Instructions

Social media are considered to be an important tool in present day marketing and promotions. The travel and tourism sector in Australia due to heavy competition most of the organisations are liked to incorporate the social media marketing for getting a strategic advantage. In this context, it can be stated that the social media promotional strategy has become a part of the promotional mix of the travel and tourism sector in Australia. In this context, the purpose of this report is to create a better understanding of the use of social media marketing in the Quicksilver Group, Australia. The reason behind choosing this company is to evaluate the success with the help of the social media marketing. Moreover, it can be stated that a recommendation part is also going to be discussed in the report that points out the required measures Quicksilver Group must adapt.

It can be argued that the Quicksilver Group is one of the renowned Great Barrier Reef operator in Australia. The company was founded in 1979 and gradually became one of the leading Travel and Tourism Company operating in the Barrier Reef region. As a result of its overwhelming performances Quicksilver Group got a place in the Australian Tourism Hall of Fame in 2009 (Quicksilver-cruises.com., 2018). In this context, it can be argued that the company offers coral surfing through cruises and diving. In order to diversify its products and services Quicksilver Group is now also manufacturing diving and surfing accessories such as watches, eyewear and surfing boats.

As a matter of fact, Quicksilver Group tries to maximise its customers by using the social media marketing strategies. According to Ashley and Tuten (2015) it can be argued that the social media play a significant role in the promotional mix and increasing the brand value robustly. Furthermore, the utilisation of social media is a very popular promotional tool in the Australian travel and tourism sector because the organisations realise the importance of the social media marketing. In response to this, the Quicksilver Group also incorporates the social media promotions in the marketing strategy. Facebook and Instagram are primarily used in this context. As per the Instagram profile it can be stated that the company has a number of 1606 active followers who are regularly follow up the posts of the Quicksilver Group (Figure1). Moreover, the company also advertises its next events and venues in Instagram. As a result of that the interested viewers can get the detailed information regarding the company. On the other hand, Facebook promotion is also facilitates a better advantage for Quicksilver Group. It can be seen that more than 10,000 people are liked and followed the official page of Quicksilver Group (Figure2). In this page all the details and direct access link to the Quicksilver Group website is also given that helps the viewers to go to the website through Facebook.

Discussion

However, it can be stated that despite of having a series of social media strategies there are still some gaps that the Quicksilver Group must resolve in order to initiate an unique marketing technique. In this context, the AIDA Model is highly relevant with the purpose to maximize customers extensively and sustain in the intense competitive market more effectively (Hassan, Nadzim & Shiratuddin, 2015). In course of the discussion it is important to evaluate the need of a more effective social media planning through the SWOT analysis of the existing framework.

· Facebook is the most popular social media site that the Australian people are accessed into. Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper · All the details of the Quicksilver Group are mentioned in the social media sites. · The clear and informative page. · Direct link with the official website of Quicksilver Group.	Ø There are still opportunities for Quicksilver Group to incorporate the other online media marketing strategies. Ø Most of the Australian travel and tourism companies are relied on the common social media sites like the Facebook or Twitter. It will be an advantage to do rigorous marketing through other online channels.
· Absence of other social media promotions. · Zero use of online campaign. · Lack of infrastructure for website flash advertisements.	Ø Fluctuating behaviour of the customers. Ø Huge expenses regarding extensive online marketing practice. Ø Dearth of adequate infrastructure.

In this regard, it can be stated that the AIDA Model will provide adequate measures for the Quicksilver Group to encapsulate the market more effectively. As per the research conducted by Wijaya (2015) it can be advocated that the AIDA Model is responsible to attract the customers so effectively through its extensive orientation of social media marketing practices. Hadiyati (2016) opined that the AIDA Model is identified as the most effective measure in the high competitive market where all the companies are looking for social media marketing. Therefore, it is important for a company to plan and execute some effective measures that were responsible to sustain the business of that company.

In this context, Asadi and Bahrami (2016) mentioned that the AIDA model has four stage that foster a better customer penetration strategy. In this context, there are four stages such as the awareness, interest, desire and action. The purpose of the awareness stage is to create a brand recognition for a specific product or service (Mohammadi, Esmaeily & Salehi, 2012). Whereas the interest phase is dedicated to increase the interests of the customers to choose that particular product or service (Venkatraman et al., 2015). Besides this, the desire part connotes the process of penetrating the psychology of the customers through rigorous online advertisements. Based on those phases, the customer will take actions that proves the efficacy and vitality of the strategy (Weng & Huang, 2018). Moreover, Penhani, Ghadami and Fard (2015) asserted that the AIDA model puts emphasis on not only the popular social media but also includes the promotional mails and online pop up advertisements as well. These measure will create a better capsulation of market by Quicksilver Group in terms of exploiting the alternative online marketing methods besides the social media promotion like Twitter or flash advertises in the online purchasing sites. In addition to this, the AIDA Model also pushes the organisation to involve other social media promotional mechanisms that are easily available and popular enough to incorporate more customers and visitors.

Recommendation

In this context, it can be stated that as the purpose of Quicksilver Group is to initiate a better social media marketing including the online sales strategies therefore, the AIDA model seems very pragmatic and relevant enough to deal with it. The modern approach with entirely relied on the technological support fosters more sense for Quicksilver Group to install the AIDA model extensively. In fact, it can be argued that the AIDA model helps the organisation to implement social media like not of Facebook and Instagram but also other social media like twitter and flash advertisements in popular websites robustly. Besides this, it also highlights on the behaviour of the customers so that the organisation will set up marketing plan accordingly.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be stated that this report rightly discusses the problems of the social media marketing strategy of Quicksilver Group through a detailed SWOT analysis. Besides this, a detailed recommendation section is also drawn in order to understand the importance of implementing a new strategy in order to maximise the customers in the intensely competitive Australian travel and tourism market. In course of the discussion, the AIDA model is mentioned as a suggestion for the Quicksilver Group.  Therefore, it can be concluded that the report rightly points out various problems in social media marketing plan of Quicksilver Group and as a solution the AIDA model can play pivotal role. From that point of view, the report is highly relevant and reflects the insights of using social media marketing.

Reference

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Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), 15-27.

Hadiyati, E. (2016). Study of marketing mix and AIDA model to purchasing on line product in Indonesia. British Journal of Marketing Studies, 4(7), 49-62.

Hassan, S., Nadzim, S. Z. A., & Shiratuddin, N. (2015). Strategic use of social media for small business based on the AIDA model. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 172, 262-269.

Mohammadi, S., Esmaeily, N., & Salehi, N. (2012). Prioritization of promotion tools based on AIDA model by Analytic Hierarchy process in production sector of sport industry. Archives of Applied Science Research, 4(4), 1670-1675.

Penhani, D., Ghadami, M., & Fard, M. J. (2015). Investigating the effect of media advertising (through TV) on attracting banks clients based on AIDA model: case study of Bank Mellat. Advances in Environmental Biology, 394-401.

Quicksilver-cruises.com. (2018). About Quicksilver Cruises | Quicksilver Cruises. Retrieved from https://quicksilver-cruises.com/company/about/index.html

Venkatraman, V., Dimoka, A., Pavlou, P. A., Vo, K., Hampton, W., Bollinger, B., … & Winer, R. S. (2015). Predicting advertising success beyond traditional measures: New insights from neurophysiological methods and market response modeling. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(4), 436-452.

Weng, L., & Huang, Z. (2018). A Study of Tourism Advertising Effects: Advertising Formats and Destination Types.

Wijaya, B. S. (2015). The development of hierarchy of effects model in advertising. International Research Journal of Business Studies, 5(1).