Marketing Scenario: A Hypothetical Marketing Campaign

In this scenario, I work for a marketing company. We target potential customers to come into car dealerships for the events my marketing firm plans and executes. Our marketing scenario includes the firm sending out mailers to customers on our list in the form of a direct mail piece. We use the dealership database of customers to decide to whom we send the direct mail. Based on previous purchases with the dealership, we predict when a customer might be in the market for a new car. In addition to direct mail, we have a blog discussing many different aspects of cars to educate our potential customers. We use this blog to discuss news in the auto industry in addition to explaining certain car myths. In addition, we hope to have followers of the dealership on Facebook. These followers will then be sent invitations to certain events the dealership puts on.  The event will have a coordinator who interviews every customer who walks into the dealership. Using an online survey method, the coordinator will put the customer in different categories based on how they heard about the event and other qualifying attributes of the customer.

The goals of this marketing scenario, is to get the customer to choose a particular dealership that is hosting the event. With the blog, we want to create traffic with potential customers. We want to inform them of all car-buying approaches and knowledge they need to make the right decision for them. In this process, we hope they will think of the dealership that provides them with the best information.  Another goal is to have the followers on Facebook share they are attending the event so other friends will want to attend as well. This tactic will hopefully expand the reach of the dealership past their current limits through the use of social media.

We will use several methods of metrics. We will use conversion rate of direct mail customers who purchased a vehicle the day of the event. We will also use conversion rate of the Facebook event, one for the actual dealership invite, and one for the people who saw the event from a friend’s share on his or her timeline. Using the data collected from the coordinator, we can accurately measure how many customers attended the event based on which outreach method. We will also measure how many people attended who subscribe to the dealership blog. We will ask if they came in because of the event or if they came in just because they were interested in a car. If they say the later and subscribe to our blog, then that will prove our blog might have an influence on consumers. We plan to use Google Analytics as one of the tools used to measure the amount of followers we have on the blog. 

This will help back up the findings of the coordinator on the actual day of the event.

We will measure success of the event based on how many people purchased cars that came in through the blog or social media platforms. We want to compare how many people came in through direct mail versus how many came in from the social media and blog platform. This will help us measure how effectively we are using our web presence. With the ease of the Internet, one would think this would be a better way to reach consumers. However, we would like to test it through this type of data collection. We will run the event several times throughout the year to make sure there was not a fluke with just one event.