Question

Background

Couples Resorts include four all-inclusive Jamaican properties in the beautiful Caribbean. Relatively new to the online marketing, they elicited the help of UNLV hospitality department to take them to the next level through online marketing and more specifically in this case, social media.

Problem and Goals

A lack of recent usage of their social media channels left their followers unengaged. The goal here is to engage current brand advocates (past and future guests) on their Facebook page as well as to expand their customer database.

The resources:

1. A contact list of existing customers (home address and email address)
2. A marketing budget of max $15,000.

Here are the questions:

1. What will be your strategy? Outline your plan to help Couples Resorts?
2. How will you measure the effectiveness of your strategy?

Answer 1

A brand promoter is someone who loves the product or service so deeply that they are willing to educate people about it — whether it is in social media or in actual life. Brand ambassadors can be internet bloggers with tons of social media followers or individuals in their business who are involved or well known. Here are seven ways to turn a frequent consumer or business influencer into a committed, involved brand advocate. My strategy would be:

• Influencers of the Befriend Industry: Due to the conversational aspect of social media and the blog boom of every area and sector, advertising has become a two-way process that can help all parties. Reach out to someone who will profit from a product or service: present yourself, see how to treat them to a drink (if you are living in the same city) and seek to create a mutually beneficial connection.
• Trade commodity rather than advertisement: Advertisement is costly, particularly with regard to heavy-traffic blogs or print media. See whether the author or author is involved in testing the product or even giving away one thing: the price of the item (or perhaps even two!) is always often lower than overt ads and it promotes a far higher degree of dedication. Popular bloggers are also open to producing a combination of conventional sideways ads and testing a product; consider mixing reviews with commercials for optimal visibility on the same platform.
• Issue a care mail: No matter how often we work online, citizens still enjoy getting receipts apart from bills. If you have connections to the address of the main influencer, buy some beautiful stamps and a sweet collection of paperwork and give them a notice about just how much you admire what they have done with your business. The joy of having a tweet from a company soon wears off, but an intelligently typed message will always be remembered.
• Writing an email: If there are individuals who connect with your company on social media on a daily basis and still have something positive to tell, push the interaction beyond the forum. When you can not send a personal letter, give them a short email and let them understand how much you value their help in developing the partnership.
• Give influencers a discount: Even though a company can't imagine giving an influencer a free product (maybe their social media presence isn't broad enough or they're not in the correct market segment) consider sending a small discount.
• Featuring advocated on the company blog: A continuously updated blog can be a great way not just of exchanging business news but also of building a brand identity, engaging with market influencers and showcasing new talents in the industry.

To measure the effectiveness, I would put the funds put into in this project vs the no. of sales being done after this project is being done. If the graph of the initial one is lower than the previous one, this project can be considered as successful.