Digital Marketing Plan for HMV: SEO, PPC, and Content Strategy

This report assesses the application of digital marketing principles to revitalize HMV's market presence. It differentiates between traditional and digital marketing, emphasizing the need for HMV to invest in digital marketing capabilities, including effective PPC, SEO, and online display or video advertising. The report discusses the efficiency of various digital marketing tools, methods for optimizing and measuring success, and key activities for strategizing effective campaigns. It covers SEO strategy design, online display optimization, audience targeting, content marketing, legal guidelines, email and social media marketing, website optimization, and success measurement. The report concludes by highlighting essential tasks for strategizing effective digital marketing.

Running head: DIGITAL MARKETING HMV
DIGITAL MARKETING HMV
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1DIGITAL MARKETING HMV
Executive summary
This report discusses the basic principles of digital marketing to distinguish between the
traditional and digital marketing. For surviving in the highly competitive market, HMV needs
to invest in the digital marketing sector. For doing this they need to invest in the digital
marketing capabilities and design effectives PPC, SEO and online display or videos for
attracting their existing as well as new audience. The aim of this report is to discuss
efficiency of various types of tools used in effective digital marketing strategies and how they
can optimise and measure the success. The report ends with the major tasks and activities
needed for strategizing effective digital marketing.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Importance of digital marketing investment:.............................................................................2
Search engine tactics:.................................................................................................................4
Steps to design effective SEO:...............................................................................................4
Steps to design effective online display:................................................................................5
Targeting key audience:.........................................................................................................7
Content marketing:.................................................................................................................8
Laws and guidelines for search engine marketing:................................................................9
Email marketing and social media marketing:...........................................................................9
Website optimisation technique:..............................................................................................12
Measuring success of digital strategy:.....................................................................................13
Key activities for effective strategy:........................................................................................16
Conclusion:..............................................................................................................................17
References:...............................................................................................................................18

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4DIGITAL MARKETING HMV
Introduction:
This report aims to discuss the various facets of the utility of digital marketing and
how it is effective for the survival of a renowned music company HMV. The marketing
strategies of the company needs a big change due to reduced revenue as it has been losing the
competitive advantages than its rivals (Hmv.com, 2018). Marketing is an act of connecting
with the customers where the companies convince the customers for buying their products or
subscribe to their offered services. Marketing whether digital or traditional, is essential key
activity that all the business around the world must partake in because no trade can survive
without an effective publicity or marketing (Arvidsson et al. 2014). Digital marketing
however is carrying out actions by using any types of electronic media for promotion of
goods and services. This is basically an internet based activity that the companies or brands
use to sell the goods to their customers.
The world is living in a digital age where any company if thinks not to participate will
abolish in no time. Millions of people spend most of their time searching the social
networking as well as other digital platforms. This report discusses the important of digital
marketing investment in the company, use search engine tactics, utilise various digital media
platforms, methods to target key audiences, steps for designing various marketing campaign
and finally describing the measuring toll for strategy success.
Importance of digital marketing investment:
HMV needs to incorporate the digital marketing strategies to introduce new changes
in their company and services. There are many reasons that can facilitate the company to gain
competitive advantage in the market and gain popularity which HMV use to enjoy
previously.

5DIGITAL MARKETING HMV
1. HMV needs to make appropriate use of befitting digital marketing strategies in their
business module because the company needs an active participation in the lucrative
and persuasive online market place.
2. Digital marketing is not only a fast growing power in the current setting of marketing
but will definitely surpass all the traditional methods of marketing which the company
has been following.
3. The company needs to grab the most important advantage of the digital marketing
strategy which provides the company capability to engage with multitude of
customers without even utilising their customer services.
4. The conversation associated with the digital marketing ranks higher than other any
other modes of marketing.
5. Marketing and the cost for advertising have proved to be the toughest financial burden
for the businesses but big industries like HMV must not have much trouble in their
marketing and advertising (Atkinson 2016). However, marketing through digital
platforms can offer more affordable and penetrating alternative than the traditional
methods used by the company. Theses create much impact though cost way less.
6. HMV needs to have a substantial return on their investments. For doing this, it can
take assistance of email marketing or advertising campaigns on social media
platforms instead of traditional methods (Jain, Ahuja and Medury 2015).
7. The needs to cater to the mobile consumers as the usage of smart phones is fast
expanding. The company can utilise the mobile marketing method and create brand
reputation among the new generation mobile users.
8. The consumers now a days are have transformed into the researchers. They buy any
product or apply for many services, only after conducting a detailed research work.
HMV has a brilliant reputation, which will allow it to earn people’s trust.

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9. The company needs proper structure of CTA service through digital marketing, the
company will be able to utilize of successful techniques to allure the individuals for
making a positive move. CTA will also help the customers to sign up and download
anything from the website, subscribe as well as purchase (Järvinen and Karjaluoto
2015).
Search engine tactics:
The companies operating in the current world needs to peruse the new technologies to
help their businesses and find proper customers. The competitive companies like HMV which
has a brilliant brand awareness in the international market need to take advantages of every
tactics of search engines. Most efficient techniques are being changed as the search engines
change or adjust algorithms (Kang, Tang and Fiore 2014). these search engines use complex
programs that ensure that the visitors get worthwhile and reliable content. This is the reason
why most of the renowned digital marketers utilise search Engine Marketing strategies for
improving their website visibility amongst their competitors in one hand and gain more
customers for their business.
Steps to design effective SEO:
 For making an effective and successful SEO strategy, HMV must make a list of
keywords because it is the heart of the SEO. Compilation of a list of near about 10
keywords associated with the service that the company provides will work.
 The company needs to create keyword focused pages because trying to get one page
to rank for a handful of keywords will be impossible. Moreover, the number of web
pages created should be coinciding with variety of offerings and locations of the
business.

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 Setting up blogs can be an incredible way of ranking the key words that will engage
the users also. These blogs help to write for the targeted audiences which ultimately
reveal the trends and the preferences of the customers.
 All these previously mentioned steps focus on the on-page SEO tactics but off page
SEO primarily focus of the link building plan which ultimately helps in different ways
to attract inbound links to the company’s website.
 Constant updating and ever-involvement with the SEO practices is absolutely
necessary to stay on top of the SEO news (Xiang et al. 2015).
 Finally, the company must measure and track the SEO success. tracking indexed
pages, leads, ROI, inbound links, keywords, and your actual ranking on SERPs help
to recognize success and find areas of opportunity.
Steps to design effective online display:
1. Proper research before running the campaigns is vital for the digital marketers. There
is a need of running campaigns for improving the quality of the advertising copy. The
company needs to research the choice and requirements of the target audience so that
their online display ads can efficiently connect with their audience (Yasmin, Tasneem
and Fatema 2015).
2. At the time of designing, the company needs to use rich media so that they can attract
the target audience because in compared to the static banners, the media, flash, pre-
role banners as well as video banners attract more people.
3. The digital marketers aim to design effective online display ads, must invest in most
effective and creative approaches (Kannan 2017). They can use basic A/B testing for
finding out which innovative one is performing best, and then invest in the most
effective ad.

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4. The company needs to write catchy call to action or CTA that will help HMV to stay
ahead of their competitors.
5. Testing of the ad copies for running the campaign is important step of effective online
display campaign (Killian and McManus 2015).
Steps to design effective PPC: goal setting and choosing effective platform is essential for
designing efficient PPC also. Beside these, the company must allow these following steps.
 After choosing right platform and setting goal, HMV must target audience for exact
geographic location to optimise the campaign for particular device type, wireless
systems and operating systems (Kladou and Mavragani 2015). Geo targeting allows
the company’s ads to appear in the location that the customers select which ultimately
helps in focusing ad campaigns on the locations full of prospective customers that
helps in increasing ROI. Device targeting helps in reaching customers on any devices
and target any online customers.
 The company needs to create an effective list of core keywords that will be constantly
refined and expanded (Young 2014).
 Writing an effective ad text will help HMV’s ads to achieve success because an
effective ad text consists core keywords, attractive discounts, promotion as well as a
call to action.
 The company must install conversion tracking code to define the most profitable
keywords that leads to click and conversion.
 Bench marking is important because keeping eye on the competitors will help HMV
to strategies more effectively.
 The company must add ad extensions which provides extra benefits for PPC
advertising (Mackey, Cuomo and Liang 2015). On the other hand, ad scheduling
helps to optimise ad strategy.

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Steps to design effective video advertising:
1. Before beginning the filming, the marketers need to consider the goals to accomplish
that mainly raise brand awareness.
2. Proper selection of medium and platform is essential because television ads are not
the sole option of the companies. Hence the marketers use tools for tracking proper
data and test multiple social networking platforms then maximise its content to make
it effective for video campaigns (Leeflang et al. 2014).
3. Reviewing all the technical aspects in the company’s marketing campaigns is very
necessary. Incorporation of video requires a degree of technical care. Aspects such as
frame rate, resolution and load timing affects the campaign success largely.
Targeting key audience:
Targeting the market audience is mandatory of the companies applying for the digital
marketing strategies. For doing so, the company can display advertises in their websites. The
people who will browse internet even casually, will be served display advertises regularly.
HMV can convey such marketing message in variety of forms which may include image,
banner ads, texts, video overlays, and flash displays (Järvinen and Karjaluoto 2015). Online
marketers constantly try to deliver their right messages at the right time so that they can reach
most number of web surfers. Displaying advertises in the websites, is all about reach explicit
demographic segments where the marketers gain knowledge about the audience preference so
that they can identify that specific segment and target to reach them.
Google’s Audience Solutions offers an incredible opportunity for identifying as well
as targeting the audience as it creates scopes for the companies to complete control over
broad targeting, frequency of marketing messages communicated and methods of spending
money in the process. To begin the process of targeting audience the company’s advertisers

10DIGITAL MARKETING HMV
can start by properly understanding as well as analysing the current set of site visitors that
they can do by leveraging remarketing (Doric, Primorac and Kozina 2016). It is a method of
showing ads to the people who visited HMV’s site already and going to other sites which are
included in Google Display Network. This method allows advertisers to collect data about the
popular websites included in Google Display Network.
Content marketing:
With the growing importance of the content for commercial success online, the
content requirements a strategy for ensuring that it supports marketing. There are several
steps how the company will be beneficial by using content marketing strategies. First, content
marketing will help the company to build trust (Medina, Coelho and Bellido-Pérez 2017).
HMV can create and publish quality content, relevant in the field of their business which will
ultimately help them to build greater cohesion with the public. More cohesive and quality
content is created for feeding public, more the company will have expertise and popularity.
Secondly, the company has a power of an established brand which they may utilize in
influencing their business decisions of buying public. Content marketing highlights unique
identity of the brand. Thus the strategy can use viral contents such as videos, blog posts, pop
trends and audio. The company will have a unique voice for their business that will resonate
with their target audience which the company aims to serve.
Thirdly, for HMV it is essential to use the digital medium through search engines
which may change their business landscape. As the buyers no a day have become researchers,
they do not purchase or avail any service without studying about the product or service before
making purchase (Levy and Gvili 2015). These people basically conduct researches in search
engine. Therefore, the content written about the service must weigh heavily so that the people
get convinced.

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Fourthly, the content marketing identifies potential buyers and attracts them as this
type of marketing effectively levels the playing field the business of the company. With a
well-planned content marketing campaign, the company can change the situation easily.
Finally, application and extension of the content marketing strategy the business of
HMV will be benefitted and produce great content to reach the customers.
Laws and guidelines for search engine marketing:
As this world keeps on changing, but there are same patterns or fundamental laws
work in the background. Therefore, the digital marketers follow some laws and guideline
while they take advantages of search engine marketing.
1. The company must remember that content is key to SEO, SMO and PPC
2. Keywords cannot be translated
3. Search trained native speakers need to nurture SEO, PPC, SMO
4. HMV must follow centralisation with the local tentacles for the best practice
5. Search engine marketing guides and needs the companies to start virtually next to
their customers through the system of geo-targeting.
6. The company needs to track market differences
7. Logistics as well as delivery times for the company are some important factors too
8. The company must take care of the methods of payment by constantly checking their
payment systems. These are absolutely critical.
9. The brand must build trust through cultural relevance as we as dealing with the
environmental factors
10. Input methods are to be taken care of that drive behaviour including all types of
digital devices