Strategies for Effective Communication in the New Digital Media Landscape Program | Reflection Report Assignment

Digital Communication Program

• Choose an organisation (a real one)
• Digital Communication Platforms (DCP)

  • Social Network Platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn).
  • Yammer (internal)
  • Content Publishing Platforms (e.g., YouTube, Blogs)
  • Websites
  • Search tools (e.g., Google)
  • Email Lists and e-newsletters
  • Analytics tools (e.g., Seismic, Hootsuite, salesforce)
  • Mobile

• The purpose /aim of the digital communication platform for the organisation
• How will this DCP help the organisation
• Who is the target audience
• What are the key tools and platforms are you going to use (see above)
• What approach are you going to take to leverage these platforms to get the results you are seeking to get (e.g., share and like on Facebook; invite yourtarget audience to a group on LinkedIn, retweet Twitter updates).
• How you will appropriately deal with cross-cultural communication issues?
• What changes need to be made to the organisational design, and allocation of resources to implement and maintain this DCP? Staffing requirements.
• Prepare internal guidelines for staff on how to use this DCP (e.g., to handle customer complaints, negative and positive feedback, PR successes and disasters). The guidelines should cover key aspect of cross-cultural sensitivity.
• Consider the content –the selection of topics to be communicated.
• Timings for the project. Development of the project and launch. Outline key

  project milestones with dates.

This group work helped me understand how important social media marketing has become off late. Initially the difficulty was in determining the airline that should be chose, ‘Virgin Australia’ or ‘Qantas’. Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson has been a great influence Virgin Australia and me was my initial choice of airline. But on researching I was actually mesmerised with the establishments of Qantas digital marketing team, especially after getting bail from the government. They have bounced to profitability in no time and have started repayment of loans successfully.

Brand is what a brand does. Qantas does hold the spirit of Australia high. But this applauds has come from commitment and hard work shown towards rendering customer satisfaction, through sheer thoughtfulness. Qantas teaches how a brand that big can bring in a personal touch in serving customers, irrespective of their demography and culture. A personal touch is in fact brought through noticing details and letting the customers know that ‘we care’.

With respect to digital media, I understand that digital marketing team has to walk a fine line between many factors include making customers involve and not to annoy them, providing updates but not overdoing it and forcing them to unsubscribe, to respond with facts and not to hurt their sentiments and many such similar factors. Customers should be involved but not over involved because then there will be chances for conflict. Siding one loyal customer against another loyal customer will dissatisfy one customer for sure. I appreciate the balancing act digital media campaigns undertake on a daily basis.

I felt too much of a novice to predict and change an already established brand like Qantas, because their decisions are a result of the research conducted by a team of employees over a time period. Qantas has also started its own brand for digital marketing business now referred to as Red Planet. Social media offers both opportunities and threats. But irrespective of this a brand can become tainted if customers decided to taint it. This is especially true when it comes to the significance and influence, a consumers opinion will have on other customers.

Social media is protected too. Researchers can follow every post made with the nametag Qantas on it. So none of the marketing efforts can be done with the tag #Qantas on it, especially with out getting permission of the team. But some of the steps that can be done include searching of already posted comments, experiences, photos, videos, articles, and making new posts about it and posting on pages of contacts we have as a team. Ultimately the number of hits and people it influences are dependent on the kind of contacts our group has at our disposal. One can also post it in groups that huge number of members. But such a step may attract wrath of viewers and someone may just decide to brag about an unpleasant he/she had with Qantas and the whole effort can be bounced back. Constant vigil is required when it comes to digital marketing. This assignment helped me to understand the importance of social marketing and customer centric customisation in any business.

Qantas:Digital Communication Platform

User

Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited) is a flag carrier of Australia and has grown to be the largest domestic and international airline in Australia. They have a high reputation for safety, operational reliability, customer service, engineering and maintenance. They have employee base of 30,000 people (Qantas, 2016). This is a report that studies digital integrated marketing of Qantas and proses recommendations for increasing target-oriented sales.

Background

Air travel is not associated to fun anymore as it used to be, but is associated to stress, bad food, over-priced tickets, priority boarding, check-ins, luggage, and many more not so pleasurable events. Hence an additional focus should be put on improving customer experiences and perceptions. Digital media helps in doing just that by gathering valid meaningful data about the customers and later on allowing the management and crew to use it and increase customer loyalty (Reddy, 2015).

Digital Communication Platforms of Qantas and its uses

While considering the digital transformation in the case of Qantas, Qantas.com still remains Australia’s No.1 travel website (Qantas, 2015). 45% of the Qantas group’s marketing efforts are now done through digital channels (Qantas, 2015). Qantas is widely accessible in all digital media platforms. It has around

• 630,000 fans on Facebook
• 270,000 followers on Twitter
• 80,000 followers on Instagram
• 20,000 Subscribers on YouTube
• 90,000 Followers on LinkedIn
• 20,000 Followers on Google+” (Qantas, 2015)

Qantas now gives the option for the customer to choose a medium to communicate with them. They include

1. Red E-mail: Customers have the option to subscribe to Red e-mail, to get updates in relation to the latest sales on tickets, special holiday offers, and also travel review straight into their inbox. This allows Qantas to send mails directly and communicate one-to-one with the customers (Qantas Airways Limited, 2016).
2. Instagram: Instagram is a platform that allows Qantas customers to share their and story and images with Qantas and other customers (Qantas Airways Limited, 2016).
3. LinkedIn: The platform keeps up to date news on launches of new product launches, competitions held, announcements about the company and vacancies for employment and other general news about Qantas (Qantas Airways Limited, 2016).
4. YouTube: The YouTube channel of Qantas is used for giving an insight into the Qantas world reveals facts in relation to the fleet, their network services and other products (Qantas Airways Limited, 2016).
5. Facebook: Qantas conduct special promotions and competitions on Facebook. FB also acts as a basic platform for them to make announcements and other general news that are to be communicated to their client base (Qantas Airways Limited, 2016).
6. Twitter: On following twitter, the followers avail direct breaking news, any updated information and also inspirational trips for travelling to various destinations around the world (Qantas Airways Limited, 2016).
7. Travel Insider: This platform provides travel guidance and has travel articles, photos and tips that are provided for travellers with in Australia. This also helps in enhancing the travel experience for the subscribers (Qantas Airways Limited, 2016).
8. Flickr: Flickr is also a platform that will help towards sharing your images online. It allows a person to get an incite into various experiences of the travellers (Qantas Airways Limited, 2016).
9. RSS Feeds: The customers can subscribe to the RSS feeds to avail prices, news, travel reviews and announcements (Qantas Airways Limited, 2016).
10. Mobile Application: Qantas have mobile application for both Android devices and iPhone that provides the users with flights gate number, boarding time, status, baggage carousel and more. It helps in booking flights on mobile apps and check into domestic flights through the same (Flynn, 2014).
11. Red Planet: Red Planet is the platform that is used by the Qantas, so that they design and target ads for their customer directly. According to Qantas it is at least four times more successful that conventional media buying channels. The data and analytics that are found by Red Planet are used for supporting making a better and broader Qantas group (Kitney, 2015). Qantas also have a controlling stake at Taylor Fry, which will also help them to improve data and analytics capability (Qantas News Room, 2015)

Accessibility to the customers is of utmost importance to any organisation. 21st century, often referred to as the digital age finds public being general users of social platforms like RSS, Facebook, blogs, YouTube etc., because it is very easy for the signup, connect, share, collaborate and create on these platforms. Hence they offer both challenges and opportunities for its users. The outreach of a message is very high as these platforms have millions of regular users (Mangini et.al, n.d). The wide reachability to customers online as well as their information system helps the Qantas digital team that is led by CIO Luc Hennekins to bring insights into power marketing, later on using them to create brand loyalty and to be a member of the frequent flyer program (Reddy, 2015). This helps them to keep connect with the customer, maintain one-on-one communication and find solution to travel problems and predict the usage of flight and associated services of customers through data tracking (Reddy, 2015). Digital channels can also be used for cross selling and attracting more customers. It offers unparalleled ability to deliver offers for targeted customers through their proprietary channels frequent flyer, acquire & Red email, along with digital and social media and leveraging Red Planet. (Qantas, 2015).

There are 5 ways in which Qantas is making use of the Social media. They are quick response, actively listening, navigating, thoughtfulness and authenticity. The impact of following these have helped them to establish bonds, loyalty and appreciation of people who do not avail to their services (Moritx, 2012).

Target Audience

Qantas has used a dual branding strategy for Qantas and Jetstar. Qantas is for people who value the service experience wholly. Hence Qantas looks for customers who travel frequently or the business class/employees to develop them as loyal customers and frequent flyers. Qantas is also targeting the families who travel back and forth from different nations to visit people and tourists who travel for leisure (Qantas, 2015). Jetstar is a low cost carrier and hence tries to attract customers who are travelling from one point to another.

Use of social media

Among the different tools that are available he group has decided on using twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Travel insider and YouTube and their video advertisements in favour of enhancing involvement from the target audience. These platforms are used because they allow partial involvement of the audience and allow replies on the post, or adding photos on the post.

We aim at increasing the subscribership of Qantas Airlines digital communication platforms, and make a positive impression in them to use Qantas flights if and when they decide to fly.

The plan is to use customer-centric marketing strategies, where there is a high scope for the target audience to be involved. The intention is to invest on positive experiences experienced by the audience. Our effort is to bring the synergy effect of using multiple platforms. We will understand and appreciate the demographic difference between the targets and post accordingly (Dreyer, 2013)

DCP Approach and how will digital platforms be used

As an external group trying to enhance subscribership or sharing, the group’s activities will be monitored. However following are some of the plans we have towards increasing the subscribership. The group plans on using different messages according to the understood preference of the target audience.

Facebook: The group will like posts that are posted by Qantas and share it on their respective page. The team will comment on the posts and try to involve selected targets through tagging, thereby increasing circulation of posts on multiple FB pages. The group will also make posts on previous experiences that were posted by customers, who were at awe with their experience with Qantas. These posts will be used to involve target customers, by posting on their pages. Subscription message for Qantas will also be attached to all the messages that are made. The group will also invite multiple audiences to subscribe to the channels.

Example of a post:Oh! How thoughtful! #Qantas. I am motivated to use your service. Are you? #tags

YouTube: One of the most attractive things about Qantas is the enriching ‘spirit of Australia’ theme based advertisement they make. These advertisements make the viewers proud that they are in Australia and can enjoy the beauty of the place. They also bring multiple emotions in mind. These videos can be shared with a subscribe message, to increase the subscription. These video links can also be shared on Facebook.

Using Travel Insider, email and posts: Travel Insider has some genuinely nice posts that will motivate people to subscribe to, as they know about it. So we will mail these articles with photos and links to people we think are interested, along with a subscription message.

Twitter: The group will re-tweet twitter updates on the twitter pages.

Cross-cultural issues and Social Media Advertising

Digital marketing can be looked at as a global market but with audience who expect brands to follow different local, cultural rules and expectations. There are differences in relation to position of the brand and the different executional styles that are adapted by the brand. The market differences can be grouped in to economic factors, media environment, advertising regulations and restrictions, competitive development, category development. The consumer differences can be grouped into cultural differences, communication syntax, and their personal experience of the brand (Wilkins, 2002; as cited in Sotomayor, 2005).

Social media is for socialising and there is a difference in the way cultures socialise. What is great socialising in one culture is inappropriate behaviour in another and totally unacceptable in a third culture (Bhattacharjee et.al, 2011). Even if a brand does not differentiate on terms of local branding, consumer project his/her local brand to the global brand and resonate to the biased preferences (de Moonji, 2013). Hence the focus when it comes to messages should be neutral, clear, inoffensive, accurate communication when it comes to campaigns in social media. In the case of Qantas, it is a carrier of the flag of Australia and hence depicts spirit of Australia. Hence any digital marketing campaigns should make sure that they are involving people from other cultures and increase their participation rate as possible.

Maintenance of DCP

The marketing team at Qantas is divided into five units including ‘Marketing and Brand, Corporate Affairs, Digital and Content, Partnerships and Community and Qantas Loyalty Marketing’ (Mumbrella, 2013). 46% of the marketing expenditure is spending for digital marketing. Qantas should manage the team as it is and make sure not to loose on customers, even if they fail to increase the market share. Qantas is providing services and response to people on social media round the clock, 365 days a week. It takes constant vigilance and effort to be answering correctly to thousands of messages on a daily basis. With respect to DCP plan provided, our group can do much more if access is granted to us for posting on social platforms of Qantas, and also for using paid facilities like ad words.

Internal Guidelines

It is important for the staff to be informed on what is allowed and not allowed in social media.

1. Any enquiries should be given intimation in the first three hours of posting.
2. No use of foul words is permitted in response to customers, irrespective of the abuses used by customers.
3. Any criticism if true should be apologised for, and if not true should be corrected through provision of true facts and figures
4. If the responding team doesn’t know the answer, promise to communicate after research.
5. Empathise with the customers and solve grievances as soon as possible
6. Navigate and direct people to the right alternatives if answers are not available with the departments
7. None of the posts made should be racially or sexually or culturally discriminating
8. The number of main posts in a platform is restricted to maximum three a day. This is to ensure that customers are not annoyed and forced to leave.
9. Third party articles require permission before posting.
10. Posts made should be void of grammatical errors, should be clear, concise and accurate.
11. Educate and inform audience.
12. Influence customers to participate.
13. Any non-adherence to these instructions will be penalised

Conclusion

Qantas is applauded for the integrated marketing campaign. Their efforts are commendable when it comes to the digital responding rate. Their loyalty program is known to attract and retain the best of customers. Their digital media marketing is especially customer involving and are customer specific according to the customer requirements because of the information system they have including their personal preferences and not merely their contacts.