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Creating a New Digital Campaign for Harley-Davidson

Michael Rickman

MKT-265

Tara Kolojejchick

1 April 2023

Creating a New Digital Campaign for Harley-Davidson

Digital marketing campaigns are an integral part of marketing. They entail executing different marketing strategies across every digital channel where customers engage or connect with a brand. Companies often launch digital campaigns to accomplish specific marketing and business goals, including promoting products, attracting new customers, and creating brand awareness. Digital marketing campaigns convey messages to the target audience through different channels. A company will consider a campaign successful when it reaches the target audience and converts leads or brings in new customers. In this paper, I will develop the framework for Harley-Davidson's new digital campaign using my analysis of the company’s digital presence.

Research Methods

A successful marketing campaign requires patience, time, planning, and, most importantly, research. Market research is vital to understand the target audience. With a proper understanding of the target audience, Harley-Davidson must also determine its customers' favorite online platforms and what competitors are doing. This will help the company to plan the campaign better, increasing the likelihood of having a successful campaign. Harley-Davidson can conduct surveys, focus groups, and competitive analysis to understand the target market.

The company can conduct surveys through several means, including mail, online, and phone. Harley-Davidson can send the survey questions to participants’ mailing addresses. The company representatives can also call to ask participants to respond to survey questions. Besides, the company can send survey questions to participants, and participants can respond to the questions over the internet. Surveys can reach a wider audience (Jones et al., 2013). This can enable the company to collect large amounts of data about the target audience, increasing its likelihood of getting a clear and accurate understanding of the audience.

Harley-Davidson can also organize focus groups to learn more about the target audience. Here, the company will bring together a group of people who represent target market demographics. The group will offer feedback regarding the brand, products, or marketing campaign. Compared to other research methods like surveys, focus groups allow participants to interact with the interviewer for longer periods (Daniels et al., 2019). Participants can also express themselves more openly and freely and illustrate their responses.

Lastly, Harley-Davidson can conduct a competitive analysis to understand its competitors. This entails identifying all their rivals and determining their marketing strategies, offerings, profits, and more. This information can give a strong hint of the competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as the company’s position in the market. Harley-Davidson can use these findings to leverage competitors’ weaknesses, find best practices, and attract more customers.

Messaging Strategy

Marketing messaging is a crucial aspect of a digital campaign. It represents how the brand communicates and connects with its customers. Harley-Davidson should create an effective messaging strategy to attract new customers, differentiate the brand from competitors, and ensure its relevance in the marketplace. In this case, the organization should use an emotional messaging strategy. This entails creating digital marketing campaigns using emotional stories about the brand or product. An emotional messaging strategy will make the target audience feel personal or emotional about the brand or product. Always #LikeAGirl Campaign is a perfect example of a digital marketing campaign that implements an emotional messaging strategy. The campaign looked at all the incredible things women and girls do worldwide, especially in sports. This campaign won many hearts and minds. Harley-Davidson can do the same thing and expect the same results.

The Overall Media Campaign

Upon researching and determining the messaging campaign, Harley-Davidson should create a new digital campaign. Nevertheless, the company should establish campaign goals before creating any campaign. The campaign goal might be to increase brand awareness, attract new customers, boost website traffic, increase brand engagement, or improve lead quality. The company should choose KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) based on those goals. Lastly, Harley-Davidson should determine what content styles to utilize in the campaign. Common content styles include videos, reviews, testimonials, or infographics. Harley-Davidson should create video campaigns and present them on Facebook and Youtube.

Ethical and Legal Concerns

Harley-Davidson should address two ethical and legal concerns to build a successful digital campaign. One concern is consumer privacy. Most online users feel that companies track them on the internet and breach their privacy by lending or selling personal information collected during marketing research (Hausman, 2022). Thus, Harley-Davidson must create clear boundaries on what is and is not a violation of consumer privacy. Another concern is comparison marketing. There is no problem with healthy competition in business. In general, Harley-Davidson should highlight the benefits of its motorcycles, but not criticizing others. Anything said must be accurate; otherwise, the company will lose its credibility

References

Daniels, N., Gillen, P., Casson, K., & Wilson, I. (2019). STEER: Factors to consider when designing online focus groups using audiovisual technology in health research.  International Journal of Qualitative Methods,  18, 1609406919885786.

Hausman, A. (2022). Ethics in Digital Marketing: Ignore at Your Own Peril. Hausman Marketing Letter. Retrieved from: https://www.hausmanmarketingletter.com/ethics-in-digital-marketing-ignore-at-your-own-peril/

Jones, T. L., Baxter, M. A. J., & Khanduja, V. (2013). A quick guide to survey research.  The Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England,  95(1), 5-7.