Segmentation of Target Audience

6 DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY FOR THE CASE FIRM

HaparandaTornio twin-city from their friends, 28% from SM channels, 25,5% from newspapers, 21% from the official website of the HTTIC, 12,1% from TV and based on other replies it is possible to conclude the rest number of respondents are currently living in Tornio and Haparanda or lived in those cities before.

The main purpose of the official website of the HTTIC is to provide relevant, up-to-date and useful information for the twin-city’s visitors, guide them and attract new travelers. Therefore, discovering touchpoints of the users of the website and what information are clients looking for are indispensable for developing DMS.

According to statistical information gained by the survey, 49,7 % of the survey respondents would use HTTIC website in order to find information about the local places to visit, such as sightseeing and other interesting historical places.

Moreover, 43% of the survey respondents are interested in the event calendar with brief descriptions about events and visual content. Around 33% of survey participants would like to see information about local restaurants on the HTTIC website. The minor percentage of the respondents with 26,1% and 16,4% would like to see information about local shops and available accommodations correspondingly. The retention of the customers is also an important issue in the development of the DMS, figure 2 represents a pie chart with a present efficiency of the SM channels of HTTIC.

Figure 2. People Who Subscribed on HaparandaTornio SM Accounts

According to figure 2, the primary number of respondents are not subscribed to any of the exciting HTTIC’s SM channels. Whereas, 33,3% of respondents subscribed to the Facebook page and only 7,3% of respondents subscribed to the HTTIC Instagram channel.

Image 3. Buyer Persona

Basing on the data described above and shown as a buyer persona on image 3 it is possible to draw a conclusion that the retention of the customers represented by the number of subscribers is low. The DMS can be aimed at the attraction of the new customers and retention of them by providing interesting and useful content basing on customers’ perceptions through SM channels and through the website of the company. Furthermore, one of the questions of the survey was aimed to reveal the challenges people have faced when they were looking for information about HaparandaTornio. According to statistics, most of the respondents (27.9%) were concerned about the lack of interactivity on the official website of the HTTIC. Other 21,8% stated that the website is lack of destination description. Around 21% voted that SM accounts are boring and 17% of respondents emphasize the lack of visual content such as photos and videos.

The least percentage of respondents (13%) were not able to find the official

website at all. To sum up, by defining the most crucial challenges customers had and by identifying their preferences it is possible to develop an effective DMS an eliminate all the week points in customers' journeys.

6.2 Positioning

To get a better outcome from DMS, it is important to specify the goals of the case company. The company should have a unique value proposition (henceforth UVP) and knowledge about how to communicate with customers. A UVP demonstrates what captures visitors' attention, how a service resolves a pain point of a potential customer and what differentiates a company from competitors online (Laja 2018). To make the analysis more precise, the survey has been conducted. Most of the answers came from people who already used HaparandaTornio online services. That survey provided a better understanding of what people are thinking about regarding the website and SM accounts of HaparandaTornio. Users are not satisfied with the website and SM content because most of the photos are not up-to-date. SM channels look boring, that is why the main goal is to update visual content both on the website and in SM.

Moreover, there is a lack of communication with customers. To solve the problem, the company can add a virtual chatbot or a contact form on the website to keep in touch with customers.

In addition, SM accounts such as Instagram and Facebook are also good tools for building strong relationships with users. They are providing a great number of possibilities for business accounts to communicate with users, such as private chats, Instagram stories, Instagram direct or comment areas. Business accounts in SM are giving wider opportunities for companies to build a business online.

With a business account, the company can follow statistics and sell products or promote any sphere of business. It is calculated that from 20% to 40% of people are buying more from companies that are presented in SM (Brandi 2019). These tools and services can help to avoid misunderstanding between the company and customers or quickly solve problems that already happened.

One more important question was about a type of content that customers want to see on the official webpage and SM. Figure 3 represents that the most important type for customers is visual content such as photos and videos. However, the useful textual content can attract customers to almost to the same extent.

According to the survey, users want to see multilanguage and high-quality content on all platforms. At the same time, customer reviews are becoming more important for people, they want to see real feedback or suggestions from local people with a catchy title.

Figure 3. Preferred Type of Content

Thereafter, it was necessary to get answers about SM usage and build own rating of SM channels that people use. Unfortunately, now the HTTIC has only two accounts on Facebook and Instagram. According to survey results, those channels providing an insufficient amount of information for people who looks for touristic destinations. Figure 4 depicts that more than half of the respondents (52,1%) voted for using TripAdvisor to get a brief description of travel destination and top places to visit there. Today, it is significant for travel destinations to be presented in SM where people can get full information about the place, check feedback, ask questions, see pictures and videos or check upcoming events in order to visit the place.

Figure 4. Preferred Social Media Channels for Touristic Destinations