Digital Marketing Direction: "The Student Project" SOSTAC & The 5 C's

By Erica Wenham, Tuesday 23 April 2013.

Digital Technologies For Marketing (Week 27)

The 5 C's


1.       Communications (Clarify your brand message)
In the site header and landing page for The Student Project website, all appropriate content is available, it is communicated clearly and quickly what we intend to “sell” to visitors by promoting brand visuals, images and text reflecting the benefits the website has to offer. The brand logo is also clearly used along with supporting graphics.
2.       Connection (Call to action)
The Student Project essentially wants visitors to interact online when they first land on the website. Sign up for an account, create their own profile and search for any desired employment opportunities or work experience. This is guided by compelling graphics, large, bright colours and call-ta-action words and text to direct their attention.
3.       Community (Captivate)
In this fast-paced digital world, it is essential to grab audience’s attention immediately. As a result, The Student Project uses an appealing yet professional and creative design to ensure visitors are more likely to become engaged and – most importantly – start building trust in the brand and use the website’s services.The website also uses key words and phrases to present to the viewer what the website is about and how they can benefit from creating an account. This allows helps to improve Google Analytics, Search Engine Optimization and much more.
4.       Convenience (Clean)
The Student Project allows simple and straightforward navigation for users with an uncluttered sidebar and smartly organised content. This allows visitors to dig through information and stay online for longer. A balanced amount of white space is also used so different areas of website content stands out.
5.       Creativity (Cohesive)
To create a cohesive look and feel, The Student Project brand uses the same colours, fonts and graphics throughout the website as well as across all social media platforms to ensure customers they are in the right place. All photos, headers and widgets compliment the overall website design and target audience (e.g. students and employers, male and female etc.) and more.


SOSTAC


SOSTAC is a key business tool worth using when planning marketing strategies/campaigns or launching a new extensive web-based concept like The Student Project. SOSTAC was voted as the third most popular model in the CIM poll on marketing models in 2011 because it’s easy to remember and makes it easy to structure plans for different marketing activities. When developing the overall digital marketing strategy of our new business idea, Black Sheep’s use of SOSTAC will also help to aid with numerous other approaches such as SEO, email marketing and more.

SOSTAC is a planning model, originally developed in the 1990s to help with marketing planning by PR Smith, who is digital marketing professional’s Dave Chaffey’s co-author on Emarketing Excellence. The concept in relation to The Student Project is outlined below;

·         Situation – Where are we now?
·         Objectives – Where do we want to be?
·         Strategy – How do we get there?
·         Tactics – How exactly do we get there?
·         Action – What is our plan?
·         Control – Did we get there?

Chaffey recommends that the best format in using the model is that it helps to give a logical order for tackling your plan (with iterations) and you should also use it to critically assess your processes. Ask, for example what you may be weak at? Ask… Do we fail to complete situation analysis? Are our goals unclear? Do we have a strategy? Do we control performance using analytics?

·         Situation – The Student Project website is due to be officially launched in late 2013/early 2014. We believe there is nothing like it on the market where students can interact with our digital marketing agency and various local businesses in the area looking for employment help. Students and employers can have their own profiles to advertise themselves. Businesses and students are required to pay NO registration or advertising fee. To find out how we will finance the web-based concept and make money, please see the “control” aspect of SOSTAC at the end of the list.

·         ObjectivesPlease see “The Five Year Plan” on next week’s post here to find out more about Black Sheep Digital Marketing’s key goals and objectives we hope to achieve for The Student Project website within the first five years of business.

·         Strategy & Tactics – The Student Project will advertise/market our website via social media accounts, email marketing and through university partnerships. The Black Sheep team aim to conduct various workshops at universities within the UK to give students an idea of how they can gain industry experience in their desired field of work or just achieve a successful part-time job role for a bit of extra cash and how this can be achieved quickly, easily and effectively by using The Student Project website.

·         Action – The Student Project hopes to introduce a mobile app in year 5 of business. The plan for this is explained later throughout the report. Due to the huge increase in digital and mobile use, Black Sheep have decided to implement an app at a future stage to meet this. The first 4 years of business will focus mainly on the website’s success before the app is due to be launched.

·         Control – As explained within the finance sector (as reflected later on within the report), The Student Project will take only 10% of the student’s paid earnings (5% if the student currently holds a valid NUS card). Our business will take effective control of this as employers will be required to pay the student through our website to ensure our fee is paid. We will then deduct our fee and pay the student’s wages into their bank account. Simple. 

No comments:

Post a Comment