Online Marketing - How Brands Differentiate itself in the competition.

1. Online Marketing
Success Stories
Afsheen Khan
6/3/2013
What makes you special? Differentiating yourself from the competition.

2. Thanks and Regards,
Email Marketing recently has been transformed into a powerhouse for building businesses. A recent study
by an independent marketing industry research firm indicated that email marketing is among the top two
most effective marketing strategies for B2C and B2B companies. This should come as no surprise as
email marketing is cost-effective, measurable, flexible across both computer and mobile platforms, and
customizable. Here are a couple of real examples of how firms have had success utilizing email
marketing.
Online Travel Leader Grows Regional Presence with Email Marketing
Expedia, Inc. is the world’s leading online travel company, empowering business and leisure travelers
with the tools and information they need to easily research, plan, book and experience travel. However, it
has been witnessing a slothful expansion into the Asia-Pacific region. To remedy and jumpstart the slow
moving expansion, they’ve created a targeted email marketing campaign to help penetrate into the
market.
Purpose: Create a targeted email campaign to maximize revenue and growth in the Asia Pacific region.
The agenda was to engage in a dialogue with consumers through targeted email opportunities specifically
in Asia Pacific Regions.
The Pitfalls:
 Target recipients in Asia Pacific with highly relevant content
 Quantifying email marketing ROI
 Improving email deliverability
 Getting people to opt-in to email lists
Solution:
Expedia and e-Dialog originally teamed up in 2007 to automate Expedia's e-mail marketing across all of
its points of sale, focusing specifically on targeted cross-sell and up-selling. Over the life of the
partnership, e-Dialog has worked with Expedia on targeting tactics and trigger-based campaigns.
Email Marketing
Brand: Expedia
Year: 2009
Industry: Travel
Website: http://www.expedia.com/

3. Triggers automatically added dynamic content to the e-mails for other Expedia services, such as hotel
bookings and car rentals, based on a customer's personalized profile and site behavior. In addition,
mailings have been tailored based on a customer's
actions in these newsletters.
1. Expedia distributed weekly customized email
newsletters targeting unique geographies with region-
specific offers.
You don't have to be a big corporation to launch a
successful targeted email marketing campaign. Follow
their lead by emailing your own customized messages.
For example, on Mother's Day, send an email with a
coupon for a complementary gift to your customers' who are mothers.
2. Expedia monitors customer click-through patterns. This helps them understand which product links are
clicked on but do not lead to a purchase. Then, the company creates highly targeted email messages
surrounding those products to better promote them and turn interest into sales.
Result: Reach up to 12 million travelers with our weekly merchandising promotional emails; target a
highly engaged email audience with our high impact dedicated emails and through any of our other email
sponsorships. The effort put into this type of narrow targeting is great, but it’s also one part of email
marketing that brings the best ROI. Every business has a variety of market segments that it may appeal
to and some that don’t return a response. But if you put in the effort to determine what your segments
are and how well they respond, your click-through rates and conversions will skyrocket.
Both Expedia and e-Dialog are able to track the effectiveness of these newsletter and marketing
campaigns through delivery, open and click rate reports. This in-depth monitoring enables Expedia to
look at what customers have clicked on but have not completed a purchase on, and means it can
continue to deliver more personalised content and targeted offers to customers in future newsletters.
*Source
http://press.expediainc.com/index.php?s=43&item=245
http://www.gsicommerce.com/news_events/news_releases/expedia_expands_global_e_mail_marketin
g_with_e_dialog/
"Asia-Pacific represents the greatest growth
opportunity for the travel industry as a whole in terms
of inbound and outbound travelers, and Expedia's
ability to reach 60 million unique users online each
month worldwide makes us an ideal marketing and
distribution partner," said Paul Brown, president of
Expedia North America and Expedia Partner Services
Group. "Growth in the number of supply partnerships
we have in the Asia-Pacific region is a testament to
the unique way Expedia works with regional travel
suppliers to address their specific needs."

4. Going Social… In recent years there has been a tremendous increase in the growth and popularity of
social media networks. This virtual explosion in social media has naturally attracted the attention of
marketers and there has been a continuous effort to leverage the reach and access of social networks
for brand promotion in terms of actual sales and customer service.
Starbucks’ Social Media Strategy Secret: It’s Not Just a Strategy But A Philosophy!
Starbucks is possibly one of the World’s best social media marketers, being the first consumer brand to
surpass 20+ million followers on Facebookand now has surpassed the 30 million “likes” mark. It
has also become one of the most tweeted brands on twitter with over 3 million followers.
Campaign Strategy:
Social Media Blog
Ideas in Action is a blog written by Starbucks employees and talks about what Starbucks is doing with the
ideas posted by users on the My Starbucks Idea site. The blog keeps customers in the loop with their
ideas, and in doing so, increases their sense of loyalty to the brand. The blog is also useful in sustaining
and promoting corporate culture internally.
Microblogging
Starbucks participation on Twitter is concentrated on answering questions and re-tweeting what people
say about the brand.
Video Content
Over 4,800 people subscribe to Starbucks YouTube Channel, where they can upload commercials as well
as informational videos explaining the origins of different coffee blends plus some of their charity work.
Starbucks has also made excellent use of YouTube. It encourages users to upload videos not only of
Starbucks TV commercials but also educational videos about the origins of coffee and the charitable work
undertaken by Starbucks.
Social Media Marketing
Brand: Starbucks
Industry: Food & Beverages
Website: http://www.starbucks.com/

5. Approach
Market segmentation
The company has stayed with the upper-scale of
the coffee market, competing on comfort rather
than convenience, which are the case with its
closest competitors, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts.
Execution
The company continues to focus on its original
product bundle that includes good coffee, quality
service, and a nice environment to hang around.
They keep their attention on paying attention to the
details of great execution and service.
Encourages sharing
Happy customers are eager to share good
experiences and offers. For example, the Starbucks
frequent promotions like “buy 1 get 1″ garner an extraordinary amount of engagement on social media
through comments, “likes,” and shares.
Taking a stand
Giving consumers a charitable reason to buy that steaming cup is beneficial for all.
Conclusion:
Social media is not free. It takes time, resources and a tremendous amount of work.
In September 2006, Starbucks hardly seemed poised
the become a social media role model. Today,
Starbucks is a case study of a different sort. In
July 2009, the Seattle-based company was ranked
the World’s most engaged brand online by San
Mateo, Calif.-based strategy consultancy Altimeter
Group.
at same month, it surpassed Coca-Cola as the most
popular brand on Facebook (which it still is today,
with more than 5 million fans).

6. Search engine marketing is a multi-billion industry spearheaded by Google, Bing, and Yahoo that is often
broken down to two segments - free (organic) and paid (inorganic) search. Free search engine
marketing, or search engine optimization (SEO), uses on-page and off-page strategies to help search
engines better understand the relative importance of a website's pages.
"Google AdWords and Google Analytics helped increase our conversion rates by nearly
45%."
Purpose:
 To establish their new business and brand
 To hone their marketing messages
 To increase their subscriber base
The right audience
“Capturing users who are actively searching for our types of services is great for finding qualified
customers,” Brett explains. “But we also wanted to attract visitors who needed us but just didn’t know it
yet.” So she developed placement-targeted campaigns to display ads in Google’s Display Network of
hundreds of high-quality news pages, industry-specific websites, and blogs. Tapping into content can
help advertisers expand beyond search and reach users while they’re reading their favorites websites.
Sites that feature videos were a natural fit for One True Media’s ads, particularly communities such as
MySpace.
Social Engine Marketing
Brand: One True Media
Location: Redwood City, California.
Company: 20 employees. Service for friends and families to
create and share their photos and videos. Online only.
Industry: Entertainment
 Website: www.onetruemedia.com/

7. Solution
“The increase in communities and video sharing sites
has been a boon for us,” she observes. “Multimedia is
becoming a common currency of communication, and
One True Media makes that communication easier. We
wanted to get that message in front of the people who
are most likely to use the service, and AdWords allowed
us to handpick the audience.”
Result
 Growth: Grew subscriber base at faster rate than anticipated
 Maximized Marketing: Increased conversion rate by 45 % through refined messages and site
layout.
“We knew we wanted to target people
online, and so we turned to Google,” says
Brett. “We signed up for Google AdWords™
and Google Analytics™ shortly after our
inception in 2005.”
“Google is the guiding light for our
marketing efforts. It turns our site into
marketing lab” Brett Gardner, VP
Marketing, One True Media

8. Good marketing always meets certain criteria.
Use this checklist to see how your campaign measures up:
Does it focus on the benefit you provide? Don’t tell people WHAT to buy, tell them
WHY.
Does it have a clear message?
Is it focused on a specific group? This makes it easier to address their needs.
Does the choice, tone and style of language suit your target audience?
Does it feature your Unique Selling Proposition? This is the one thing that sets you
apart from other products or services.
Does it have one, compelling point of focus? Avoid confusion. Leave people with one
clear thought in their minds.
Does it accurately communicate your business personality? Will potential customers
feel as if they “know” you?
Does it offer more than one way to respond? Even if people don’t buy straight away,
they might want more detail. Give them several ways to get it.
Do you have a specific objective? This will help you to measure the success of your
campaign afterwards.