A Comparative Review of Inbound Marketing Methods on 2 ASX listed Companies
Treasury Wine Estates & Experience Co. Ltd Australian ASX All Ords List
The fundamentals of inbound marketing, as stated by The Australian Academy of Digital Marketing (2020), Inbound Marketing — The fundamentals of inbound marketing states “When a business is trying to build relationships with their customers, there are some essential tools they can use to ensure they are developing an inbound marketing strategy correctly: ● Buyer personas ● Creating great content ● Using content properly ● Understanding the buyer’s journey
Two Companies are comparatively analysed on how they apply the fundamentals of Inbound Marketing to their Organisation. Both are in the Leisure Industry, offering products that can attract and evoke enjoyment, experiences and create associated memories. Both have the ability to create stories and generate talking points, have products to immerse and delight customers, have potential to create and build customer relationships, an opportunity to build on-line communities through direct and indirect customer interactions.
In researching each Company, and to understand how each company has approached their inbound marketing; through their media posts, we examine how well the Companies understand their buyer’s journey (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing (2020 Inbound Marketing p.5) awareness (the customers’ needs or wants), consideration (what the customer options are) and decision (how to help the customer in their choice)
We asked ourselves: Ø How they are attracting their audiences, and how customer focused they are, Ø How each Company is satisfying customer wants and needs, Ø Whether they have lost sight of the benefits their respective products offer, Ø Is their inbound marketing adding value, Ø Does the Company, through their digital marketing engagement, understand the buyer’s journey?
To understand each Company, we did a quick company comparison
Strengths and weaknesses of the inbound marketing approach used by each organisation
Whilst acknowledging that both Organisations would rely heavily on Business-to-business (B2B) transactions and interactions, for the purpose of this report, analytical research is concentrating on the success of inbound marketing — Business-to-consumer (B2C).
Inbound marketing aims to attract new customers with a guarantee of value, converting and closing whilst also retaining existing customers through rewards and keeping existing customers happy. Inbound marketing is focusing on getting customers to come to you, Chaffey (2019, p.10) stated that “using digital communications to maximise sales and encourage continued usage on online services through techniques including database, personalised web messaging, customer services, chatbots, email and social media marketing.” This is known as Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Unpacking the dot points in the above table (Fig 2 — Company Strengths and Weaknesses).
Treasury Wine Estates (TWE)
TWE, to get to where it is in its market dominance, the Company was effective in its uses of resources in a pre-digital era. Moving forward into the future, in order to achieve its vision (TWE (2020) online website-About Us) “Everything we do is dedicated to realising our vision of becoming the world’s most celebrated wine company.”, the company would need to be active and fully embracing the digital marketing world, focusing on its customers and offering value, and gathering social currency (Berger |Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age.) The adoption of the Company App is a good start. The conclusion after looking at TWE’s current social media, is the Company is failing in its objectives, as evidenced by its erratic use of all its digital marketing platforms. For a Company of its size, it has also been slow to adopt to economic and environmental global ground swell — as evidenced by its September 2019 release of its Sustainability report. Whilst the report is highly commendable, perhaps this should have been addressed a decade back, and in recent times, TWE could be engaging with their audience, updating information and sharing it’s successes.
Whilst albeit very late in its governance of corporate responsibility, the TWE report appears to be missing a 5th pillar — The Customer, and it is this missing link, which in consideration of the original questions pertaining to this topic
Ø How they are attracting their audiences, and how customer focused they are
Ø how they are satisfying customer wants and needs,
Ø whether they have lost sight of the benefits their respective products offer,
Ø is their inbound marketing adding value,
Ø is the Company, through their digital marketing engagement, understanding the buyer’s journey?
The concluding answer is a no to the above questions. Whilst they are making attempts at customer engagement to attract following with its marketing association deal with music icon Snoop Dogg, they have failed to capitalise and cement their product speciality by not covering all social media with a big launch, inviting social media discussion, creating stories from this association that will offer customers something in return, giving information of where customers can find this brand and their other brands (leveraging). There appears to be a lack of planned marketing strategy to keep this and other great stories current and “top-of-mind, tip-of-tongue”, instead this big event is being over-shadowed by class action lawsuits, and videos of financial reporting. Whilst they are an ASX listed company, and have serious corporate responsibilities, they have taken their eye off the market and are failing to give value, to understand the buyer’s journey, and are not fully practising Customer Relationship Management. Time will tell, if their sustainability adoption will be sufficient to keep their market dominance, and if the age demographic and wedge of the market that they are aiming at in their association with music icon, will lead to a sustained growth and loyal customer following of all their brands.
A glance at a competitor, will highlight how much TWE have to improve their website and social media presence. http://www.gallo.com/
Experience Co. Ltd (EXP)
EXP, acknowledges that social media is as an important tool for customer engagement. Their Annual report issued 2019 reflects their value of social media “The way in which our customers, both direct and agents, interact with us continues to change at a rapid pace. To meet expectations, during the period we have invested in our websites and booking engines, on boarded a number of new payment options and increased the channels and media used to communicate and share content”
Mobile interactions with the company is easier when searching for skydiving. There are good pictures, videos, CTA’s, information. They have understood that over 53% of the net is accessed through mobile phones, and their travelling customers would be majority interacting through their mobile. Mobile interactions included integrated payment options, blogs, clothing, news, stories, deals and specials, they have even added language selections. However, there is still testing required as their Rainforest meets Reef has no information “Page not found”. The CTA through Adventures in Your Inbox “Join the XList” returns “Page not found”
The Company vision (Experience Co. (2020) online website- About Us) “our vision and business strategy of offering high quality and memorable adventure tourism experiences, and to become the largest and most respected adventure tourism company in the world”. Acknowledges that the customer is at the heart of the business, and therefore all digital technology should be geared towards every customer, being able to easily access information, delight in the discovery journey and have their decision to be part of the memorable experience a simplistic and easy option, one that is replicated in all corners of the world.
The Company has so many wonderful experiences to offer and so many stories to tell, including education and involvement of all sectors of society in environmental protection, however their website, fails to communicate these stories, and does not have blogs, nor do the links “Lets Go” .. go anywhere.
To analysis the Company’s inbound marketing successes and to see if they have addressed the questions
Ø How they are attracting their audiences, and how customer focused they are
Ø how they are satisfying customer wants and needs,
Ø whether they have lost sight of the benefits their respective products offer,
Ø is their inbound marketing adding value,
Ø is the Company, through their digital marketing engagement, understanding the buyer’s journey.
The concluding answer is a yes to the above questions. They have understood the customer is the heart of the business, and have made great strides to incorporate experiences. However, the greatest weakness is not having a consistent message across all media channels, and not ensuring that the media options are working correctly. The company is greatly affected by the environmental current issues (weather — fires/excess rain/winds and global pandemic), however this down time could be used to upgrade and test all their media platforms, write great content stories, reach out to their customers, inform of steps on how their vision will be accomplished. A glance at a competitor’s website will see they have much to do, to keep at the top of their game. News — We Are Explorers
Which Organisation is best at inbound marketing and why
In comparing how each Organisation currently undertakes its inbound marketing, information is based upon digital evidence, and after analysis, we conclude with a rating system “better or worse”. Ratings are on the basis of analysis of the main companies websites and not the associated individual and different brand websites.
*** Chaffey (2019,p.17) states e-commerce refers to all financial and informational electronically mediated exchanges between an organisation and its external stakeholders. Such as inbound customer service enquiries and outbound email broadcasts.
Conclusion: Experience Co.Ltd — have embraced digital more effectively, and overall, customer experiences are enjoyable. They interactions through social media are generally well covered.
Examples of how each organisation could improve its inbound marketing
Each companies emphasis on social media marketing, what the impacts of inbound marketing mean in terms of offering value for their customers, retaining customers, and how the effective use of technology will help with marketing-sourced income:
Treasury Wine Estate (TWE)
Ø Reorganise the Company website, to become less formal, and more customer focused on the customer’s journey — Awareness, Consideration, Decision
Ø Include and embrace a 5th pillar — Customers
Ø Plan and implement a strategic and engaging social media marketing, through regular use of fresh content across their social media sites, LinkedIn, Facebook (Australian Academy of Digital marketing (2020)| Social Media Marketing states “Businesses can encourage direct engagement via Facebook messenger by including their direct Facebook messenger link or code in all online and email communication); Twitter, Videos.
Ø TWA could run regular stories to engage with their customer demographics, letting them know what brands are releasing new products, what competitions are on, information on areas, country preferences, customer preferences, grape growing tips, recipes, vineyard experiences, travellers experiences, brand promotions (Flores (2014) states “brands are first and foremost sender of messages”, brands that are offering specials/deals, stories on their resellers. Stories on associations and label stories; how TWE is embracing technology, and how their apps work; what is on the planning board and why
There are so many topics that could be created into so many great, newsworthy stories, yet currently there is so little interaction between the Company and its customers.
Ø Each story could have a CTA directing audiences to the TWA website, to engage with the company directly. CTA’s such as:
“Read On”; ask audiences to “Re-Tweet”; offering discounts; asking audiences to Join clubs/newsletters etc. “today”; Install Now (apps); asking audiences to “Send Message” (engage with Company); “Free downloads” (Apps/Recipe’s/Discount Coupons); Ask audiences questions; “Subscribe to”; “Games”; Ask audiences to try a new wine; create a label / name it.
Ø The TWAGlobal current website, is formal and lacks personality. The messages are stock standard feel good, and ambiguous, with little evidence to show how they are embracing and implementing their visions. The staff are not engaged, as evidenced from poor feedback, management is not engaging with staff and appears not to walk the talk. There is no evidence easily found on community engagement, despite being mentioned in one of the 4 pillars. Each message of the 4 pillars can be improved with actionable examples.
Ø TWE Global could make more use of Links to their brands, recipes, vineyards, people, stories, countries, markets, distributors, discounts, restaurants, cellar door promotions; bottle stores showcasing promotions.
Ø TWE Global could take control of their social media. As their social media currently stands, it appears as though the company places little importance on this mode of engagement, advertising and marketing.
Experience Co. EXP
Ø Their business is 100% based on customer engagement, and in order to offer value to the customer, they need to ensure existing media channels are working, current, up-to-date, and have plenty of ways customers can interact.
Ø Technology is going to become so important into the future, and as such businesses such as EXP need to find tools that can immerse their clients, thrill them and encourage clients to join them for actual activities. Some 500 000 total activities took place in 2018 and 2019 had a drop in their tandem sky dives to just over 192000. Weather events; drop in tourism, high capex outlays are all influences. Each area of activity should be analysed to see what corresponding indoor activities could be incorporated i.e. (indoor wind tunnels simulating sky diving; interactive educational reef activities — partnerships with science).
Ø Integrator’s such as chatbots, and other technology, such as micro-segmentation marketing, giving personalised experience. AI will help with information on experiences, media channels needs to prompt and up-to-date information, or helps with missing information.
Ø Video interactions could be displayed more on other social media platforms. The visual aspect helps audience to immerse into the narrative and invites call’s to actions.
Ø Building of an app could be tailored for more personalised experiences and easier tour bookings
Conclusion
TWE Global with its Global Distribution, well known brands, is such a great company and could capitalise on its social media marketing by become more personalised, engaging, increase its market presence, retaining its dominance, and grow its lesser known brands to have a greater market awareness and profitability.
Experience Co., with its adventures set to thrill, delight and create lasting memories, could capitalise on its market spread by branching out into indoor activities and AI technology, so increasing its market presence, and helping it grow and incorporate all those “want-to-be” travellers, and encouraging and retaining customers for outdoor adventures. More use of digital technology with the adoption of apps will also enhance and add value to customer interactions.
References
Australian Academy of Digital Marketing (2020). Inbound Marketing & Social Media Marketing
Berger, J. (2014). Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age (2nd ed.) Simon & Schuster UK
Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019). Digital Marketing — Strategy, Implementation and Practice (7th ed.) Pearson
Flores, L. (2014). How to Measure Digital Marketing: Metrics for accessing Impact and Designing Success (1st ed.) Palgrave Macmillan
Unruh, H (2018) Access Intelligence. LLC (2020) | Chief Marketer. “Understanding Why Micro-Segmentation is Critical to Digital Experiences” [online] [Accessed 13.05.20]
West, C. | Sprout Social (2019). 10 Call to Action Phrases to Increase Clicks & Conversions. [Online] [Accessed 11.05.20]
