LO1: Apply professional marketing techniques to a showreel website to gain feedback from industry professionals.
Last week I decided to write up a few criteria’s to asses current websites and how these websites market themselves to the public. This was due to the fact that we wanted to assess the marketplace and how some of the big hitters within the industry. Some of the bigger companies we looked at within this sample size were Soho Squared studios, Codapostproduction and Westdigital. All of which are quite established and constantly work with highly regarded artists and broadcast companies within their portfolios. By reviewing how they market themselves, we gauge a slight idea into how successful companies market themselves. These are the results I discovered upon going through the websites.
1. Does this website include social media links?
Looking through the websites, you can immediately get the impression that using social media profiles is a tool used by much younger producers and companies. Overall, out of the 20 companies we looked at. 13 out of the 20 used social media profiles throughout the website. Due to the fact that the vast majority of the companies that come of as modern use social media links as a method of promoting, it’d be quite beneficial for us a new company to do similar.
2. If so, are these links to the social media pages on the homepage?
This question was constructed to determine where we would be placing these social media links. If companies were having links to their socials on the launch page then it would evidently be quite an important to the overall website. Out of the 13 companies that used links to social media page throughout their websites, 7 of them featured links to them pages within the homepage. The 6 that didn’t places the links within pages such as “contact us” and “hire me”. It was also noticeable that the majority of the companies using social media links on their home pages were more active on social media so this is something we will to consider if we are going down the route of heavy promotion within social media platforms.
3. Does the website include a contact email on the homepage?
This question was against used with website format in mind. One prominent aspect I noticed early into tracking these stats was that the email contact was dependent on how companies laid out their websites. Websites that heavily featured prior work on the front page tended to use a contact email within a “contact us” page within the website. Where as companies who took a more minimalist approach when it came to their home pages typically did feature a contact email or an online enquiry form. For the sake of statistics, I lumped in both online enquiry forms and contact emails together. Out of the 20 websites we looked at; 12 of them featured a contact detail within the homepage. I believe that this is a variable that doesn’t matter massively, it’s more so a case of if we have work we want to immediately showcase on the homepage.
4. Does this website include a phone number on the homepage?
Similarly to the prior question, this questions sets out to see what contact details are featured and where about’s they are featured. The rational behind using this question alongside the prior contact email one was also party down to us seeing which the preferred method of contact was. Within the home pages, only 6 of the 20 within the sample had a clear phone number within homepage with the vast majority of them placing it within a “about” or “contract/hire us” section. From this, it could be argued that most companies prefer clients sending emails rather phone calls and placing email address’s on the front page increases the amount of people emailing enquiries as posed to ringing.
5. Do these website use paid for ads on google?
From googling each of these companies individually, only 2 of the 20 placed at the top in ad sections both of which were quite esteemed companies. Due to this factor, we won’t be paying for ad placement as it’s apparent that companies can thrive without it. Also factoring in the lack of a marketing budget.
6. How active are these companies on Twitter/Facebook?
– Est. Multiple posts a day
– Around 1 post a day
– A post every week or so
– A post every month or so
– No social media presence
As stated earlier, 7 of the 20 companies we looked at seemingly had no social media presence that was promoted within the websites. 2 of the 20 companies seemingly didn’t post much at with one of them’s most recent post falling 2 months prior so both of these would fall roughly into the a post every month or so category. A further 2 companies posted roughly every week and another 2 posted roughly once a day. 7 of the companies fell under the posting multiple times a day category. What does this tell us though? It informs us that out of the companies that have a social media presence, the vast majority are incredibly active with various different posts. I also noticed that a lot of the companies retweet pieces done by other companies so it’s evident that a fair amount connections have been made between different companies.
7. Do the companies make reference to current events on social media?
Out of the 13 companies that prominently use social media, only 1 of the companies post about external news stories not revolving around the audio production sphere and that anomaly was an individual who seemed to use his social media’s as more of a personal blog space. Most of the other companies posts fell under 3 categories: write up’s, posts about artists being in and technology. All of which fall under the relevant company subject matter. Due to this, if we were to make use of social media pages we would stick to exclusively industry based posts.
Although the sample sized used was relatively small in the grand scheme of things, i’ve began to notice patterns within the marketplace when it comes to how established companies promote content. The companies that have a more youthful feel to them often use external websites such as Twitter and Facebook as a method of cross platform promotion where as the more traditional companies who are established stick to what they know, this might be due to them having a bigger reputation in the industry. As a company who’s just starting up it’ll be vital for us to use social media and contract information on the landing page as a method of attracting as many clients as possible.
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