Communications Strategy of MESH Consultancy

This assessment analyzes the performance of MESH Consultancy's digital marketing strategies, including web analytics, SEO, and social media. Recommendations for improvement are provided based on primary and secondary data.

RUNNING HEAD: COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
Communications Strategy of MESH Consultancy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
Summary
The purpose of this assessment is to analyses as well as investigates the primary data
regarding the performance of digital marketing strategies of MESH Consultancy a firm
seeking to enhance the learning experience of students at Murdoch University. The
investigation of marketing strategies of MESH Consultancy involve that across the three
different set of activities which are, website analytics, SEO and social media. This study then
proceeds to mention observations as mention few suggestions with help of secondary data
obtained from reputed sources from the internet. After giving description of how primary and
secondary data has been used, the complete set of recommendations is shared. Thereafter the
report ends with sharing concluding notes based on observations made from the study.

2COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Client Overview.....................................................................................................................3
Project Overview....................................................................................................................3
Research Questions................................................................................................................3
Methodology..........................................................................................................................4
Discussion: Data Analysis..........................................................................................................4
Web Analytics........................................................................................................................4
Search Engine Optimization or SEO......................................................................................7
Social Media.........................................................................................................................11
Secondary Data....................................................................................................................14
Primary Data........................................................................................................................14
Recommendations....................................................................................................................15
Conclusion................................................................................................................................15
References................................................................................................................................17

3COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
Introduction
Client Overview
The client, MESH Consultancy is responsible for offering both academic and student
consulting services to their respective clients in the areas of web design, strategic
communication, development of applications and games among others. By taking the pledge
of strengthening the learning experience of students they highlight the strength of Murdoch
University in providing work-integrated learning1. They are working towards promoting a
new degree structure of the School of Art.
Project Overview
The project involves conducting analysis of the traffic and activity of the client’s
website, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy and rank as well as social media
campaigns over the period of a year. Thereafter the report discusses about the primary data
provided by the client along with the secondary data collected from relevant sources.
Research Questions
How successful is the company’s current marketing strategies in luring visitor activity?
Are the SEO strategies helping to improve search engine ranking of the website?
How effective is the social media campaign of the company?
Methodology
The report conducts the assessment by identifying the problem in the particular digital
marketing channels followed by discussion of the data collected from the client or reputed
1 Leong, Raymond, and Marie Kavanagh. "A work integrated learning (WIL) framework to develop graduate
skills and attributes in an Australian university's accounting program." Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative
Education 14, no. 1 (2013): 1-14.

4COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
sources over the internet. Thereafter the required analysis is made and solutions are
identified.
Discussion: Data Analysis
Web Analytics
Web Analytics refers to the process that involves analysis of visitor behaviour to a
specific website. With the help of web analytics, businesses can earn greater number of
visitors, attract and retain newer customers for goods and services or even in increasing the
volume of money invested by every customer. Google analytics is the leading analytical tool
for businesses today2. Hotjar is another comprehensive tool that can aid in performing in
depth analysis of websites like meshatmurdoch.com3. The primary data used for this report is
generated by google analytics.
2 Farney, Tabatha, and Nina McHale. "Introducing google analytics for libraries." Library technology
reports 49, no. 4 (2013): 5-8.
3 Riegel, Julie. "Remote Unmediated A/B Test Research." (2017).

5COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
Figure 1: Traffic Analysis of Website
The above diagram shows how google analytics uses graphical representations to
point out the time periods at which the particular website has been attracting visitors and the

6COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
times it is struggling to generate any activity. It can be easily understood that the website
traffic remains very consistent for the months of April and May. A sudden spike in activity
by visitors is noticeable during the last few days of the month of June. For the rest of the
year, user activity on the website is pretty much non-existent. A detailed breakdown is
provided below the graph in tabular format. Based on this data the performance of current
marketing strategies of MESH Consultancy can be easily ascertained and necessary changes
can be made to the marketing campaigns accordingly. It is evident that the website only gains
interest among visitors in the months of April and May which are usually times when
examinations occur. This means to have decent traffic throughout the year, MESH
Consultancy must find ingenious ways to associate the learning courses with the regular
classes of students at Murdoch University so that students can better understand these classes
while also improving quality of learning. To improve the performance of the home page, it is
highly important to improve the layout of the homepage and to add ergonomic touches to the
UX/UI of the same4. This is essential in minimizing the sheer amount of drop offs occurring
in the homepage as can be seen from the diagram below.
4 Šimek, Pavel, Jiří Vaněk, and P. Pavlík. "Usability of UX Methods in Agrarian Sector-Verification." Agris on-
line Papers in Economics and Informatics 7, no. 665-2016-45086 (2015): 49.

7COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
Figure 2: Flow of users in different webpages
Search Engine Optimization or SEO
The set of activities that deals with improving the visibility of websites in the unpaid
results pages of different search engines. Obtaining a high SEO rank is the easiest way to
boost organic visitor activity in the website5. Here data on multiple parameters that contribute
to SEO rank of the website is gathered. Google is constantly updating the algorithm tasked
with determining the SEO rank of websites, web pages and blog posts. Panda and penguin are
two such updates6. Some of these updates are also penalizing websites that are not
periodically updating their content.
5 Wang, David Y., Matthew Der, Mohammad Karami, Lawrence Saul, Damon McCoy, Stefan Savage, and
Geoffrey M. Voelker. "Search+ seizure: The effectiveness of interventions on seo campaigns." In Proceedings
of the 2014 Conference on Internet Measurement Conference, pp. 359-372. ACM, 2014.
6 Lievonen, Marjut. "Understanding Google Algorithms and SEO is Essential for Online Marketer: Guide for
Interns in Golden Moments." (2013).

8COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
Figure 3: Exit pages of meshatmurdoch.com
It can be noted that out of all the exit pages listed, the two pages ‘about mesh’ and
‘graphic design course’ have extremely high exit count7. This just means additional focus
must be given towards making these pages more appealing to the visitor so that the
percentage of exits can exist more evenly among the different pages of the website.
7 Bekavac, Ivan, and Daniela Garbin Praničević. "Web analytics tools and web metrics tools: An overview and
comparative analysis." Croatian Operational Research Review 6, no. 2 (2015): 373-386.

9COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
Figure 4: Landing pages of meshatmurdoch.com
The Google analytics data regarding landing pages show that none of the visitor
activity is obtained from social referral. This only suggests that the activity is generated
through either SEO or SEM (Search Engine Marketing) however MESH Consultancy mainly
focuses on SEO only and therefore it is safe to note that most sessions are resulting from
organic campaigns.

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Figure 5: Site speed overview
Another key factor contributing to the SEO rank of the website revolves around the
performance of the web pages8. According to the data presented above, loading time of the
web pages at peak load in the month of May takes quite a hit but is decent otherwise. The
performance of the website can be further improved by compressing the images and videos
before uploading. It is also encouraged that MESH invests in SEM which uses advanced
features in narrowing down the target audience and also bidding strategies that help the
website links in Google search engine results page (SERP) make it to the first page more
8 Devece, Carlos, Rafael Lapiedra, and Daniel Palacios. "Website effectiveness for tourism accommodation
companies." In Strategies in E-Business, pp. 55-65. Springer, Boston, MA, 2014.

11COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
quickly and easily9. An important advantage of SEM is configuring of negative keywords10.
But if they are only to stick to SEO, it must be noted that these ranks are not permanent.
Since constant updates are coming from Google and websites are periodically analysed, the
team must not stray away from consistently maintaining or creating contents.
Social Media
Social media marketing are a set of activities that deals with promotion of products or
services by leveraging the features of the websites and platforms of social media. SMM posts
are of two types, i) Paid and ii) Organic11. Paid advertisements can come in three different
forms namely Awareness, Consideration and Conversion.
9 Yang, Zhuofan, Yong Shi, and Bo Wang. "Search engine marketing, financing ability and firm performance in
E-commerce." Procedia Computer Science 55 (2015): 1106-1112.
10 Spina, Damiano, Julio Gonzalo, and Enrique Amigó. "Discovering filter keywords for company name
disambiguation in twitter." Expert Systems with Applications 40, no. 12 (2013): 4986-5003.
11 Kumar, V., Vikram Bhaskaran, Rohan Mirchandani, and Milap Shah. "Practice prize winner—creating a
measurable social media marketing strategy: increasing the value and ROI of intangibles and tangibles for hokey
pokey." Marketing Science32, no. 2 (2013): 194-212.

12COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
Figure 6: Landing pages visits
As per the above graph, the landing page visits of MESH Consultancy through social
referrals stay flat at zero. This means MESH is not interested in tapping the social media
platforms at the moment and this is definitely worrisome. Students spend a lot of time in
social media platforms and by ignoring this platform, MESH have failed to generate the level
of connect it could potentially have with the students of Murdoch University.

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Figure 7: Flow of users from social media
The above diagram shows how visitors of meshatmurdoch.com traverse through the
website and which webpage gets what number of visits. It is noticed that the largest number
of sessions occur in the first set of tabs along with the largest drop offs. But the gap between
the number of sessions and number of drop offs reduces dramatically after the first
interaction. In second set of interactions the student make their purchase decisions and
therefore the gap between the sessions and drop-offs shrink gain. To gain back the drop-offs
in the second interaction it is absolutely essential for companies to run remarketing
advertisements along with custom conversions12. However the default approach for the
second interactions should be conversion advertisements where successful conversions
should be shown up-scaling advertisements while unsuccessful ones can be tracked and
monitored. A key point to note here is that just like Google in SEO, Facebook also uses an
12 Brik, Alex, and Jeffrey Remmel. "Diagnosing automatic whitelisting for dynamic remarketing ads using
hybrid ASP." In International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, pp. 173-185.
Springer, Cham, 2015.

14COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
algorithm called EdgeRank13. It is the key technology that determines the success rate of
advertisements.
Secondary Data
The process of collecting secondary data is far easier than that of collecting primary data.
Here collection of information occurs by way of utilizing already published sources. These
can come in many forms like articles, internet, white papers, and different kinds of media like
newspapers, research editorials or even academic journals14. Another big benefit that
secondary data presents is that most of the background work is already done, for example
case studies and literature reviews. Research publications that are available from the year
2013 to present are considered for this study.
Primary Data
Use of Primary data concerns with conducting research through practical means like
interviews, questionnaires and group debates. Primary data is obtained via the processes of
analysis and statistical calculation15. These are considered to be accurate methodologies
which get followed with precise end results. However, this category of data collection is often
very painstaking and requires long durations. Here performance of all the components of the
website is measured, graphically represented and segmented with the help of Google
Analytics which can also be used to set marketing goals16. The primary data obtained from
Google analytics, presents a variety of charts and info graphics which is helping in
13 DeVito, Michael A. "From editors to algorithms: A values-based approach to understanding story selection in
the Facebook news feed." Digital Journalism 5, no. 6 (2017): 753-773.
14 Clark, Gordon. "5 Secondary data." Methods in Human Geography (2013): 57.
15 Mills, James A., Céline Teplitsky, Beatriz Arroyo, Anne Charmantier, Peter H. Becker, Tim R. Birkhead,
Pierre Bize et al. "Archiving primary data: solutions for long-term studies." Trends in Ecology & Evolution 30,
no. 10 (2015): 581-589.
16 Chaffey, Dave, and Paul Russell Smith. eMarketing eXcellence: Planning and optimizing your digital
marketing. Routledge, 2013.

15COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
investigating the digital marketing strategies of MESH Consultancy for the three different
sets of marketing activities.
Recommendations
From the Web Analytics section, it is clearly evident that the traffic to the website
meshatmurdoch.com is not consistent throughout the year. This only suggests that actions
must be taken maintain a connection with the students throughout the year. This can be done
by launching programs that tie appropriately with respect to their class lessons and practical
sessions as also including inspirational content for students. Moving to SEO, it is found that
this is the set of activities that MESH Consultancy is solely relying on and so far, they have
refrained from making much investments. Though they are getting decent results with SEO,
they can gain more flexibility in keyword planning, the kind of searches made by users as
also restrict the advertisements for negative keywords if they chose to invest in SEM. As for
social media marketing, it is observed that the company made no progress for this set of
activities. It is strongly recommended that the company kick starts their social media
campaigns. Since students spend healthy lengths of time in social media platform, this can
only pay dividends for MESH especially in gaining consistent visitors. To make the most of
social media marketing conversion advertisements should be conducted.
Conclusion
In conclusion this report investigates the performance of MESH Consultancy’s
marketing strategies across the three different set of activities and lists the observations along
with suggesting ways to improve upon the existing strategies. The assessment makes
observations based on the primary data regarding performance of meshatmurdoch.com and
discusses the issues while also presenting suggestions with the help of secondary data
gathered from reputed sources. From Web Analytics, It finds that there exists a huge gap of

16COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
connect with the students for about almost ten months throughout the year which can only be
solved by launching curated learning programs throughout the year. When it comes to SEO
however, it can be seen that MESH Consultancy has put up a decent showing although
further optimizations to website content can be made including adding more ergonomic feel
to the website layout as also improving the UX/UI of the website. But for social media, no
efforts by MESH Consultancy could be observed and hence the study urges the company to
initiate their digital marketing campaigns for social media specifically because of it is more
appealing for the students.

17COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
References
Bekavac, Ivan, and Daniela Garbin Praničević. "Web analytics tools and web metrics tools:
An overview and comparative analysis." Croatian Operational Research Review 6, no. 2
(2015): 373-386.
Brik, Alex, and Jeffrey Remmel. "Diagnosing automatic whitelisting for dynamic
remarketing ads using hybrid ASP." In International Conference on Logic Programming and
Nonmonotonic Reasoning, pp. 173-185. Springer, Cham, 2015.
Chaffey, Dave, and Paul Russell Smith. eMarketing eXcellence: Planning and optimizing
your digital marketing. Routledge, 2013.
Clark, Gordon. "5 Secondary data." Methods in Human Geography (2013): 57.
Devece, Carlos, Rafael Lapiedra, and Daniel Palacios. "Website effectiveness for tourism
accommodation companies." In Strategies in E-Business, pp. 55-65. Springer, Boston, MA,
2014.
DeVito, Michael A. "From editors to algorithms: A values-based approach to understanding
story selection in the Facebook news feed." Digital Journalism 5, no. 6 (2017): 753-773.
Farney, Tabatha, and Nina McHale. "Introducing google analytics for libraries." Library
technology reports 49, no. 4 (2013): 5-8.
Kumar, V., Vikram Bhaskaran, Rohan Mirchandani, and Milap Shah. "Practice prize winner
—creating a measurable social media marketing strategy: increasing the value and ROI of
intangibles and tangibles for hokey pokey

18COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY OF MESH CONSULTANCY
Leong, Raymond, and Marie Kavanagh. "A work integrated learning (WIL) framework to
develop graduate skills and attributes in an Australian university's accounting
program." Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education 14, no. 1 (2013): 1-14.
Lievonen, Marjut. "Understanding Google Algorithms and SEO is Essential for Online
Marketer: Guide for Interns in Golden Moments." (2013).
Mills, James A., Céline Teplitsky, Beatriz Arroyo, Anne Charmantier, Peter H. Becker, Tim
R. Birkhead, Pierre Bize et al. "Archiving primary data: solutions for long-term studies."
Trends in Ecology & Evolution 30, no. 10 (2015): 581-589.
Riegel, Julie. "Remote Unmediated A/B Test Research." (2017).
Šimek, Pavel, Jiří Vaněk, and P. Pavlík. "Usability of UX Methods in Agrarian Sector-
Verification." Agris on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics 7, no. 665-2016-45086
(2015): 49.
Spina, Damiano, Julio Gonzalo, and Enrique Amigó. "Discovering filter keywords for
company name disambiguation in twitter." Expert Systems with Applications 40, no. 12
(2013): 4986-5003.
Wang, David Y., Matthew Der, Mohammad Karami, Lawrence Saul, Damon McCoy, Stefan
Savage, and Geoffrey M. Voelker. "Search+ seizure: The effectiveness of interventions on
seo campaigns." In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Internet Measurement
Conference, pp. 359-372. ACM, 2014.
Yang, Zhuofan, Yong Shi, and Bo Wang. "Search engine marketing, financing ability and
firm performance in E-commerce." Procedia Computer Science 55 (2015): 1106-1112.