Question

This course project consists of five parts, each of which will relate to strategies that you will learn throughout the course. This project will give you an opportunity to plan the digital marketing needs for your brand. You may use your own organization for the project. If you are not currently affiliated with an organization, you may choose one with which you are familiar or base your responses on The McCormick Hotel.

As you complete this project you will: (1) identify initial digital marketing needs relating to your website; (2) evaluate initial SEM and SEO activities; (3) create a social media strategy; (4) evaluate the effectiveness of your firm’s reputation management activities; and (5) develop an organization structure and responsibilities (or recommend changes in your current organization) to execute the digital marketing strategy. In conclusion, you will have an integrated strategy that address your website, search, social media, and reputation management, plus an organizational structure to execute it. Complete each project part as you progress through the course. You will submit the completed project at the end of the course for credit and grading. Begin your course project by completing Part One below.

Part One: Determining Digital Media Needs

In this part of the course project, you will start to identify initial digital marketing needs. These do not have to be well defined at this point, but should relate to the course material you have reviewed, particularly with regard to website and content marketing.

Instructions:

1. Think of the course concepts you have examined so far and how they apply to your firm (or one with which you are familiar) as you complete the chart. If you are using The McCormick Hotel for your project, you can refer to The McCormick Hotel Strategic Case: Background.

Complete the following grid.

State your brand name and brand promise.

In a few sentences outline your overall organizational marketing strategy.

In a few sentences outline your organizational digital marketing strategy.

In reference to the AIDA model, provide two examples of digital marketing activities the brand is doing or could put in place. Don’t worry if you are not certain about the digital media activities you suggest now. You will able to refine this answer as you progress through the course.

Awareness: Interest: Desire: Action:

Part Three: Create Your Social Media Strategy

In this part of the course project, you will assess your firm’s social media marketing activities. Based on your findings, you will recommend changes to (or create a) social media plan for your organization.

Instructions:

1. Reflect on the digital marketing fundamentals and core concepts you have examined. Think about how they relate to your organization as you update the chart below.

In a few sentences, provide a social media strategy for your organization or The McCormick Hotel
List at least four key social media marketing activities an organization should engage in and why.	1. 2. 3. 4.
How would some or all of these activities relate to SEM and SEO?
What are some high-level indicators of social media activity effectiveness for the items you identified in the above cells and how they relate to elements of AIDA model

2. Reflect on the various types of social media marketing activities you have covered thus far in the course. In the matrix below list at least six social media marketing activities. For each provide at least one associated high-level indicator of effectiveness, and how they relate to elements of AIDA model

Social Media Marketing Effectiveness
Activity	Effectiveness Measure	AIDA Model Area*

*AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action

Recommend changes to your social media marketing activities

Based on the firm’s digital and social-media marketing strategies and the course concepts you have reviewed. Include recommendations to either create or enhance existing social-media marketing strategies.

Part Four: Assess Your Firm’s Reputation Management

In this part of the course project, you will assess the organization’s effectiveness in managing the brand’s reputation. You will also integrate at a high level the interrelated activities of digital marketing and reputation management, as these each impact the brand promise.

Instructions

1. Reflect on a service failure you encountered in the past and how you communicated that failure to others or to the organization. Did your response involve the use of social media? If not, could it have? What impact could the use of social media have had on the brand? (For this step, report what you have experienced as a consumer. Identify whether or not the company responded via social media to mediate your problems.)

Complete the following grid.
Describe a service failure you encountered and whether or not recovery methods addressed the problem.
Did you, or could you have, used any forms of digital media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube video, etc.) to communicate the service failure with others or the organization?
What impact could those actions have had or did they have on the organization’s brand and brand promise

2. Based on a selected set of reputation management metrics (data) shown in the table below (Assume they are for The McCormick.), is effective reputation management occurring or are there areas for improvement? You may use similar metrics for your own firm instead of those in the table.

Reputation Management Data
Year	Reviews*	TripAdvisor Scores**
	Total Number of New Reviews*	Positive*	Negative*	Overall	Front Desk	Restaurant	Room Service
1	125	95	10	4.0	4.4	4.0	3.9
2	145	105	8	4.1	4.4	3.7	3.6

*Typically, reviews are categorized by reporting agencies as positive, negative, or neutral. So, numbers in the columns may not add to the total.

**To find a description of TripAdvisor scores and scoring techniques search “TripAdvisor Traveler Ratings” and “TripAdvisor Popularity Index” and look for TripAdvisor’s latest articles on how they make the calculations.

Does effective reputation management appear to be occurring and why?

What reputation management activities and process appear to be in place, or could be in place, based on the metrics shown in the table?

Part Five: Design Your Organizational Chart and Digital Media Strategy

In this part of the course project you will determine how to effectively execute a digital marketing strategy. You will describe how a firm’s organizational structure and job responsibilities can be tailored to execute digital marketing. You may use your own organization or The McCormick’s.

Instructions:

1. Review the organizational chart and job descriptions for your firm or The McCormick’s. (NOTE: The McCormick’s structure is shown in the course.)

Complete the following grid.

If you use your own firm, share the parts of your current organizational chart that relate to executing a digital marketing strategy. Indicate whether you recommend (or your firm already uses) a digital marketing agency. The McCormick’s organizational structure is provided in the attachment.

Share your job titles and brief job descriptions. The McCormick’s are provided in the attachment.

2. Based on the relationships between the firm’s overall strategy, digital marketing strategy, and financial performance, with what areas of the organization (e.g., finance, operations, etc.), should those responsible for digital marketing coordinate? For example, those responsible for SEM should coordinate with the finance and accounting areas to determine how much can be spent on search marketing activity.

Organizational Areas for Coordination
Digital Media Marketing Role (Job):	Areas of Coordination within the Firm:

Reflect on the organizational chart and job descriptions you provided. Now that you’ve taken another look at your various digital marketing strategies, would you change anything?