Digital Marketing Strategies for Blockbuster: A Comprehensive Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of digital marketing strategies, focusing on the case of Blockbuster. It begins with an introduction to digital marketing, contrasting it with traditional marketing methods and emphasizing the importance of digital adoption for Blockbuster. The report delves into website optimization techniques, including A/B testing, content delivery networks (CDNs), image optimization, plugin management, and website caching. It then critically discusses how Blockbuster could have leveraged Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), and Content Marketing to attract, retain, and engage customers. The analysis covers the importance of keyword research, content creation, social media platforms, and content distribution strategies. The report also touches on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, Online Display advertising, and Email marketing as key components of a successful digital marketing plan. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and reinforces the significance of digital transformation for businesses in the modern era.

Digital Marketing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
(1) Traditional and digital marketing ..............................................................................................3
(2) Importance for Blockbuster company to invest in digital marketing.........................................4
(3) How Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) and Online Display (& Video) advertising ...............11
(4) Email marketing ......................................................................................................................15
(5) Analytics ..................................................................................................................................16
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................19
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................20

INTRODUCTION
The term digital marketing means that platform where the product and services can be
promoted at a large scale with the help of digital technologies. Here, the digital technologies
includes: display advertising, digital images, web pages, digital audio (Mp3 and electronic
books). The word BLOCKBUSTER means to be successful. It is a given organisation in this
project it deals in movie and video games. Founded by David cook and Wayne Huizenga in the
year 1985, parent company is DISH Network. Tools used by the organization are, search engines
optimization, social media, and content marketing to retain their customers for long term. It also
tries to distinguish difference between traditional and digital marketing, also focus on the website
techniques to improve performance as well as focus on the pay- per-click advertising (PPC) and
online display to create brand awareness and website visibility. The study shows the link
between Email marketing into digital marketing and how the company BOO.com can use the
digital marketing.
(1) Traditional and digital marketing
Company Blockbuster is a rental service giant for home movie and video games.
Founded by David in the year 1985, gradually turned out a big iconic brand in the field of video
rental space. Around 84,300 employees are working worldwide, and 9,094 stores are opened
across the globe. In the year 2010 the company turned out to be bankruptcy because of transition
in the digital model. In 2000 the CEO of the blockbuster company rejected the offer from
NETFLIX to purchase their company (Barwise and Farley, 2005). The rejection was done as
Netflix was a small company and was suffering financial losses. But in the year 2017, the same
company came up with 103.95 million subscribers and revenue of US$8.8bn.
Basis Traditional Marketing Digital Marketing
Meaning Traditional marketing means
the old methods used by the
company like print media,
billboards, radio, newspapers,
pamphlets etc. to promote its
product to the general public.
Digital marketing means
promoting the product
worldwide by the means of
digital technologies like
internet, mobile phones,
display advertising, web pages

etc.
Importance Traditional marketing is
important as it tells the
company how to get
emotionally attachment with
the customers and the product.
Advertisement is done to make
people aware about the
product by any medium. For
example: Pepsi company fails
in the digital marketing when
it decided to switch from
traditional TV adds to social
media.
Digital marketing is important
for the company as it tell the
company how the various
channels of digital marketing
helps in growth and expansion
at a large platform.
(2) Importance for Blockbuster company to invest in digital marketing.
In the era of 21st century everyone is on digital platform. Every company from small to
big industry are turning digital in their own ways. BLOCKBUSTER is associated with the video
games and home movies. Company should switch to the digital platforms because it is more cost
effective than traditional. The revenue generation is high and also the company can facilitate the
business to its targeted customers and helps to build brand reputation and image in the market. If
Blockbuster pays more emphasis on web based social networking it will help the company to
gain customers trust and loyalty towards their product (Chaffey and Bosomworth, 2012).Website
optimization
The term website optimization technique is a process to improve website's ability to drive
business goals. To speed up the performance of the website, website owner uses A/B testing to
examine the variation on pages of their website. It helps to determine which changes will result
in more conversions like demo request, increase in organic search and results, more customer
services etc. Blockbuster company wants to improve in websites performance because today's

generation is digitally connected with each other. It helps in website navigation and also assist in
social media functionality.
1. Use of content delivery network: Company block buster is dealing with online video
games and home theatres. When a customer host a website, on a single server all users
are sent to the same hardware, due to which the speed decreases and need more time to
process the link. Whereas using the CDN ( Content delivery network) it redirected to the
nearest server due to which the website works faster. In case, of home theatre the speed
of the website need to be faster and quicker.
2. Optimization of images on your website: In case on home theatre and video games
customer need eye catching images. The negative side of the images use is that they are
usually large files which slow down the websites. If the company uses tools like
imageOptim, JPEGmini or kraken it will help to reduce the image size without
compromising its quality (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). Company can use it in
some other ways to reduce image size by the use of HTML responsive images
<secret>and<size>attributes adjust the images based on the display properties.
3. Reduce the number of plugins: Plugins is commonly used component of every website.
The use of more plugins installed more are the resources required to run them. Try to
avoid the plugins that load a lot of scripts and styles for database queries. Company
should use only necessary plugins and also ensure that they are updated once. If the
websites work slower than some security issues can also occur. The speed of the websites
totally depends upon the number of installed plugins but also affect their quality.
4. Use of websites caching: Websites caching is the process of storing the current version
of the websites and presenting this version until your website is updated. The web page of
the version does not need to send again and again database request each time. The
company should use the current version of website caching so, that the web page does not
send request again and again. If the server is shared with some other then website caching
is not available (Ryan, (2017) ).Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media (SMM)
and Content Marketing
Search engine optimization (SEO) can be described as the process that affects the online
visibility of a web page or a website in web search engine outcomes. This process is used by the
websites to optimize it with the help of various methods with a objective of ranking themselves

higher on the certain relevant keywords on the search engines like google, yahoo, etc. the
effective use of the search engine optimisation will help the website to appear on first priorities
on the search engine page. Blockbuster should have used the SEO to attract an retain the
customers on a larger base but, they failed to make an effort in it. Blockbuster could have
improved their websites SEO to improve their organic digital marketing efforts in which they
were required to conduct keyword research which would help them to judge what the customers
will nearly type on the search engine and then they were required to create engaging and original
content for their webpage that would have included the highly searched keywords on the search
engine (Chaffey and Smith, 2013). Blockbuster could have used the other factors like website
efficiency, mobile optimisation, architecture to improve their search engine optimisation for the
positive growth of the company. They were also required to post relevant content on the regular
basis, effective metadata would have provided the great boost to the performance of the website
of blockbuster in relation with SEO. The search engine optimisation helps the small business unit
to create fast, robust and user friendly websites that results in attracting the potential customers
towards the business and also leads in increasing conversion rates. SEO is considered probably
the most efficient and affordable marketing strategies for the business organisation. It helps in
building the brand awareness and helps in getting higher rankings and increase trust among the
customers.

Illustration 1: keyword search engine
Social media marketing (SMM) refers to the marketing of both organic and paid digital
marketing efforts on the social media networks which are Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. These
social media networks proceeds many different activities and is considered to be the best
platform to perform digital marketing for any organisation. Social media marketing has a wide
range of customers associations and is considered as the nerve centre of business and helps in
engaging a large population. Blockbuster could have used these social media platforms in order
to attract, retain and engage their customers in the effective manner. They could have made their
website page on the these platforms like on Facebook page and by opening many social media
accounts on the network would have been the better option to capture the large customer base
with the support of posting relevant and in demand content on the regular basis would have help
in engaging customers to help in grow business effectively (Chaffey, 2010). Paid social media
activities are more relevant as it help in effecting the growth of the business in very effective
manner and helps in even rivalling the similar efforts made on the search engines as well. The
social media marketing is a key element for the success and it is considered to be the best
platform to grow the business on a faster pace. It is also one of the cost efficient digital
marketing methods that is used to syndicate the content and increase the business visibility

among the customers. It also helps in increasing the better customer satisfaction and
communicating platform and increase the viability of the company.
Illustration 2: facebook page for SMM
Content marketing can be defined as the from of marketing based on creating, publishing
and distributing content for the desired audience online. Content marketing is used to attract and

generate leads of the interested customers, helps in expanding the customer base for the website,
leads in increasing brand awareness and engage online users effectively. Blockbuster could have
used content marketing to attract, retain and engage their customers by creating and sharing
authentic and valuable content on their website that would have resulted in creating sustainable
brand loyalty, valuable content to the customers ad would have made the value of the company
strong in the market for future growth. Content marketing would helped the blockbuster in
creating awareness among the customers about the services they are providing, once the
customers is aware about the website they will search for the required content they want to watch
, then the consideration would have taken part in which the customer start comparing the services
provided form the other contemporaries to make sure about the price and the content is fair and
equal or not. The effective use of content marketing by the blockbuster would have also provided
them with extra benefits as it also supports the other marketing channels as well. As, the content
marketing provides additional content for the social media marketing and also contributes to the
SEO efforts by creating natural links and forming strong content for the website that will appear
on the search engine. The content marketing is at heart one of the most successful and user
friendly digital marketing campaigns. To back a brand and to build its strong image in the market
there is always a need of a relevant and effective content that eventually results in connecting
with the potential audience. The content marketing helps in improving the conversion as it
allows the organisation to connect with the targeted customers.

Illustration 3: content marketing
Key performance indicator is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is
gaining success in the market with these social marketing tools. The company can use KPIs to
determine the desired objectives company has achieved or not. KPI can be constructed with the
help of 5 most SEO which are:
 web page rankings
 organic search performance
 page loading speed
 organic landing page bounce and conversation rate
 indexed pages

(3) How Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) and Online Display (& Video) advertising
PPC is also known as cost per click, is an internet advertising model, which is used to
direct traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher, when Ad is clicked. In other
words, websites can offer PPC ads. PPC is generally associated to first tier search engines. This
is a kind of campaign, which is required to pin point the customer, when they clicks on any
websites and business used to get pay per click. In context with Blockbuster, which was giant in
movies or online video games, they have simply option to regain market suitability along with
measures to overcome its competitors. Blockbuster, which is currently in stage of bankruptcy
wash have opportunities to increase its brand image along with enhancing its brand awareness
future. Netflix which is the leading entertainment company, was first decided to sell its business
operation to blockbuster, but this giant has refused to do this, because as a silly reason of small
niche market. In the current period, Netflix has 103.95 millions subscribers along with revenue
of US$8.8 Billion. This is actually, because of what company has been offered to their
customer's with huge of digital presence into the market (Charlesworth, 2014). This actually
happened, because this Netflix has focused on great product along with less cost to incur into the
services. Their focus was on digital transformation to target their customer's. Blockbuster could
use pay per click and online display to gather the customer interest at single point of time. The
process of pay per clicks is huge and wide. Setting up a PPC campaign in google AdWords is
quick and easy. However, optimising the advertising will be different story. The complete
process of pay per click are as follows:
Create a login: First of all, it is necessary to have Google AdWords user account. For
creating Google AdWords account, it is necessary to have email address and manager needs to
prepare the separate password of it.

Target a geographic region: This completely depends on local business. Is there issues
that blockbuster has not been advertise globally or nation wide. In this step, it is necessary to
choose the geographic area, where blockbuster can do their Ads.
Setting up of daily budget: With Google AdWords, digital manager can decide, what is
the capacity of business to pay per day. The payment is used to be generated once people will
click on your ads.