Issue statement:

The report comprised of discussion related to segment of market targeted by Vodafone and their relative strategy of positioning. It also shows evaluation of the techniques and tools used by Vodafone for digital marketing. Evaluation process comprised of the weakness and strengths of the techniques and tools adopted by Vodafone for digital marketing. In the recent years the concerned company has scattered its business from a company of mobile telephony to service industry of communication. Vodafone also deals in the services of broadband, services of cloud, mobile telephony and IOT (internet of things).

The ad campaign of Hutch was mainly considered at the season of cricket. This was the main time when hutch could reach the people in maximum number. Vodafone mainly took over Hutch for increase their market segments and reach people globally.

Vodafone mainly uses a mixture regarding the strategies of segmentation to part its offerings in the service of mobile network, services of enterprise and services of broadband. The concerned company is mainly targeting several areas in the society with their wide range of offerings (Lovelock & Patterson, 2015). Hence, the company utilises differentiated and selective strategy for targeting. The ad campaign of zoo zoo by Vodafone is very successful for developing awareness in the service of communication in the entire world.  It mainly uses strategies based on value for positioning.

Before Vodafone takeover Hutch, the strategy of positioning used by hutch was quite famous and successful. It was in the year of 2007 when Vodafone take charge of Hutch. The time of transition regarding the concerned company was very limited (Canniford, & Bajde, 2015). It took approximately about four months by the company for taking decision regarding brand relaunching, channelising and positioning. It was mandatory for Vodafone for maintaining things like before. The Vodafone name was not new because it was used many a times in advertising and it consists of strong position in the international market. The Vodafone arrival in India is considered as a positive sign regarding the telecom industry of India. Telecom industry expected that Vodafone would increase the service standard and the market would face more competition. The concerned company did not failed to satisfy the subscriber. Vodafone begins a campaign of ad for making a position in the service space of customer. This campaign did not provide satisfied result in the local region. Vodafone tried to express that they genuinely care and respect the customer by using the PUG repeatedly. Indian customer faced a lot of trouble while calling in the number of customer care for solving their issues. This issue was mitigated by Vodafone and provided better services to the customer.

Vodafone started launching campaign of ‘Power to you’. The characteristics of ‘Power to you’ comprised of following things:

• It emerges with current form of services that helps to mitigate the distance between the customer and internet (Alt & Iversen, 2017)
• It enhances the experience of users regarding Internet and emails on the phone (mobile). The service provided by vodafone regarding this is known as ‘Vodafone Internet pe mobil’. This is now added with browser of Opera Mini.
• Easy assessment of email from any region of the world
• Vodafone provide refreshment regarding the IVR for improved and easier experience of customer

Users of Vodafone mainly use both the postpaid and prepaid types. The customer could perform transaction on the basis of self-care with the help of system of IVR. This does not required the help of operator of Vodafone for purposes like Roaming, Ringtones and many more. The aims of the new form of campaign were to company’s position as an innovator of services. Vodafone promises service series that improved the experience of customer and provide better type of opportunity to them.

Findings

The digital marketing techniques and tools used by the Vodafone are as follows:

Marketing the services and products of Vodafone with the help of email considered as cost effective, flexible and fast method to reach customer of new 5 types and to retain the old customer. Email marketing allows Vodafone for creating messages of personalized and targeted type. This helps the concerned company in building a better relationship with the consumer. Rate of response regarding the campaigns of direct marketing also gets improved. Vodafone also receives negative feedback when they overuse these tools of digital marketing. This is mainly because peoples get irritated by receiving unwanted and frequents mails from the company.  IINET and Singtel Optus has compiled with several legislation of data protection. This legislation of protection of data comprised of PECR (The privacy and electronic communications regulation) and GDPR (General data protection legislation).  It is possible that action of enforcement type could be performed against Vodafone if they do not maintain the GDPR and PECR obligation. There is a possibility of issuance of fine of substantial type and liability of contractual matter (Huerta-Muñoz et al. 2017).

Advertising of paid social lets Vodafone to determine particular segments of audience and message crafting that connects with the slice of the market. The offered variables are depending different on the used platform. For example, LinkedIn could help to customize the audience targeted by determining the sector and the entire employees. The other two telecommunication industry in Australia like IINET and Singtel Optus take advantages of the location of several platforms of social media. Linkedin is famous among the wealthier while Facebook is utilised more by the previous generation. Paid social media has several common items with historical advertisement of online. It is similar to that of the ads of mobile app and banner for online type. It is an effective process to expand and maintain awareness of brand by Vodafone. Vodafone used Paid social media for targeting current segments of audience by choosing important location.

Though there are several benefits to the paid social media, there are also host of disadvantages which cannot be ignored. The first challenge is the presence of competition that makes it a costly affair. Another aspect is that it requires constant monitoring from the advertisers. The paid social media advertisements can have instant results in some of the cases, the results can be negative as well as positive. Therefore, it is important that the businesses constantly monitor how their paid social media activities are performing. In addition, it requires that the team engaged in social media activities are appropriately trained to understand all the nuances of the social media input and output, otherwise the company may end up investing huge sums of money without substantial results. Also, setting up in house social media team requires substantial investment at the initial stages (Holmene. (2018). 

Programmatic is not only used for conversion but also act as an important part of the strategy of branding for Vodafone. Traditionally, strategies regarding awareness of brand always lie above activities of advertising like print, radio and television. The advertising of digital media comprised of branding which concentrates on PPC and media of social types.

Market Segments targeted by Vodafone

Some of the platforms that are used by Vodafone, IINet and Singtel Optus are as follows:

• YouTube

It consists of high responsibility for idea promotion of the marketing of video. It is the most famous and the platform of extensive type for video sharing. The good things about this service of video hosting are that the viewers could use it for free. The telecommunication uses this platform for producing their videos in front of the viewers. As, there is no charge regarding usage of YouTube, there are large number of users and they could easily come closer to the telecommunication industry.  It is considered as one of the largest engine of search in this entire world. As per the user base till this year is concerned, YouTube enjoys more than 1.8 billion users worldwide (Gilbert, 2018). An important aspect of this channel is that it allows the companies to target users from across the globe. YouTube also allows the advertisers to target local viewers. However, it depends on the goal of the company that which option it is willing to use. If the goal of the company is to increase its brand awareness at random throughout the world, then open advertisement without any country restriction can be considered. On the other hand, if the goal is to target the local customer to increase the retention, conversion, and brand value, then latter option should be considered.

• Wistia

Wistia is considered to be the best platform regarding the purpose of business. It gives entire authority regarding the video branding. The company could have the authority to integrate button of share. Wistia videos comprised of integration with Twitter which allows the user to view videos with the help of tweet. It mainly forms with the package of analytics type. Wistia helps businesses host videos and track the performance of those videos using various analytic tools. Unlike YouTube, Wistia helps the businesses learn the basics of video making and the way they can benefit from it.

• Vidyard

The availability of this platform is not free. However,  it gives a trial period of 14 days in which it could rotate around the entire system before tha payment. The particular system is made mainly for the marketers. The free period is very helpful as it could allow the user to know about the entire feature of the corresponding platforms. Video player customisation is also available here. Further, it comprised of features like integration and analytics and helps video performance tracking.

• Sprout video
• Brightcove

Conclusion 

Vodafone is one of the largest telecommunication businesses across the globe. This company faced some major success in Australia to. That is the reason why Vodafone has been chosen for this study. The two major market segments are discussed in this study to demonstrate the actual scenario. Vodafone is using two main market segments that are positing and digital marketing to attract more customers and to grow their business in a sustainable way. Email marketing, advertising and social media are the three main tools that Vodafone is using for their business growth. In addition to that, paid social media is better to reach more customers and this company is doing the exact same thing to reach more customers.

From the above study it could be recommended to the Vodafone that email marketing must not be over used. This is because it creates irritation in the customer with numerous unwanted messages. E mail marketing is a great strategy for business growth as it can bring new customers. In addition to that, it is also helpful to inform about any new service or product when it comes to the existing customers. However, this e-mail strategy can be done in a tactful way so that customers will not get irritated.  There are several strategies that can be adopted by Vodafone in the email marketing. As for instance, the company can send personalized mails to the customers that will help them feel personal. While sending the mails, the company should consider using buyer history to develop email instead of suggesting randomly generated product or services. In addition to the email marketing, effective usage of paid advertising is suggested. There is a difference in using the paid advertisement for the sake of using it and the paid advertisement that targets the actual user base of the company. The company should identify paid sources where expenditure can be fruitful in terms of customer conversion, customer retention, and increase of the brand value in the longer run. 

References

Books

Lovelock, C., & Patterson, P. (2015). Services marketing. Pearson Australia. Retrieved from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/43169963/Services_Marketing__7th_edition_by_Lovelock___Wirtz.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1543818058&Signature=Al1QoET1FePxuBuDT5cVtTl1qBY%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DServices_Marketing_People_Technology_Str.pdf, Retrieved on:  22. 11. 2018

Canniford, R., & Bajde, D. (Eds.). (2015). Assembling consumption: Researching actors, networks and markets. Routledge. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robin_Canniford/publication/305228092_ASSEMBLING_CONSUMPTION_INTRODUCTION/links/5785acc908aec5c2e4e12117/ASSEMBLING-CONSUMPTION-INTRODUCTION.pdf, Retrieved on:  20. 11. 2018

Journals

Alt, J., & Iversen, T. (2017). Inequality, labor market segmentation, and preferences for redistribution. American Journal of Political Science, 61(1), 21-36. Retrieved from: https://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~iversen/PDFfiles/Alt&Iversen_2016.pdf, Retrieved on:  23. 11. 2018

Huerta-Muñoz, D. L., Ríos-Mercado, R. Z., & Ruiz, R. (2017). An iterated greedy heuristic for a market segmentation problem with multiple attributes. European Journal of Operational Research, 261(1), 75-87. Retrieved from: https://yalma.fime.uanl.mx/~roger/ftp/paicyt-IT511-10/publications/pisis_report_2012-02.pdf, Retrieved on:  21. 11. 2018

Holmene, I. (2018). Paid or semi-public media? The Norwegian film industry’s strategies for social media. Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook, 16(1), 41-57. doi: 10.1386/nl.16.1.41_1

Websites

Gilbert, B. (2018). YouTube now has over 1.8 billion users every month, within spitting distance of Facebook’s 2 billion. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.in/YouTube-now-has-over-1-8-billion-users-every-month-within-spitting-distance-of-Facebooks-2-billion/articleshow/64032773.cms