DMKT5008 Spring 2019: Digital Marketing Strategies for Blockbuster

This report examines the digital marketing strategies Blockbuster could have employed to avoid bankruptcy. It begins by contrasting traditional and digital marketing, highlighting the advantages of the latter. The report then delves into website optimization techniques, including server-side optimization, compression, and image handling. A significant portion is dedicated to search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing, explaining SEO strategies, key performance indicators, and content creation. Social media marketing (SMM) is also analyzed, covering platform selection (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube) and relevant KPIs. Furthermore, the report touches upon pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, online display marketing, and email marketing strategies. Finally, it discusses how Blockbuster could have utilized and managed these digital marketing methods effectively, concluding with a summary of the key findings and recommendations. The report also references the legal and regulatory aspects of digital marketing.

Running Head: DIGITAL MARKETING 0
Digital Marketing
Student name
FEBRUARY 28, 2019

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
1. Traditional v/s digital marketing.................................................................................................3
Reasons for the relevance of Blockbuster to invest in digital marketing....................................3
2. Website optimization techniques.................................................................................................3
3. SEO and content marketing.........................................................................................................4
Search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.................................................................................4
Social media marketing (SMM)..................................................................................................5
Content marketing.......................................................................................................................7
4. PPC and online display advertising.............................................................................................7
Pay per click marketing...............................................................................................................7
Online display marketing.............................................................................................................9
Laws and regulations...................................................................................................................9
5. E-mail marketing strategy..........................................................................................................10
6. Ways for boo.com to use and manage the digital marketing methods......................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
Blockbuster video is video game and home movie rental Services Company, initiated in 1985.
The company faced the challenge of being bankrupt in 2010 due to its inability to transform
business towards the digital model. The company could have been used digital marketing to
prevent itself from bankruptcy (Adam & Kotler, 2014). The report will consider the digital
marketing strategies that the company could have used in order to prevent its business and
sustain in the competitive market.

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1. Traditional v/s digital marketing
Marketing is a major concept that every business is aware and its relevance has been knowing
since centuries. The external environment is changing, and so do the technology and social
trends in modern society. The tools of marketing have also been updated according to the
changing trends all over the globe. The traditional marketing is quite different from that of digital
marketing (businesstopia, 2018).
Traditional marketing includes conventional tools and methods, for instance, advertisement and
marketing through television, radio, newspaper, printed form like pamphlets and billboards and
flyers, or magazines and journals. While digital marketing is considering the internet era to be
used and influence the potential customers to make a purchase. This includes platforms like
networking platform like LinkedIn, social media platforms like twitter, instagram, and Facebook,
blogs, paid pop-ups, clickbait links, email marketing (Tuten & Ashley, 2015).
It has been considered that digital marketing versatile than the traditional one, as the company
can go for innovation through digital marketing and reach maximum customers at the same time.
Reasons for the relevance of Blockbuster to invest in digital marketing
 Reduced cost – through the use of digital marketing that traditional marketing, the
company could have reduced the cost
 Brand development – this is the best way to develop the brand name and brand image, as
it is possible for the company to create brand awareness globally to a large audience at
the same time (Arena & Azzone, 2015)
 Better customer engagement – digital marketing is the way to interact with the customer,
which includes two-way interaction, it is better for the company to understand the
customer review and what the company need to improve (Sener, et al., 2014)
 Customer relationship management – since the interaction is two way, it becomes
possible for the company to develop better customer relationship through a social media
platform
 Competitive advantage – through digital marketing blockbuster could have tracked down
to the competitors and develop a strategy in order to gain competitive advantage (Anute
& Deshmukh, 2015)

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 Real-time results – the results from the marketing can be seen on the real-time basis, as
this includes the feedback from the company, the like and dislike by the customers.
Moreover, it can be observed how many people have been visited the website or have
seen the promotion on the social media platform (Ahlin, 2014).
2. Website optimization techniques
These are the ways for the organization to try the easier, faster and convenient process, through
which the speed of the website can be maximized, and the company can save money through
better web development and maintenance. This can be bifurcated into three parts that are the
assets optimization, which includes images, JavaScript and CSS as web components. Server-side
optimization and platform optimization, which includes word press optimization (Biemans,
2018)
Blockbuster could have improved the website performance through following website
optimization techniques:
 Choosing better web host – this aspect is not directly responsible for the optimization
purpose, however, it is the important aspect in the web development, the reason being the
aspects like security, the stability of the server, customer support and price, which play an
important role and must be kept in mind by the company.
 Compression with GZip – this includes the transfer of information or content from client
to server side or vice versa, as and when the HTTP request is made. The content
compression could be helpful in reducing the process time at every request made. GZip
could be one of the ways for compression for a blockbuster.
 Merger various JavaScript into single – there could be multiple JavaScript which must be
combined together into one URL, which can be done through manipulation, for instance
using PHP (Bruns, 2013)
 Compress CSS and JavaScript – the blockbuster can use minify, which is a PHP5
application which could be helpful in combining multiple JavaScript files and CSS. This
will let the contents be compressed and the results would be served with HTTP encoding
allowing optimized client-side holding (Ryan, 2016)

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 Handling web images – images are the major aspect over the websites and must be
appropriately optimized as they could be responsible for utilizing a very large volume of
bandwidth on regular basis. For instance, the company can optimize PNG images, which
could be done through web tools and services
 Handling CSS – this can be done through keeping CSS short, use of CSS sprite, reduction
CSS files in terms of amount (Smith, 2018).
 Deactivate and erase the plugins, which are unused (Camison & Fores, 2016)
3. SEO and content marketing
Search engine optimization (SEO) strategy
SEO is the process of ensuring one’s website visibility and its information on search engines
results in pages. In other words, when people are searching for something using some terms, the
visibility of the Company’s website in the top list that is the organic results are responsible due
to search engine optimization (Byrne, 2018).
This is one of the major aspects that the Blockbuster could have integrated into an effective
digital marketing strategy. This includes incorporating the keywords selected strategically and
with valuable content, which could be responsible for enhancing the company presence at world
wide web and eventually become the bottom line of the company (Sharma & Gautam, 2017).
Moreover, it is relevant to know how the customer would find the company invaluable
information. For a blockbuster to increase the customer experience through SEO, the company
must include quality content, optimization of the content, and pay attention to changing trends in
technology, testing the website of the company, tracking the competition strategy, website
optimization, using Alt text (Chari & Feng, 2018).
This can be easily understood with an example, is an individual search for designer phone covers
on any search engine say on Google, and the first link visible on results is amazon’s link to
phone covers, this indicates good SEO marketing of Amazon (forbes, 2019).
The major key performance indicators of the SEO marketing includes organic sessions that are
measuring the visits to the website by the audience from some of the popular search engines like
Bing and Google, which can be measured with the help of Google analytics. Another KPI would
be increased in keyword ranking, this means the position of the website on search engines, the

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rank closest to one would be preferable (Skudiene, et al., 2015). Third KPI would be leads or
conversions, which can be any sought of contact or interaction with the customer, this can be a
phone call, newsletter signup, purchase made. The company can improve this KPI through
conversion rate optimization, moreover, another KPI would be the bounce rate, sessions or
pages, the average duration of the session, the load time of the page, that is lesser load time, the
better for customers and company (Camison & Fores, 2016).
Social media marketing (SMM)
This is another major aspect of digital marketing that the company could have used to be
successful and popular among the audience. In today’s scenario, especially youth is spending
maximum hours of the day on social media, which provide companies to easily reach out to the
customers. In earlier times, people use to spend the time of watching television, which was the
reason companies use to prefer advertisement through television mostly, but with changing the
social trend, social media marketing tends to be popular amongst all (Su, et al., 2018). The
major activities that are associated with the SMM for blockbuster would be deciding on the
social media platform, which includes various platforms. According to the priority list, the most
approachable platform for the company would be Facebook, the reason being it is one social

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media platform with maximum users, and continue to increase every day (jeffbullas, 2019).
Moreover, it has been observed that Facebook is not only been used by youth but all ages of
people, except kids. The company can create brand awareness and run marketing campaign over
this platform through the post, use of images, innovative videos can be used to influence the
customer to make a purchase of the brand (alleywatch, 2019).
Figure 1: (Source: (facebook, 2019)
Another social media platform would be Instagram, for this, the major focus would be targeting
the youth, the reason being this social media is generally used by young college going students
and people, for which the company can post live videos or images on Instagram. However, this
platform is less active than Facebook, but still another popular social media platform, which the
company must focus to attract new customers (Amabile & Rigolizzo, 2015).
Twitter would be another platform that the company must go for, this platform could be majorly
used to interact with the customers, and would have largely helped the company to know what
the problems customers are facing with the brand or products, moreover the customer feedback
can be received by the company through this social media platform. The reason being users can

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retweet on the companies tweet (Tiago, 2014). It makes possible for the company to retain the
existing customers and create customer loyalty. The company can use the feedback for the
improving the products and services that they are offering to retain the existing customers and
attracting the new customers, moreover, this will make the company aware about the changing
trends and needs of the customers, and would not be in the stage of bankruptcy (Armstrong &
Giardina, 2016).
YouTube is another popular platform, which seems to be the major opportunity for the company
to gain positive publicity. In today’s social trends, people prefer to check the review of the
products or services before making the purchase decision, and YouTube is one of the platforms
where people prefer to go through for review or use of product or services before making the
actual purchase. This could include the videos of customer review or the product used by some
of the popular bloggers, which could create customer loyalty (Coulson-Thomas, 2017)
The key performance indicators of SMM, which could be helpful for the company to monitor
and control this digital marketing aspect would be number of views in case of videos, number of
likes, and number of shares of the posts, profile visits on social media websites, subscribers in
case of youtube platform. Followers in case of Instagram, customer satisfaction can be identified
through comments on the posts and on twitter, moreover, the lead generation can be measured
through social media (Griffiths & McLean, 2014).
Content marketing
This is another type of digital marketing, which includes providing or disseminating the content
or the product and brand awareness through the various platform, for the customer. The major
key activities include the creation of the content, for which the major aspect for the company
would be a wise choice of words while creating the content. Another work here is sharing, for
the content to reach to the customer the company must decide on the platform from where the
company would like the information to reach to the customer (Zahay, 2015). The online material
can be shared in the form of blogs, videos, social media post. The role of content marketing is
not to promote the brand, but it is essential in order to create the relevancy or create the interest
of the customers. This includes some relevant, valuable, and consistent information to the
customers, this is done for increasing the customer base and attract the customer attraction and
this is to create the lead to the purchase (Craig & Douglas, 2015).

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The major key performance indicator that the company could use for monitoring, and measuring
the content marketing of the company downloads, this is in case of blogs, time on page, this is to
indicate the time per individual spend on the page reflect that the customer found the content to
be interesting or useful or not. A number of shares of the content would be another factor to
indicate the usefulness of the content marketing for the company, moreover, comments and
interaction can also be helpful. At the various platform or company’s official website, the
customer asks some questions through the post, which indicate how much the content is making
the point clear to the customers. Lead generation, cost per lead, cost per click, subscribers or
followers are some other key performance indicator in this digital marketing (Doole & Lowe,
2008).
4. PPC and online display advertising
Pay per click marketing
It is another digital marketing which is paid by the company, according to this model the
advertisers are liable to pay a fee for every time an ad is clicked. SEO is one of the pay per click
marketing. An advertiser prefers to bid over the keywords that they believe that the user would
be using to search the product. The ad’s quality score and bide in combination is the measure of
click-through rate, relevancy of pay per click keywords, relevancy of advertisement to the
landing page. Some of the major benefits that the company can gain through this digital
marketing would be, it offers to remark of the visitors. This reduces the existing visitor effort to
reach to the website again, this marketing can provide one the measurable results, more than the
SEO. This is also helpful for the company to track the return on investment. Blockbuster could
have used this marketing to gain competitive advantage. This is also helpful to gain quick results
for the company, this paid advertising is one which could be quite affordable for the company’s
as compared to other paid marketing tools, and this leads the company to track the ads of the
company on a real-time basis (Hu, et al., 2016).

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Figure: (Source: (bostonmediadomain, 2019)
The steps that the company could take to implement the PPC campaign effectively are
Step 1- setting goals – this is the initial stage where the company identifies and set the objective
for the marketing campaign to run so that the planning for each objective can be created. For
instance let’s say for blockbuster the objective could be brand awareness, generating a lead, and
increase in online sales (Loewenberger, 2013).
Step 2- choosing the platform – this includes deciding over the platform to reach to the
customers for these paid ads, for instance, it could be Google, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, and
MSN.
Step 3- plan targeting – this is to decide on the target audience for the campaign. The key
audience for this mode of marketing would be the businessmen and women, the reason being
these are the potential customers who are assumed to be occupied in work to a greater extent,
however, spend large time on laptops and use the search engines to great extent.
Step 4- keyword research – this stage is a bit time consuming, the reason being this include the
core keywords list, which the company must continuously refine and enlarge the list for lowering
the cost (Rebon, et al., 2013).
Step 5- writing effective ad text – the choice of word is a major relevance in this marketing, as
this includes making the campaign attractive and interactive to get customer attention. This must
be appealing, and unique.

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Step 6- adding ad extensions
Step 7 – Ad scheduling – this is a significant step to optimize the strategy of the company’s ad/.
This is deciding on the time when to display to the customers, that is on specific days or
whenever the customer search
Step 8 – Optimize the landing pages
Step 9- filtering out the negative keywords
Step 10 – benchmarking through analyzing competitors
Step 11- integrate the conversion tracking code
Step 12- use of Google analytics- to monitor and track the campaign’s effectiveness (Harrigan &
Choudhury, 2014)
Online display marketing
This is the marketing or ads on social media, or websites through various ad formats and banners
that are made of text, videos, images, audio, and flash. The aim of this marketing is to deliver the
brand messages and general advertisements to the visitors of the website (Hudson & Roth, 2016).
The key steps taken by the company to create the display ads for the effective result would be
1. Research – this is the essential stage as it is liable to improve the quality of the campaign.
This could include the target audience for the campaign. For instance, the target audience
for the same would be social media users like young people, college going students, and
working or businessmen and women who spend large time on electronic devices and
social media.
2. Communicate with the target audience
3. Use of rich media for influencing and attracting the audience
4. Integration of the banner with all other marketing tools
5. Investment in effective ads
6. Exceed expectations
7. Call to action
8. Test advertisement copy (Pappas, 2016)