Blue Cross Blue Shield Case Study - Blog Post Assignment

   

Read the Blue Cross Blue Shield Case Study at the end of KDP Chapter 12. Discuss how BCBS could measure the results of their communications plan. How could BCBS-NH measure their communication effectiveness with their own publics? How can BCBS-NH measure the relationships it has with local offices? Be specific.

When you're finished with your post:

1. Click the link above to submit the link to your blog post.
2. Post a link to your blog post on the Blue Cross Blue Shield Case Study discussion board for Module 11.
3. Comment on your peers' posts.

By reading BCBS case study, I think BCBS is a good franchise example because it has very independent and diverse franchisees. This is different from many other franchisees companies.  For a franchise company, the hardest thing is to control and keep the right extent relationship with franchisees: Too far will cause the management confusion and too close influence the normal operation of franchisees and also influence the relationship between each other.  To make the whole strategy coordinate and fit can improve the overall image of company.

To measure communications plan, we can go through some main ways. From the review from all kinds of ways like: e-mail, phone, website and Social media. Focus on the content of media report. Though these different ways, we can get the real perspective in different angles.  I think the only way to measure the communication effectiveness with their own publics is research the satisfaction of their public. Good relationship will lead to the good reputation. If the communication is not effective, the result must have many dissatisfied voice and lots of suggestions, actually that is a good way to improve. To measure the relationships with local offices. I think they can hold local regular meeting, which can make the relationship become close and do some survey at regular meeting at regular intervals to collect different ideas and also the satisfaction and then submit to parent company to improve their relationship.

Communication Across the Sales Channels - Blog Post Assignment

1. Instructions

Pick a franchise and discuss whether or not the communications at the franchises are the same as the parent corporation. Give specific communication examples and discuss why these do or do not match the messaging of the larger brand. How can the parent corporation measure its relationships with the franchisees? Be specific.

When you're finished with your post:

1. Click the link above to submit the link to your blog post.
2. Post a link to your blog post on the Communications Across the Sales Channels discussion board for Module 11.
3. Comment on your peers' posts

The franchise I picked up is Avis.  Avis is a famous car rental company. You can see it almost everywhere especially near airport and train station.

I think Avis doing great job to make communications at the franchises are the same as the parent corporation.  People usually using phone or web to make an appointment. The phone call this company provide is the telephone terminal, and then the task will be subdivide to local shop, it is fast and convenient. Half a year ago, I went to New York, Washington and PHL I rent the car from New York Avis and return it in Washington Avis. The only thing I feel is convenience because you can rent in anywhere an return it in any shop you want. Also the company provide GPS rental and other service to make travel easy. Because everything will via the reception desk to each shop, the communication with either parent corporation or franchise is convenient and normative.

The parent corporation can measure the relationship through phone review and website review. Because of the unity of management, measurement become easier. If problem appears, parent corporation will get the massage at the same time with the shop.

PR Crisis Discussion - Blog Post Assignment

    

In a blog post, discuss a company that had a PR crisis. What was the crisis and how did they handle it? How could they have measured their communications effectiveness during and after the crisis? What could they have done differently?

When you're finished with your post:

1. Click the link above to submit the link to your blog post.
2. Post a link to your blog post on the PR Crisis discussion board for Module 11.
3. Comment on your peers' posts.

What was the crisis and how did they handle it?

Gucci is a famous luxury brand in the world. In China, it has great public’s praise and corporate image. Last year, it experienced a serious crisis in Shenzhen China which in my recollection. Sep. 23, 2011. Two former employees of Gucci public a letter online named < an open letter to top management from mass resignation employees> which made media reported for a long time.  Since that time, Gucci become a “Sweatshop”, “Abuse employees”, “management confusion”, “employees overworked”.

After employees abused event’s exposure, it damage Gucci’s social image deeply, Gucci use PR means immediately.  Firstly, Button their lips from top management to laborial staff, and they made a statement that pointed out this event was distorted and enlarged. Everything they did is wanted to stop negative massages’ spread and become worse. But this action did nothing to do to solve this crisis. Media continue follow-up report and government start to investigate.

 

 How could they have measured their communications effectiveness during and after the crisis?

What they did after this crisis is trying to hide everything. Employees and managers silent on this topic and publish a statement explain that this event is not exist. The words to clarify themselves can’t change public thinking.

The only way for Gucci to measure this PR crisis is after their action, how is the negative reports and disgruntled discussion from people? I have only to say, this PR crisis is totally failure. They want to cover and hide the truth, whatever the truth is, what they did just make people don’t trust them anymore.  The core of it is communication, not about how to pretend it never happen.

 

 What could they have done differently?

In my opinion, their PR crisis can’t do any help to this situation but make it worse. It can’t cover the management confusion. I think what they should do is:1. Enhance their internal communication in the company; provide a way to make employees an top management communication directly. 2. Multinational corporation like Gucci, Converse, Zara have this kind of scandals in China. Actually it have already have thorough management system in mainland. They should treat their employees equal in different places.

After crisis, most companies anxious to clarify the event or list the truth, they trying to use their own words to change media’s report direction and public perceive. But this method usually useless.  The first thing they should do is to get the trust from public. Make business practice hyalinize temporarily. And find out management loopholes and  improve it. So that the social image will reverse.

Multichannel Campaign Analysis - Blog Post Assignment

In a blog post, explain:

• What type of campaigns is your company using?

Dell using the campaign that ran across web-connected TVs, desktop Web and mobile devices. DELL trying to track every individual consumer through this three platforms. They try to find out how each correlate channel impact the others. This campaign is cross-channel .

 

• How might they be able to tell which channels are giving them results?

DELL using WPP mobile agcy Joule to working on it. The company deliverd 15- and 30-second Dell spots to connected Tvs. They using website or app list, the targeted consumers have already seen the connected TV. The other group can’t see, so they can see the difference of performance between these two groups. But if customers don’t have connected TVs, they can’t link a specific TV and smartphone to the same person.

 

• How can they track results that may flow across online to offline (or vice versa)?

 

I thinking if tracking offline is hard for DELL to get accurate data. I think the only way for them is when a customer firstly bought a computer, he will have an account, after that, his any purchase behavior can be tracked. But why this customer’s acting happened we still can’t to measure.

Long-Tail Search Strategies - Blog Post Assignment

    

As a web analyst for your company, you've completed the search budget distribution below. Does the search traffic appear to match the budget? What recommendations do you have?

 

 

When you're finished with your post:

1. Click the link above to submit the link to your blog post.
2. Post a link to your blog post on the Long-Tail Search Strategies discussion board for Module 10.
3. Comment on your peers' posts.

 

 

 

 

 

From this budget form we can find out, The total budget of Head key phrases is 33% and the total Budget of Tail key phrases is 66%. From the percentage of contribution from SEM and SEO, We can tell that, in head key phrases, the contribution from SEO is 80%, but in tail key phrases, the contribution from SEO is only 10%. For contribution from SEM, in head key phrases, it only have 20%, but in tail key phrases its contribution occurred 90%.  When we focus on the distribution of SEM Budget,  Head key phrases is 25% and Tail key phrases is 75%.

It seems that we use most of budget to buy the advertising place to increase traffic. In Tail key phrase, I think using most of budget on SEM is reasonable because the contribution from SEM is up to 90%, but from head key phrases, using more budget on SEO I think is a smart way to increasing the traffic because in this part, keywords or relevant keywords is more useful to this website. My recommendation is continually optimize the search engine and increasing the success rate of keywords and relevant words. Reduce the budget of Tail key phrases appropriately to get the most use of budget.  

 

Path Analysis - Blog Post Assignment

Read Avinish Kaushik's post Path Analysis: A Good Use of Time? Do you agree or disagree with his post? Why? How could your company use Path Analysis? What advantages or disadvantages would path analysis provide?

When you're finished with your post:

1. Click the link above to submit the link to your blog post.
2. Post a link to your blog post on the Leveraging Competitive Intelligence discussion board for Module 10.
3. Comment on your peers' posts.

Actually I can just agree part of Avinish Kaushik’s blog. I think path analysis is useful without a doubt. But path analysis is worth or not, we should treat it as appropriate.

I think path analysis is essentially to find out the logical visit behavior of visitors. But to be a visitor of website, I know some of our behavior is logical, but we can’t deny that the other behavior is nothing to do with logical, sometimes just simply looking around for nothing. How to measure improvisation of visiting without any purpose? I think the answer is no. So I think path analysis is only making sense for logical visit behavior. We can’t adjust the website to suit everyone, even it is hard to say most people.

I visit DELL’s official website, seems their website updated frequently. The first things show up is kind of shopping guide. We can’t deny that most people visit DELL’s website is trying to buy something or at least checking the product information. DELL did the segmentation of products so that it can guide you to see what you want.

The advantages of using path analysis is: convenient visitors, make searching efficiency, through analysis, the website will understand what the most people searching for, put it in the most showy place to let people see it as quick as possible.  Also can increase the amount of visiting and sales.

Disadvantages for it I will say, considered the cost of analyzing. Especially for a large website which has a lot of segment pages, the path of it will be countless. Trying to analysis the visit behavior is definitely a huge project and the result is accurate or not? Nobody can make sure.

Context is Queen - Blog Post Assignment

You're a web analyst for a company and are handed the following report on search traffic to your website. What would you do to provide context to the data? Explain what context does for your reporting to management.

The picture is showing the search traffic of one website since May,1,2012-Oct31,2012. Time period is 6 mouths. Although it seems provide a lot of data like amount of visiting, average time of visiting, percentage of new visits. I have to say, only from this one picture, the data means nothing.  

To change the data to make sense. We can compare it with :1.Time. We can compare the data with the data 6 months ago or 1 year ago to find the difference. 2. Also we can compare it with segmentation to compare the specific change during this time period.  3. We can also use the data showed in the picture to compare with the average data of this website. 4. The data we can measure is also include how many visitors are sent from referring sties. 5. We can also set up the benchmarks for every particular data to measure it.  6. Compare with competitors is a good way to measure our site.

Using the measure method above, the core task is to compare with something. Independent data without comparability means nothing basically.