Joshie Online

Media Plan 4: Campaign Management

noreply@blogger.com (Josh) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:21:00 +0000

Just to reiterate, my KPI is that 60% of my forum members will contribute at least once a week. A conversion is a lead from any source that goes on to make a purchase.

I am assuming that every single conversion turns into a sale except those that come from my community site.

4.1 - A & B

4.2 a

4.2 b

4.3 - At this point I would need to adjust the amount I spend on Paid Search and my Affiliate program as they are currently costing more than they make in profit. Other than that, I'm happy with my KPI although it may be wise to create one for the money making side of the company. For example the percentage of community members that makes a purchase each month.

Media Plan 3: Channel Selection

noreply@blogger.com (Josh) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 06:28:00 +0000

1 – Selected Channels

I think it’s key to note that for the purposes of this media plan that I have two different approaches to my online promotion:

Firstly is the building of my community, where a lead is somebody that follows my ad and signs up to take part. A conversion is if that person then goes on to post something and contributes to the community through the boards or content submission.
For my sales business, a lead is somebody that signs up for our mailing list. A conversion is somebody that goes on to rent from my company.

I will look at and discuss both avenues for this part of the plan.

For the community –

For the building of the online community, there are a few of the channels that I would rule out instantly. The use of paid search, advertising and affiliate marketing would be detrimental to the profitability of the site. All three require a much higher monetary investment that would potentially not see a return in sales through the main part of the rental company. The leads for the community do not generate revenue directly, at least not at first, so the spending of money to build up the fan base would not be a sound idea.

SEO is going to be key for the filmmaker community because there aren’t a lot of instantly go to places for people to visit. Before I went to film school I searched out numerous communities as a place to learn my craft but never found a one-stop-shop that could help me. Through careful use of keywords that attract different career paths in the industry I can guide upcoming filmmakers to my site before they even start their careers. Constant community interaction will in turn breed word of mouth, especially between students.

It’s an interesting concept to use social media and social public relations to promote a social media site, but that is essentially what we’ll be doing. The community is a socially interactive site for filmmakers and we don’t want to draw members away to side Facebook groups and pages, but they are essential for generating awareness for new users. We’ll use social media and online PR to alert people to our mini-festivals and events that are occurring. Social media will be just another channel for people to hear news about the site and our events.

Email marketing will be used to alert customers to our community special offers and events that will be taking place. Our mailing list will be generated from our rental customer base and customers will have the option to opt in or out of the marketing. I’m not a fan of spam but if you clearly give the option to customers in every email to opt out if they wish, then it makes you less of a bad guy. There’ll be incentives to receive the emails such as special offers only available to subscribers.

For the rental company –

SEO and Paid Search will be a big part of the rental side of the company’s marketing strategy. After doing research, it’s hard to find consistently reliable looking websites for rental of equipment and studio space in Florida. All the sites look dated or badly designed and with careful use of paid search and organic rankings The Hub could place highly in the eye of the consumer. Especially with the new film incentive bill coming to Florida, production companies around the country are going to be searching for rental houses in the area so they can secure a tax rebate. A well placed website in search results could generate a ton of out of town business.

The majority of the PR and Social Media interaction for the rental side of the business will come directly from the filmmaker community focus of the company. Special deals and offers will be available as an incentive to join and contribute regularly to the community. This will in turn drive up rentals in the money making portion of the business.

Email marketing will be used to alert customers to our community special offers and events that will be taking place. Our mailing list will be generated from our rental customer base and customers will have the option to opt in or out of the marketing. There’ll be incentives to receive the emails such as special offers only available to subscribers. Every new rental customer will be offered the chance to sign up for the mailing list.

Affiliate marketing will play a big role in our business. Each customer will get a referral code without having to sign up for an affiliate account. Every time they get a new customer to come and rent gear or least studio space, both they and the new customer will get a one-time discount. The numbers of referrals are limitless, however only one discount may be applied at a time. We will also have a more traditional online affiliate program where even people who aren’t customers can sign up and receive monetary payments instead of discounts for purchasing leads.

2 – Campaign Budget

2 – A – Budget Total

For my company I have allocated $10,000 a month for Internet based advertising out of a budget of $27,640 of total advertising that is going towards billboards and more traditional local advertising sources. This money will be divided non-equally between the rental and community sides of the business with the larger weight going to the profit generating rental side.

2 – B – Budget Allocation

The largest portion of our budget will go towards paid search and generating awareness of our company to local and national production companies. We will spend a lot creating a position for ourselves as a go to company for Florida productions.

Then, although not costly, we will spend money on email marketing. Once our email templates are designed however, this cost will not be extensive because it can be done in house.

Both affiliate programs won’t affect the budget because the money will be added as a variable commission, reducing profit rather than being charged to the marketing budget.

The remaining money will be spent promoting the community. This will again be largely done in house so the costs, minus wages, will not be extensive.

2 – C – Man Hours

Our in house web and community manager will manage SEO and Paid search for both sides of the business along with the community itself. This person’s job will be to promote the community and keep our web presence up to date. This will be a full time position, although much of the job will be able to be done remotely. They will also be responsible for our email marketing campaigns. They will work closely with the executive team to plan community events. 30 hours a week at least will be spent on this position.

3 – Campaign Duration

Essentially this campaign will run forever. For the first year the push will be heavy handed and deliberate. As the community and customer base matures, we will be able to rely more on word of mouth and less on calculated marketing. Ideally we could eventually reach a point where we didn’t have to market, however, that really doesn’t seem like it could become a situation we would find ourselves in.

Social Media Promotion

noreply@blogger.com (Josh) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:25:00 +0000

Part of my business plan is to create a social network of filmmakers to collaborate with and advise new filmmakers.

Each month we would have a video topic of the month and then would encourage members to create original work in the vain of "Photo of the Day" topics. The best videos would be voted on by members of the community and the winner would win a discount voucher towards rentals.

Net Neutrality Slideshow

noreply@blogger.com (Josh) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 06:18:00 +0000

Here's a slideshow I worked on in class with two other students. It discusses briefly the impact of net neutrality and the current issues surrounding it.

Media Plan 2: Goals and Objectives

noreply@blogger.com (Josh) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 06:11:00 +0000

1.1 Objective

Our online business objective is to create a successful and popular online filmmaker community that brings young filmmakers together to collaborate.

1.2 Goals

We will achieve our objective by making our community a valuable source of information. Experts will be present giving advice with tips and tricks to newcomers.

We will also create a strong discussion board that allows the community to interact.

We will also create a portfolio area similar to other video sharing sites that allows customers to promote their work.

1.3 Key Performance Indicators

A key performance indicator for our plan will be the number of forum members that contribute at least once a week to our forum.

We could also modify this indicator as the community matures. It could be increased to twice a week etc.

1.4 Target

We would like our KPI metric to be at least 60% of forum members contribute to the forum at least once a week.

Further down the line we would like at least 70% of forum members to contribute to the forum at least twice a week.

Credibility of two online rental companies.

noreply@blogger.com (Josh) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:38:00 +0000

The two sites I found were:

rentglass.com and borrowlenses.com

Both are places to rent DSLR glass and accessories. Rent Glasses' website is a lot less refined than Borrow Lenses' website. There are also testimonials from Borrow Lenses and an in depth selection of gear outside the basic lenses and flashes. Rent Glass on the other hand has a much smaller selection of gear and a very clunky ordering system that uses boxes. I don't know if I would be comfortable putting my credit card information into their website.

Media Plan 1

noreply@blogger.com (Josh) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:36:00 +0000

1.1 Business Model

1.1.1

The Hub llc is a film/photography equipment rental and leasable studio space company located in Winter Park, FL. We cater mostly to the Orlando Universities and Florida production company markets. The Hub strives to be a meeting place for talented photographers and filmmakers to collaborate on and perfect their projects.

1.1.2

My products are split up into a few categories. My key sellers are lenses at an average sale of $17.50 a day and studio space rental at an average rental of $25 an hour. I also sell packages that are an average of $80 a day for still camera packages and $130 a day for video packages.

1.2 Competition

1.2.1

There isn’t any specific data on increased film industry within Central Florida; however, due to the new film incentive I found a few articles that discussed the potential benefits. Mark R. Smith at markeermag.com discussed that television specifically was growing in Florida. With Burn Notice being shot on location in Miami and injecting more than $900,000 and creating more than 485 jobs. Additionally Spanish channel Univision is opening up a new studio in Miami that will create numerous jobs.

1.2.2

Because I’m catering to the Full Sail and University markets primarily, I have deep discounts available to students. My pricing will also be catered to production companies that can afford more than students can but will also buy more potentially. My prices are offset by the ability to pickup and checkout the gear in person rather than purely an impersonal web presence. Additionally you don’t have to wait or pay for shipping so that is another place to cut costs.

1.3 Customer

1.3.1

I found it hard to find specific competitor websites, however, by looking at similar websites for key demographics like studentfilmmakers.com I found that their demographic was young adult male, with no kids. They were also less affluent but had graduated from college. This seems to gel with my estimated target market. Two other sites I found to compare with were two online rental sites. rentglass.com and borrowlenses.com are both cheap lens rental companies that I would be competing for in terms of price. According to quantcast, their demographics were similar, generally older males who were less affluent. Although this tends to point out the obvious that they are renting the lenses because they can't afford to buy them...

1.3.2

The Hub will be catering to both business and consumers. The students at the local colleges will be a key market for the company, however the businesses and production companies will hopefully be the strong repeat customers. Their business will be repeat sales over numerous years, better than the limited time students are at school. Students will need to be consistently marketed to as there is a fresh new supply of students regularly.