailored to two different groups: potential customers and current customers. The newsletters will contain information pertaining to: brand news, car updates, incentives, and current offers.
Mercedes-Benz currently has seven mobile applications. Although there are seven various applications not one of them does a great job at harnessing the entire Mercedes-Benz. With this in mind I am creating an application that will be suitable for any device and will contain all of the things that the seven other applications did. It will be a comprehensible application that has a high level of usability and is optimized for every device.
Month one will consist of confirming this new digital strategy and making sure it is clear, implementing changes to the current Mercedes-Benz website, and creating new social media accounts and reinventing existing ones. The second and third months will consist of creating advertisements to be used online and on the social media websites. Moving on, the fourth and fifth months will be delegated to internet marketing which consists of inbound marketing, targeted websites, a blog, and email marketing. Following, the final four months will be focused on developing a mobile application.
To measure the effectiveness of the new digital strategy I will be looking at the change in the number of sales Mercedes-Benz has, the change in the number of followers that we have on the social media accounts, and the change in the number of clicks to the Mercedes-Benz website. If these numbers have increased, then the digital strategy will be considered a success.