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Editorial Calendar 5. Control Budget KEPI’S Tools 6. References Learnedly Music is a business established in 1994 and located in a high traffic shopping area in Caring (South Sydney). They teach music on site in a safe one- on-one format in private studios. However they also have a sizeable retail shop onsite for music instruments and other items. Just on 100,000 people live within a 10 km radius in which 10,000 are students aged between 6-18. Little fact: 20% of kids learn to play music whilst 70% of adults wished they had!
Over the years, statistics show a slight decline in the participation rate in music as other forms of art come more accessible. There is also a 30% drop off as students reach 13 and another 30% by the age of 15. Only 15% continue playing at 17(1). Lessons are tailored around the student’s goals in a fun, safe and friendly environment. This is exemplified in their Rock School and Jazz Ensembles where students share in performances. Late last year, the whole business was bought & sold. Unfortunately with the slowing economy, business has dropped Off little to about 300 students.
The owner is keen to increase turnover by 20% to $1+M through more lessons and retail shopping. They have a website receiving a steady 600 visits ere month along with an online catalogue and a Faceable page with 1,300 likes. Traditional channels like letter drops, newspaper ads, outdoor signage, school sponsorship have had limited success. So the time is ripe to leverage a digital marketing approach! This is not about more broadcasting, but about better interactions and engagements with our customers. And being flexible and quick to adapt our strategies and actions as we learn.
There are five other music stores and over a thousand music teachers in the locality so there is a plenty of competition(2) 2. Business Objectives, Goals and Kips SMART format There are four broad objectives for the business over the next 12 months: 1 . Increase reach, awareness & engagement by 50% 2. Reduce customer attrition by 20% 3. Increase overall sales turnover by 20% Increase number of students and lessons by 20% Increase number of shoppers and spend by 20% These objectives are broken down and quantified further in the table below: 3.
Strategy & Audience Learnedly Music is positioned as a high quality learning centre in a convenient centralized location that is safe, fun and friendly. It has many years of experience and an untarnished reputation. There are four different persona that best fit to he products and services. It is important to describe who they are along with their interests and motivations. This will help guide the best manner to reach, communicate, engage, convert and retain them. (6) Persona & channels The table below summaries the persona, their goals & favored channels.
IMPORTANCE VERY HIGH HIGH MEDIUM Persona Aspiration’s Mother(S) Teenage Rampage(9) Old Rocker (6) Shopper (5), (6) sex Female Guys & Girls Male Age 30 – 45 10-18 45 – 65 30 – 65 Education Degree High School Employment Part Time Student Full Time Income Middle Low Middle – High Lifestyle Time poor – outsourcing! Friends, school, study, sport, TV More free time. Some flexibility Limited time. Location Within 10 km Within 20 km Goals “Wire up my child’s brain! ” (5-10 years old) “l Just want rock! “Reignite an old dream” “l need to buy a birthday gift.. ” Digital Channels PC, SEE Website Email Newsletter Blob Faceable SEE You Tube Twitter, Text Value Propositions – Engagement & Acquisition Strategies In order to convert more clients we need to spell out our clear points of differentiation: what makes us more appealing for each of the persona than our many rivals? Aspiration’s Mother Central Location – Quick ‘n easy drop-off/pick-up for child. Near other shops. Quality Teaching – Grading with bi-monthly goal tracking. Safe environment.
Music Retail Store – Buy new equipment on site as the child progresses Easy Online interactions – Book lessons, track progress, buy items all online. Teenage Rampage Safe, Fun & Friendly – Reputable teachers. Learn and buy on site or online. Rock & Jazz ensembles – Give your family & friends a real show! Great Value – Commit for only 10 lessons at a time, discounted prices. Social Online interactions – Share videos, snaps, events, memories, songs. Old Rocker Central Location – Learn in private but still near your home. Keep it simple. Low risk, Fun & Friendly – Life is short.
You deserve to have some fun. Jam Sessions & Concerts – Play with experts and/or your friends Social Online interactions – Share videos, Shopper (Gift Buyer) Central Location – For expert advice and quick parcel pickup on site. Easy Online interactions – For great ideas, prices and a broad range of brands Loyalty Programs – Get discounts, rewards, previews and other perks. 4. Tactics and Actions REACH SEE – SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION The Learnedly Music business will evolve whereby the website will become the greater linchpin for the business.
Certainly the on-site premises remain important for that safe, fun & friendly customer experience, but the website will be crucial for new customers and growth. Studies show that paid and organic searches continue to be the most consistent way to get new customers and that they have a higher customer lifetime value than other channels(4). The website will collect new prospects through numerous in-bound marketing efforts and will convert them to the next phases in the customer cycle: to sign-up for a newsletters, to buy and book lessons, to buy and order musical instruments or simply to make personal contact for rather advice and guidance.
Key Word Research Our website needs to be easy and quick to find for our target persona. Our pages need to use the keywords that fall naturally within the customer’s lexicon when they search on Google. Through Google Trends and Towards we can identify which keywords to include into our web pages (without overdoing it!! ). In Australia, the keywords “play music” is searched nine times more often than ‘learn music” (1. MM per month versus 0. MM). Moreover it also trending upwards and peaks in the month of December(7). We can also pick a phrase like “music lessons” and get a list of keyword ideas (see below).
We can consider using keywords that get a good number of local searches (between 1,500 to 8,000) but not too high as it gets very competitive to rank highly in search engines. We can also recycle and dive deeper within one string of keywords such as “guitar tutorial” and check in Google to see how many pages we would be competing against (ideally should be less than 50,000). From this we can develop a list of keywords that can get a decent CTR On-Page Optimization – URL: Each page needs to be search friendly for specific keywords such as: Example: http://www. Aeronautics. Mom. AU/legionnaires/guitar/ This also improves CTR. – Page Title Tags: Each page needs a unique title tag to promote organic searches. Title tags need to be specific, brief, relate to the content on the site and link to search engines. Make sure they are not too long (between 60-70 characters) and focus on the first 3-4 words. Example: if you searched “Guitar Lessons” into Google, it would attract the following page title: Sutherland Shire Guitar Lessons see appendix – ref (10) – Meta Tags: Each is designed to provides a summary of the page in less than 145 characters.
Although the meta tags do not affect page rankings, it will improve click through rate and bounce rate by reflecting the content accurately. This could really leverage the online store capability. Currently a colorful catalogue is promoted but ordering can only be done by phone or in person. It is better to make it fully functional online and separate out each item into its own pages and summarized uniquely with relevant Meta Tags. Example: Searching New Acoustic Guitar on Google would give: New Acoustic Guitar Sutherland Shire www. Toastmistresses. Com. AU/structuralism’s/ Sutherland Shire – Online Music Store.
Save 20%. Next day shipping Shop for the latest & greatest rock brands in the world. – Images: They need to be of high quality, download quickly and not be too large. Use Alt Tags to label images with 3-4 relevant keywords so they are easily found by search engines. – Heading Tags: Each page should contain 1-2 headings as Google searches pick up on these. Again these heading should contain relevant keywords specific to the page. – Breadcrumbs: Helps make it easier for the user to navigate & keep track of their location. – Clear Site Navigation: The current site is simple but quite static and conservative.
It requires a succinct estimate to make it easy to link to search engines. It also needs to affiliate more directly with our four persona through stronger imagery and dedicated pages. In addition we need to include sections and pages for the on-line music store, newsletters and blobs and embed the concert videos (e do not send user to You Tube! ) – Screaming Frog: Tool to summaries and check that you have optimized your websites(11). Off-Page Optimization The website can draw additional traffic if it links to other sites with a high search ranking.
This takes a bit of effort, particularly as its better to get a broad array of inks rather than Just a couple of big ones. However this will enhance the reach & attract more clients. Currently there are only a few websites linking in with us (Australian Music Association and some suppliers). However, we can build this up by targeting more suppliers, schools, libraries, community boards, councils, notice boards, sporting clubs, directories and other places where folks might get inspired. Of course the aim is to build referrals from links that have relevance and high quality.
The Majestic SEE tool (12) can help us keep track of. We do not want to generate high bounce rates and frustrate users. In addition these links need to be put on the keywords in the sentence rather than on the learnedly Music business name. Example: it’s never too late and you don’t have too prodigy. You can learn to play guitar in the shire at Caring in 10 easy lessons… PC – PAY PER CLICK Optimizing the website for Google Search is important, but does not mean it will immediately or always come to the top of an organic search.
Currently we rank high on direct searches for “Learn to Play Music”, “Music Lessons Sutherland”, but not when searching more indirectly such as “Private Music Lessons” or “buying musical instruments”. A great way to leap in the rankings is by advertising with Google Towards. As an example, the phrase “Learn Music” finds over 2. 5 Billion pages in Google but only 4 are paid for! Through PC we can become much more visible and in a smaller pool. Towards can also be used to increase traffic from search engines to the website. “Learn to play music” has the following list of suggested keywords to be used.
A series of Ad Campaigns will be run using several groups targeting our persona in the South Sydney area (1 Km radius around Caring). Our bid will vary, depending on the breakable point which may take a few iterations to get right. For example, if we make $25 gross profit from a $50 online gift voucher, and we have a 1% conversion rate, then we can initially set a maximum bid of $0. 25 per click for a Music Voucher Group. Groups will be monitored weekly to modify and exclude keywords in order to improve CTR, Bounce Rates, budgets, etc.
Suggest to use less than 50 keywords per group and that they are tightly bunched. Groups will be doubled into A/B formats to enable further optimization. If results are poorly, Display & Banner Advertising will be run to help trigger more searches. The ads need to be designed so as to have a good quality score (>7/10) in order to get onto the top positions on the search page. This is dependent on including keywords in the ad text and using a mix of broad, exact and phrase matches. We also need to include site links in the ad that go direct to the relevant landing page and not to the homepage.
For organic searches, Learnedly music already highlights a series of landing pages and maps. (see examples below). This increases CTR and makes the customer experience faster and easier. SOCIAL MEDIA Learning to Play music is all about fun and interacting with family & friends, so Social Media will become a key element of the marketing plan. This will bolster our word of mouth to reach, convert and engage with clients. The key tools will be Blobs, Faceable, You Tube and some Twitter. They will not be duplications but they will be linked and work together.
A Blob will be run from the same domain name as the website. It will be embedded into the Website with a similar look and feel. It will target folks that are hungry for information like the Aspiring Mums and Old Rockers. New content will be uploaded every week on topics like special deals, upcoming events, past concerts, playing tips and motivations to keep learning. These articles will have a few links through anchor text to encourage users towards key pages on the website. Like the website pages, the articles will have Title Tags, description Tags, Headings, etc in order to make the URL search friendly.
In addition the Blob will have archive of articles that can be easily searched. More importantly, others will be inspired to link into the blob which will boost page rankings in search engines. Topic Article Title Date Reviews – New Musical Instruments New Sukiyaki Keyboards – The good, the bad and the ugly Gag 10, 2013 Sutherland has got talent John Doe – In the State Finals – From Oboe to Boy! May 25, 2013 Learnedly Music already has a Faceable with 1,300+ likes, but this needs to double. First we need to incorporate a vanity URL to aid stronger recognition and branding. For example change HTTPS://www. Casebook. Com/lawrencium’s? Ref=BRB_TFH , to HTTPS://www. Faceable. Com/lawrencium’s To increase reach for those seeking to learn, we can advertise to Faceable users in the Sutherland Region of Sydney with an interest in Music and above 13 years old. This gives a Faceable catchments of 10,400 people. And we can start at $1 per 1000 impressions. We can target persona more pacifically or go broader for on-line shoppers and target all of Sydney (650,000). Example Ad for the “Old Rockers” As visitors come to our Faceable page, we can direct new comers to a different Welcome’ landing page.
They could have the chance to redeem a voucher ($10 of for on-line music store) for liking Learnedly Music. Or by signing up they can get discounted lesson. Faceable will target the Teenagers, Old Rockers and Aspiring Mums and will be more chatty, informal and strong on images, color and fun. We want to increase engagement so it is crucial to post a few times each day and encourage users to Penn more time on the Faceable page. Users can add their news feeds and comments for all their friends to see.
Posts will include striking and funny photos for people to tag themselves or links from Pinsetters. We will include and encourage links to video clips of them playing. We can also have some stimulating questions (who is the best bass guitarist in the world? ) or fun trivia to get inputs. It should also include upcoming promotions, special deals and events. Links to the website (and even direct to the online store) will be included and tagged so we can measure how much traffic is flowing across. Twitter Twitter will target primarily the teenagers to add a little spice to their learning.
General broadcasting may have limited appeal although upcoming events, specials, competitions, news feeds can still work, particularly for the online store. Tutors can set up Twitter as a quizzing engine with rewards to keep students engaged. Participation can be encouraged through provocative questions and rewards for responding back. It can also be used for motivational quotes, reminders and music playing tips. In turn, students can tweet their own questions and thoughts. This can help students think after class in a more entertaining way. You can also use Twitter as a fun way to collaborate with each other.
For example: invite students to add and write a lyric (one sentence) for a song. Unlike blobbing, tweeting takes less effort but lasts for a short time only. Finally, it can be used to connect quickly to other media, particularly You Tube. A video channel can be set up to cater for the Teenager and Old Rocker. In particular sessions from recent rock concerts and ensembles can be divvied up into episodes to show-case the latest pieces of work. In this manner progress and performances can be shared broadly with family and friends. Videos need to be short (2-3 minutes) and professionally made.