1. 1
Table of Contents
Executive Summary………………………………………………………………………………...2
Overview……………………………………………………………………………………………..2
Competitive Analysis ……………………………………………………………………………….3
Social Media Presence……………………………………………………………………………..4
Goals …………………………………………………………………………………………………5
Strategies……………………………………………………………………………………….........6
Target Market ………………………………………………………………………………………..7
Tools…………………………………………………………………………………………………..7
Implementation………………………………………………………………………………………8
Monitoring…………………………………………………………………………………………….8
Tuning……………………………………………………………………………………………….11
Budget…………………………………………………………………………………………........11
ROI…………………………………………………………………………………………………..11
Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………………13
2. 2
Executive Summary
The Vibe was founded in 2013 with the goal of providing the most user-friendly free
online music streaming service. In order to achieve this, The Vibe offers uninterrupted music
streaming as well as an online community where music enthusiasts of all genres can share their
playlists, opinions, and even their own uploaded content. Our offices are located in Pullman,
Washington.
Overview
The Vibe is an online music streaming service which is free to use. It offers music
uninterrupted by commercials as well as a forum where music lovers can interact and share
their own original material.
3. 3
SWOT Analysis
The SWOT analysis shows the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that The Vibe
may face.
Strengths:
● fewer ads (relatable to music)
● less intrusive ads
● mobile apps
● free product
● playlist sharing
● user created content
● large selection of music
● include stream radio
● young demographic
Weaknesses:
● free product
● rely on advertisements for income
● obtaining music rights
● must pay royalties each time a song is
played
Opportunities:
● allowing users to upload own content
● offering user friendly system
● offer exposure for independent artists
● having ads that don’t interrupt playlists
could bring over listeners from other
streaming services
Threats:
● other free music streaming sites
● copyright laws could be violated by
users sharing content
● (we should think about other threats)
● Over saturated market
● copyright laws/ online music laws
causing site to charge for use
Competitive Analysis
The competitive analysis shows how The Vibe compares to other music streaming site available
to consumers currently.
Create
Playlis
ts
Share
Playlists
Rewinding
Songs
Music
Available
for
Purchase
Ads that
interrupt
playlists
Free
Music
Stream
Download
required?
Mobile
Support
The Vibe Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes
Pandora yes yes yes No Yes Yes No Yes
Grooveshark Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Spotify No No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes
Soundcloud No No No Yes Yes Yes Optional Yes
Last FM No No No Yes Yes Yes Optional Yes
4. 4
Social Media Presence
Promoting The Vibe through a variety of social media websites is an effective way to spread our
brand’s reach and influence. With the increase in popularity in music streaming websites,
branching out to a more broad audience is an effective way to increase brand recognition. Using
popular social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, we can analyze how our audience is
growing and reacting to our activity.
1. Facebook page: Currently our Facebook page has 30+ likes, and has made two posts. In the
time frame from 11/05/13 - 11/11/2013 our page saw a %100 increase in post reach. We intend
to post updates, questions, and other interactive posts in order to attract more likes to our page.
2. Twitter page: Our Twitter account currently has 20 followers and has tweeted twice. We have
integrated our Twitter account with both the Facebook page, and our official Wix website. Users
will be able to interact with any of our social media platforms without any issues with
connectivity.
5. 5
3. Official website forums: On our Wix based website we added a forum app to promote open
discussion about topics beyond just music. The forum will require moderation which equates to
constant interaction with members of the website. Creating a variety of message boards with
broad subject categories will provide the framework for spirited discussion among our user
base.
Goals
After evaluating the competitive and SWOT analysis, The Vibe determined short and long term
goals. These goals are set to represent the image and name The Vibe wants to live up to.
Short term:
● Update social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) on a regular basis.
● Spread the word of our networks and website via social media, word of mouth, and
advertising.
● Update website consistently.
● Keep website appealing to viewers.
● Familiarize The Vibe with the public.
● Track views, likes, and followers to analyze the target audience.
● Review comments and consider changes.
Long Term:
● Maintain a positive reputation.
● Maintain excellent customer service.
● Strive for quality.
● Maximize profit opportunities.
● Beat competitors.
● Update SWOT analysis accordingly.
● Be successful in sticking to company purpose.
6. 6
Strategies
The most effective way to advertise The Vibe will be through social media such as Facebook
and Twitter, which will allow users to interact with the company as well as make it easier for
them to tell others about it. A strong social media presence can make The Vibe more popular
among current and future users. In order to accomplish this, we will use the 8 C’s of Strategy
Development to decide how The Vibe’s social media pages will be structured as well as what
they will post.
1. Categorize: We will focus on social media platforms our target market (ages 16-25) uses
most, Facebook and Twitter.
2. Comprehend: The Vibe will maintain a strong presence on both Facebook and Twitter, but
will not spam users. Facebook posts will be kept to 2-3 per week, while making sure to read and
reply to questions and comments that Facebook users might post. Tweets will be kept to one
per day. In both cases, the plan for posts emphasizes quality, relevant posts rather than high
quantity.
3. Converse: It will be important to interact with people who have liked the page, responding to
their comments and tagging them and engaging in actual conversations with them. It will be
more effective to contribute to the platform rather than focus solely on promoting it.
4. Collaborate: Related to Converse, taking user feedback seriously and collaborating with them
to optimize the platform for them will be an important step in establishing brand loyalty.
5. Connect: Connecting with opinion leaders and collaborating with them will increase the
perceived value of using The Vibe rather than other music streaming services.
6. Contribute: Rather than posting promotions for The Vibe, we will work to post information,
stories and links that are relevant to the music community. Since this will be the whole music
community rather than just one genre, variation of content on posts will be needed in order to
appeal to as many genres as possible.
7. Community: In the same vein as conversing and collaborating with members of the online
community, we will make them feel involved by getting them to participate in discussions, ask
them for their opinions and suggestions, and participating in open discussions with them. This
will help turn The Vibe into a music-focused community, which will be further helped by the
forums available for use on The Vibe main website where people can go specifically to talk
about music. In addition, allowing users to post their own content that they made will involve
them further.
8. Convert: Each of these steps will be used to convert our overall strategy of created a music
based online community through inclusion of and interaction with individual users to our desired
goal of spreading the awareness of The Vibe’s music streaming capabilities, largely focused on
7. 7
convincing people to use it rather than other music streaming services such as Pandora or
Spotify.
Target Market
The Vibe’s target market is one of the largest active audiences. The primary target market for
The Vibe is between 16 and 25, males and females, living in the United States as well as all
over the world. Their interests may include music, hanging out with friends, searching the web,
attending concerts, using social media, and/or movies.
Our target audience values the importance of relationships, specifically with their friends and
parents. According to A Portrait of “Generation Next” our primary target audience have grown
up with personal computers, cell phones, and the internet and use technology to connect with
people in new and original ways.
The majority of our target audience uses social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Since The Vibe’s target market is in tune with social media
our main marketing strategy will be reaching our audience through social media sites as well as
online marketing.
Tools
With such a wide range of a target audience that the company will target, The Vibe will use
many different forms of web based tools. These tools will aid The Vibe’s Wix based website. We
used Wix to create and launch our brand website. We intend to continue using this tool to
manage, edit, and improve our website as our consumers and market are ever-changing.
Using tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram will help promote the brand as well as
advertise if felt the need to do so. Using these tools will help the company learn about its target
more in-depth and learn about the consumers listening habits and music preferences.
In order for The Vibe to be successful, certain things had to be done in order for the brand to be
known. Product awareness needed to be accomplished, and in order for that to be fulfilled we
used social media to launch our brand. Our goal is for each social media site to reach both male
and females between the ages of 16-25. Using these social media sites allows our company to
reach an enormous audience without the hassle of dealing with print advertisements.
8. 8
Implementation
To actualize our strategies for advertising The Vibe, we focused on implementing our plan
focusing on the 8 C’s of strategic development. This process involved:
- Targeting our social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) toward our target demographic;
people ages 16-25.
- Maintaining our social media presence. This was accomplished through timely posts and
updates, while simultaneously responding to questions, concerns, and comments from our user
base. It is important for us to not inundate our user’s various news feeds’ with spam-like
updates, while providing them with updates and information on the state of our business in an
interactive and collaborative manner.
-Connecting and collaborating with popular artists and opinion leaders who use our service is an
important step to increasing the reach of The Vibe. Bringing a community feeling to our services
will go a long way towards influencing users of other music streaming services to switch to ours.
Instead of simply promoting our website, we collaborate with artists whose music we feature on
our site to bring attention to The Vibe.
- Contributing to our community is an important strategy if we want to grow and maintain an
involved user base. Providing a constant stream of news from a variety of genres and subject
matters will help keep our user base involved. We have added a news section to our official site,
as well as a forum for user/creator interactions. Providing multiple platforms for our users to
interact with us and each other will help to grow and improve our platform.
- Growing a strong core community is a key step to any social media platform. Allowing our
users to both listen to popular and underground music, upload and review music from the
community, and providing a place for open discussion induces community growth.
-Converting users from other popular music streaming platforms is arguably the most difficult
aspect of the implementation of our social media plan. To do this, we have emphasized the
open community present on our website, the lack of intrusive advertisements, and an incredible
variety of music, drawing from not only popular music of the day, but user created music as well.
Monitoring
Currently our social media presence consists of Facebook and Twitter pages as well as the
forum on The Vibe’s website. In the beginning stages of our company we will use free
monitoring websites to track and measure our social media presence. We will need to track,
measure, and evaluate our social networks in order to measure the success of our social media
campaign.
Tracking
In order to track what our target audience likes and dislikes about our music streaming website,
as well as our competitors, we will search for keywords and hashtags on Facebook and Twitter
and analyze what the audience is saying. We will continuously monitor what the audience is
saying to make The Vibe better for our audience.
9. 9
Measuring
In order to measure the success of our social media campaign we will use key performance
indicators (KPIs) that will be both quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative:For our Facebook page we will use Facebook Insights and evaluate our likes,
visits, reach, engagement, and demographic of our audience (shown in graphs below). We will
track and record the number of fans the page has and also record fans who have commented
and liked a post as well as users who have become a fan in that past month. Comparing the
data to previous monthly totals will give us a chance to track our growth on our social media
sites.
Pages & Visits
Demographic
10. 10
Post Reach
For Twitter we will use Twitter Analytics and Klout to track our reach, demographic, and
interests of our followers (interests and followers shown in graphs below) . Every month we will
use quantitative methods and track the number of followers our twitter page has as well as the
number of people who retweet and favorite our posts and compare them to previous months.
Every month we will use quantitative methods and track the number of followers our twitter page
has as well as the number of people who retweet and favorite our posts and compare them to
previous months.
Followers
11. 11
Interests
Qualitative:
In order to grasp the
reputation and
influence of The Vibe on social media we will use qualitative methods. We will do this by
collecting data from Twitter and Facebook on the number of times The Vibe is mentioned and
assign each mention into positive, neutral, or negative categories.
Evaluating
After we have received all the information we will take into account and make changes to our
social media presence accordingly.
Tuning
As a company, The Vibe Music will adhere to the public demands and alter strategies and
approaches as the digital world changes. Our website and other associated company sites will
be up to date for our customers. The company will continue to grow in new and unique ways
that will ensure its competitiveness and ultimately separate itself from the competition as the
leading free music streaming website available. To ensure of our status and stay maintaining
our goals, the social media specialist will regularly conduct research studies and analysis on
opposing music streaming websites. This is to ensure that The Vibe Music stays on top of the
competition.
Budget
Through the use of social media advertising we intend to reach the largest number of users
possible placing our advertisements in Facebook, Twitter and Google. We will advertise for one
year for $2,000 on Facebook, $1,825 on Twitter and $1,825 on Google. Royalties will be paid
$0.000015 per song for a total of $7,500 per year, assuming 500,000,000 songs will be played
in the first year based on the average number of songs people play in a year.
ROI
12. 12
Through the use of social media we intend to advertise on each of 2 different social media sites
and 1 search engine. We intend to reach the largest number of users possible that are part of
our target demographic by placing advertisements in Facebook, twitter, and google. We intend
to advertise on Facebook and Twitter for 1 year at $2,000 for Facebook and $1825 for Twitter.
Through Google we intend to advertise for 1 year as well costing $1825. Through all advertising
mediums we intend to use, we predict a reach equal to or greater than 2,000,000 Facebook,
Twitter, and Google users with the use of our website we will allow companies to advertise not
within the music on the website, but instead within banner ads.
Throughout the mediums that we intend to reach we are expecting a few things for our return on
investment. Through our social media medium we are expecting a constant increase in
Facebook likes and followers on Twitter. Through this medium we expect to gain subscribers as
our company continues to grow. Through the increase in users of Google we expect a return of
users being exposed to our advertisements and gathering more brand awareness and users
alike.
Through all our mediums we intend to reach our goals of increasing brand awareness as well as
exposing our brand to as many listeners as possible, as well as gain recognition and new users
for our streaming service.
