Future Online marketing recommendations:

We advice Messer to focus on expanding its online advertising by doing a long term campaign of duration of 6 months in order to increase sales and target new customers. That campaign has to be made for the whole world except Germany.
Germany being a particular country in which Messer performed good before, the group has to prepare its re-entry and boost its image. This can be done through a short term campaign whose can help to enhance brand awareness.

The Industry component
1.    Introduction

In this section we are going to present the results of our campaign. We will show and compare our previous strategic and metric objectives with the final practical results.
We will also give the operational details about how we launched our campaign and our account like the schedule, the money spent…
Then the major changes of the campaign and the reasons that led to these changes and the impacts will be explained. Indeed we had to change some of our strategies in order to reach more impression and to spend the total amount of money during the two weeks of the campaign.
We will then conclude with the practical lessons from the campaign and the recommendations we would give to the company to reach the best ROI of its campaign.
2.    Campaign overview:

Strategic goals:
Our company is principally a B2B business, therefore our strategy was built around their major industry customer which are: the manufacturing industry, medicinal laboratories and the food industry.
Our keywords have then been chosen in order to answer the specific needs of these customers and to match to the potential searches they could make. Our goal wasn’t to increase the brand awareness of the company because then we think that Google Adword is not the best way to do it.  On the opposite our strategic goal was at first a long-term objective to create a very specific targeting online advertisement campaign. In our campaign our main focus was on creating sales and secondly at the same time increasing brand awareness with specific segment marketing.
We especially wanted to focus on the food sector and industrial cutting therefore we chose keywords as  “laser cutting machine”, “gourmet gas”, “freezing food”, “cooling down food”, “gentle freezing” or “carbon acid for beverage” in order to meet their specific needs.  Therefore our campaign was really built around specific targeting with specific keywords.
Metrics goals:
Our metrics goals are meant to be realistic which means nor optimistic neither pessimistic.
Here are our forecasts for the different figures:
-    Around 5 clicks per day which means around 50 clicks in total for the whole two weeks campaign because no clicks during the week-end.
-    Around 2000 impressions per day which means around 20.000 impressions in total.
-    We planned to spend the whole amount of money (2000 NTD) during the two weeks of the campaign and to spend less in the beginning to see how it works and then if needed to spend more after.

Operational details:
Unfortunately we couldn’t reach our goals from the beginning. We had to shorten our campaign and to change the strategy.
•    Our campaign started on 24th  November and was till 30th November.
•    Money spent: 1705NT$
•    Campaign schedule
1.    Stage: 24th- 26th November
2.    Stage 27th – 30th November
•    Cost structure and keywords were adjusted due the performance results
3.  Evolution of the Campaign Strategy
In the first stage the keyword we used were:

•    Laser cutting machine
•    Industrial gases
•    Freezing food
•    Shop welding supply
•    Buy welding supplies
•    Cooling down food
•    Gourmet gas
•    Gentle freezing
•    Aluminium welding supply
•    Industrial gas cylinders

In the second stage we added more keyword, which were also much more expensive:

•    Industrial gas
•    Gas welding equipment
•    Industrial gas cylinders
•    Argon welding chamber
•    Welding gases
•    Argon gas
•    Laser cutting machine
•    Co2 gas
•    Argon welding
•    Argon welding gas
•    Argon co2 welding
•    Argon co2 welding gas
•    Co2
•    Welding gas

First our campaign was created with a duration of 2 weeks, but from our experience in the past and our knowledge from the lecture we knew that we always had to evaluate and survey our campaign’s output. As we will discuss later in this paper we changed our strategy after the first 4 days, because our key metrics weren’t reached and so we decided to make our campaign shorter- only one week but to add 14 more keywords. Details about reasons and consequences will be mentioned later.
Some keywords were much more broad terms and also much more expensive but In two days we gained 38 clicks and 33 146 impressions. Some of the new keywords like “welding gas” and “co2” tempt to gain much more clicks and impressions then the others so they are actually the best performers. The keyword “welding gas” was the best performing keyword regarding clicks, “co2” created the most impressions in our campaign. Best performer in the “older” keyword group was “industrial gases” with 40 impressions.
4. Key results
In total our campaign gained 38 clicks and 35 289 impressions. The both metrics are not equally distributed among the search and content ads. From the results we can see that content ads create much more impressions and clicks  – 30 479 impressions and 30 clicks and the search ads created only 4,949 impressions and 8 clicks. This difference in the performance is because for this type of businesses it’s not that common to search for companies on Google, people tend to click on ads with appear on specialized sites or networks.
In the first stage there are no clicks and less than 100 impressions gained on the content ad showing. So we figured out the using highly specified keywords isn’t the only approach we should use for this campaign. After discussing this topic in our group meetings during the campaign activity we finally decided to change our strategy and to add more general keywords. The main reason for this is that Messer Group is a typical Business-to-Business company and in its industry Online Advertising is not really common. Their marketing activities are mainly based on industry fares or advertising in professional journals.
After we figured out that the performance of our campaign couldn’t reach our expectations we discussed making  minor and major changes in our strategy. We decided that we should add some more general keywords in order to attract also a more general audience. Some of them were very broad like “industrial gas” “welding gas” and “co2”.  We adapted our budgeting to these changes and decided to reduce the duration in order to have a better overview of our strategy. We cut the estimated campaign duration down from 2 weeks to 1 week and augmented the daily budget.
These risky changes lead to a better overall performance. We gained in the 4th day of our campaign in total 15 clicks and all of them where from the content ads. The impressions after the change increased significantly. From the content ads we had 19 708 impressions and from the keywords 10 impressions. On the 5th day the performance is pretty much the same. The clicks of the content ads for the day stayed the same but the clicks of the search ads were 0. The impressions gained on this day increased to 20 520.
Another interesting fact was that also keywords from our previous campaign performed a lot better with the new strategy (e.g. keyword “industrial gases”).
From budgeting point of view we planned to spend the 2.000 NT$ constantly with a daily maximum amount of 2.000 NT$/14 days. After our campaign didn’t create any clicks and just impressions by content in the beginning we had to adapt our budgeting plan. In the second stage of our campaign we spent almost all of our budget – 1705NT$. As already told the content ads showing gained 30 clicks for the whole campaign so it also generated much more costs than the search ads (1336NT$ for content and 365.56NT$ for ads showed directly after a Google search).  Although in total the ads showed in content networks we more expensive their average CPC is less than the CPC of the ads showed on Google.com (44.54NT$, 45.695NT$).This fact is very important for the campaign because if it is extended in the time in total the impressions generated would be much higher and the average CPC is less so it is much more efficient for MesserCorp to advertise on websites part of the Google network but not on Google.com.

5. Conclusions
The main conclusion for our group and our client is that the first campaign we created was a long-term campaign with inexpensive and very specific keywords. The problem is that for this project we only had 14 days and so we changed the strategy after we figured out that we would never reach our budget. The change in our major strategy showed us the difference between a short-term online campaign and a long-term one.
Our first approach was very specific targeting a professional target group searching for specified keywords. We still can be sure that our first campaign has a high chance to create sales after a potential customer is clicking on our ad, but this campaign is more long-term and as we only have 2 weeks to set the campaign for this course we decided to change strategy in order to see the difference between general and specified keyword advertising.
After buying more expensive and more general keywords we were able to see the increase of Clicks, CTR and impressions in one day. Our whole previous campaign hadn’t create as much Clicks, CTR and impressions as the new campaign in a few hours.
As you can see above we discussed our keywords again and added some more expensive ones, which provides us more impressions and clicks. Especially the keyword “welding gas” we also discussed in our pre-campaign performed very well. With a CTR of 0,29% it was our best performing keyword. As we know from our previous marketing courses that in conventional online advertising a CTR is normally in the “one-tenth of a percent”-area (best performing keywords are around 1%) we think that this performance was really good.
The highly specified keywords didn’t provide that much clicks while the campaign was active. We discussed this topic intensively in our group and we figured out that a B2B Online Marketing should use a mix of specified and general keywords, because the result of a ad for a very specific target group isn’t measurable in 1-2 weeks. That would take more time.
Regarding all these points the main conclusion is that the focus of company’s scope of marketing activities really matters. An affordable long-term campaign should use inexpensive and highly specified keywords while a short-term campaign should be based on expensive keywords with hey Clicks, CTR and Impressions potential in order to boost traffic of the website.
The advantage of our first campaign was that it was really affordable and the possibility of creating sales after a click was in comparison with the next campaign a lot higher.
Messer Group as our client prefers the long-term campaign as they told us in an email. Especially in Business-to-Business Marketing  (B2B) sales are more important than brand awareness and so they are more focused on the possibility of selling a product after a potential customer visited their homepage than generating thousands of Impressions or Clicks without any effect on their sales.
6. Future Recommendations
Our future recommendation for the gas industry and especially our client Messer Group is to expand their online advertising. We are sure that Keyword Advertising is a good possibility to boost their sales, market share and brand awareness, although B2B Online Marketing is really different from conventional marketing.  While doing our campaign with Google AdWords we figured out that the choice of keywords really depends on the scope of companies marketing activities.
The companies in this sector should do a lot of research before selecting their keywords, because a mix of cheap, selected and general and more expensive keywords could lead to the perfect result in online advertising.
We also contacted our client Messer Group to tell them the results and conclusions of our campaign. Our group recommended the Marketing Management to set up a long-term Keyword campaign with at least 6 months of duration in order to increase sales, which should be the major goal of their online campaign.
Another point is that Messer Group is one of the smaller players in the Gas Market. They don’t have as much financial power as their main competitor Air Liquide, Linde AG, Praxair or Air Products. Regarding their previous marketing campaigns they mainly focus on a professional target group in order to create sales. Brand awareness never has been one of their major goals.
Nevertheless we recommended Messer Group a special Advertising campaign for the German market. As they have been market leader in Germany 20 years ago they should use their market re-entry in 2008 to “rebrand” themselves. For this country we recommend a short-term campaign with general and expensive keywords to boost their brand awareness.  In no other country on the globe they would have a chance to increase their brand awareness as fast and efficient as in Germany.
For the rest of the world we recommend a mixture as mentioned above.
Creating a click on our ad at highly specified keywords is still the main goal, because this click could lead to selling a product to this customer because his professional “searching behavior” indicates a high potential to buy the products of Messer Group.

Learning Component

1. Learning objectives and outcomes
What we as a team hoped to learn:
-    How to extract relevant information from the company its website with regard to learn about the company and get familiar with its products
-    What keywords are and how to find the right keywords
-    What the metrics (impressions, clicks, click trough rate, average cost per keyword) exactly mean and how to manage and evaluate them
-    Overall, how to set up such a campaign and manage and maintain the campaign in such a way as to produce useful outcomes for the company (for example, choose the right strategies, long-term/short-term)

Overall, we met our learning expectations. From the start we had to go through the company its website to find the information relevant to the campaign. We got pretty familiar with the company and its products and so we were able to give a good description about the company, its products, and the activities it is involved in. Moreover, by having a good overview and impression of the company it was relatively easy to find the correct keywords. At that time, we already found out what keywords exactly are and how to develop the ones that are most useful for the company and give the best result.
Furthermore, we learned a lot about the different metrics that we had to use in relation with the keywords. We achieved to get enough familiar with these metrics as to know how to recognize, manage, and measure them in an appropriate manner. This helped us in analyzing and evaluating the results in the end and that gave us a clear end picture of the campaign.
Overall, we learned how to set up such a campaign, manage and maintain it. This was the result of having a good understanding about the key factors that have to be used in the campaign. In the end, the results of the campaign gave us the opportunity to produce useful outcomes for the company.
The learning objectives that we had before the campaign really started are actually all met. Sometimes it took some time for understanding everything in the right way, however towards the end of the campaign we could say that we met our learning expectations pretty well.
The key outcome that we will remember is that we did not reach the goals of metrics and therefore a change in strategy had to take place. After a short time we discovered that we had to change our strategy, we changed from stage 1 tot stage 2. This means that more keywords were added that were more expensive. Moreover, due to adding more expensive keywords we had to shorten our campaign and the shorter period gave us a better overview of our strategies as well. Unexpected is that the keywords from stage 1 had a better performance with this new strategy.
The expected outcome was that the impressions and clicks for search ads would be much lower than for content ads because of the business where the company is in. Overall, it was a big learning experience that we would never reach the goal with our long-term campaign but instead we had to use a short-term campaign to reach our goal. This change in strategy showed us a major difference in the outcome of the campaign.

2. Group dynamics
All the people in our group were already familiar with each other in working together. This helped us in not encountering too many problems with regard to each other. Actually, when any help was needed during the campaign we were there to give some assistance. So, the outcomes from working as a group were as expected and no really unexpected outcomes occurred.
One of the problems that we did encounter was that we had to make some changes in the beginning of the campaign. As a group we tried to find the best company for the campaign, we thought we found the right one but as we identified what information we had to use for the campaign it turned out to be too difficult to use the company. The company was too small and too less information was known to be able to meet the objective of the campaign. As a team, we discussed the problem and searched for another company and after a short time we found Messer. We overcame this problem relatively fast and because we identified the problem in the beginning of the campaign there were no serious consequences with regard to the outcome of the campaign. The other problem was our strategy. After noticing that the campaign was not giving the results as we expected we decided to change our strategy in short notice. This worked out really well, the quick response of the group resulted in another strategy with higher performance.

3. Client dynamics
The only problem we encountered was that some relevant information was not available on the website. This was a problem because we needed the information to get a clearer picture of the company. As one of our team members is familiar with the company, we were able to contact the client. The company was very helpful in providing some extra relevant information to us. Thus, we encountered the problem of unavailable information on the website by contacting the client and ask for more information.
Furthermore, our client preferred a long-term campaign to generate a higher sales possibility. However, due to the short time our group had to run the campaign, the strategy changed to a short-term campaign. In the end, this was the best change we could make because it generated a lot more clicks and impressions. For a short-term campaign the performance was good and the best we could do for the client.

4. Future recommendations
A minor point that we could improve for the future is:
- Get faster familiar with the key factors (metrics for example) because if the preparation time is reduced, more time can be spend on the major content of the campaign
A major point we could improve for the future:
- During the preparation of the campaign find out if a long-term campaign is realistic or a short-term campaign is more realistic due to time limits

PayPal is the first “person-to-person” electronic payment network and as such it has a great competitive advantage. With 8 years precedence PayPal had over 100 million  registered users and 28 million active accounts.
PayPal’s management developed a very successful “three-phase strategy. Firstly PayPal was expanding its services among eBay users in the US, later to eBay’s international web sites and after that it began building PayPal’s business off eBay. PayPal’s management wisely decided to distinguish the service’s growing phases so that they were able to focus separately on the different markets and develop and improve the system PayPal was using.
PayPal’s early success is thanks to its advantages as payment system. It’s the most fast and convenient payment way because it requires only their email account and bank account or credit card. Using credit card or bank account information on the internet is considered to be dangerous because of the growing fraud with such kind of data. But PayPal provides better protection by requiring username and password and also by refunding payments in a case of card theft. Another advantage in comparison to the traditional credit cards is that PayPal serves both sides – the customers and the retailers.
Another part of PayPal’s success is that it attracted the users of the online auction marketplace especially eBay who are individuals or small businesses and are unable to accept credit cards. Another advantage of PayPal’s payment system is that there are no transaction costs for the customers and only the sellers are charged with small fees per transaction.
PayPal became so successful also because of the growing share of ecommerce. In the last years more people started purchasing on the Internet, not only on eBay but also on other retailer or auction web sites. Online payment’s importance was raised and beside the credit cards PayPal’s system was the only other option for customers. So with all the advantages this service had, it increase it’s market share dramatically.

Question#2 – Does Google represent a serious threat to PayPal? What strategy for payments would you recommend for Google? For eBay/PayPal in defending against Google’s attack?

Yes, in a certain way Google represent a serious threat to PayPal. However, PayPal has all the first-mover advantages which Google does not have. PayPal its business system is not perfect yet however, there is a high level of trust among customers and its users-base is still growing. Many people are not comfortable sharing credit card information online or do not even have a credit card. Retailers overcome this problem by using PayPal which makes it possible to pay through the internet without using credit cards. Furthermore, PayPal provides four product suites which is very convenient for merchants in choosing the appropriate payment product. The strategy of eBay and PayPal of acquiring certain companies such as VeriSign gateway and Skype are one of their key factors for growth.

Google says its goal of its newly introduced payment system is not to compete with PayPal but to turn their advertisements into purchases. However, when introducing a payment system for their customers, it is already a kind of threat to PayPal. Especially in the case of Google which is a large company with a very large customer base.

Strategies to recommend for Google:

Google has one main advantage: the brand awareness. People all over the world know the brand Google and they trust this really famous brand. This advantage leads to an easier market entry for Google in this new market segment. Another important opportunity Google could use is their high amount of famous applications like gmail, iGoogle, AdSense, Reader, AdWords etc.. Especially services like Google AdWords are easy to combine with a new payment service and so they use synergy effects (economies of scope) by providing their payment service with their applications.
In the beginning they should focus on online marketing. One possible strategy is to reward people with a signing bonus when they create an account or when they recommend the Google service to friends.
Furthermore, Google could use its huge network of business relationships. Because of their importance in the online environment they created during the last years very useful partnerships with other online companies and Google could negotiate with these business partners whether they can use their payment system. Other marketing activities like offering packages and bundles are also helpful.

Strategies to recommend for eBay/PayPal;

-    Expand the off-eBay business which will result in a larger customer base. However, PayPal should closely watch the reactions of credit card companies with pursuing this strategy to avoid conflicts.
-    PayPal should invest on the merchant’s side of their business. The more merchants will support by paying through PayPal, the more customers will make use of it because they are automatically informed about this payment possibility.
-    For off-eBay business target new users.
-    Emphasize on recruitment of large online retailers however, also put significant effort in the small and midsized merchants.
-    Maybe link with Google it’s rival

The main idea is to recruit sales representatives, which use their social environment (co-workers, friends, neighbors, fellow church members, grocers) to sell the products and to broaden the number of sales reps. The typical distributor is a white, married mother between the ages of 35 and 44, who wishes to be part of the Mary Kay experience and to increase the household’s income.  The main incentive by using this strategy is to create a highly personalized sales environment, in which the customers feel really comfortable, and with emphasize on the relationship between sales rep and customer.
Another point is that women (the main target group) highly appreciate the values or the self-definition of Mary Kay, which is to “help customers feel good about themselves and their appearance” and “taking care of their skin and apply cosmetics, and thus improving their self-image”.  This leads to a close relationship between the brand and their customers. The high trust into the quality and values of Mary Kay is another result of this strategy.

However network marketing fell into a slump in the 1990’s and as a result of feminism and social changes women give up their life as housewives and start to focus on their business careers. Another problem was the demographic change in modern societies of high-developed countries. This led to a decrease of direct selling from 8 percent in 1995 to 6.8 percent in 1999 in the United States.
Furthermore, people started to use the Internet as an information source and as a distribution channel. For Mary Kay technology has never been a driving force, because they use telephone and fax to organize orders and most of their beauty consultants were not familiar with using the Internet/technology in an appropriate way.
As a result of this non-readiness for new technology they have problems with “blocked calls” and stock problems.

In order to have a better structure of our summary we compare an “offline strategy”,  “mix strategy” and “pure online strategy” in the following table.

Approach: Offline
Advantages:

-    women trust their social environment
-    original strategy
-    was successful
-    customers’ familiarity with it
-    personalized
-    more
-    professional in introducing women in taking care of their skin in the right way
-    friendly atmosphere back up purchasing process

Disadvantages:

-    social changes
-    time consuming
-    obsolete system
-    high amount of reps can cause problems
-    cannibalism
-    target groups don’t fit anymore

Approach: Online
Advantages:

-    cost saving
-    global coverage
-    lastest needs
-    easy to update
-    time efficient
-    easy for customer
-    possibility to change image of mary kay
-    possibility of a social network by using web2.0 applications (forum, community)
-    no training costs anymore
-    can focus on online advertisement to increase potential sales and brand awareness

Disadvantages:

-    they have to fire all their sales rep
-    restructuration of the whole company
-    losing dialog between beauty consultants and customers
-    changing the whole values
-    loss of their competitive advantage
-    lose of their authenticity
-    maybe losing the trust of customers in their brand
-    bad image by feedback of desperate/angry sales reps
-    online payments

Approach: Mixed
Advantages:

-    combining all the advantages of both strategies
-    not losing their values but also the possibility of using the Internet as an important medium to create e.g. a social network (forum, community) to improve customer satisfaction.

Disadvantages:

-    investment in training and IT
-    online payments

After the comparison of the three approaches we came to the conclusion that Mary Kay should use a “mixed (online and offline) strategy”. Customers should not be able to order directly from the homepage without having an interaction with a beauty consultant.  The trust of women in the way of selling Mary Kay products is their competitive advantage and makes this company unique and reliable for their target group. They should keep these advantages and combine them with the possibilities of an online environment, e.g. by using web2.0 applications like forums or community items. In addition to that, they should create a strong back-office platform enabling the sales rep to keep track on their orders and to fasten the procedure.

Another opportunity is to provide online training for sales reps in order to increase professionalism and the quality of advice.

In November 07, a MySpace user was connecting an average of almost 15 times a month on MySpace while a Facebook user was coming back an average of 17 times. In February 07, the difference was less important. Facebook users tend to come more often and stay less time than MySpace users: especially due to the “News Feeds” system. Now, a user will log in his profile have a quick look on new feeds, select the one he is interested in, check it out then leave Facebook. A MySpace user will navigate on each MySpace page more accurately paying more attention of the information. Facebook and MySpace users are different.
Firstly, creating an account on Facebook is much easier than a MySpace page. It is easier and you have the feeling than you tell less about your life.
Secondly, MySpace is much more cultural than Facebook because a lot of music brand have a MySpace page, for example.
Finally, there is more privacy on Facebook because only your friend can access your profile even if a Facebook user tends to have a lot of friends.
For the moment, Facebook is not a threat because these two networks are targeting different people or focusing on different interest. Facebook is more to show of while MySpace is more to share a hobby. According to the figures, we can not say that MySpace suffer a lot from Facebook creation in terms of monthly visits, time spend and so on; but still Facebook records some growth in this area. So far Facebook is a competitor of MySpace in terms of networking but may become a threat in future; that is going to depend on the strategic position that Facebook is going to take. If Facebook add more and more application, like the chat or the Deezer application (you can download your playlist made on www.deezer.com) that is going to raise significantly the time spent at each visit and may be attract new users.

Question 2:
Should MySpace join OpenSocial or invest in its own developed platform?
The both options for MySpace have their benefits and costs.
OpenSocial provides applications for the social networks that joined it. The greatest advantage for MySpace to choose this platform is that as an already developed service, using this platform is related for MySpace with lower costs and lower adoption time. It means that MySpace’s applications could be developed very quickly and then the company won’t be lagged behind their competitors like Facebook.
However, there are some disadvantages for Myspace. OpenSource is a platform developed by Google available for every social network that joined it which includes also competitors. Using it would destroy MySpace’s competitive advantage and would lower its differentiation possibilities. In the world of social networks, differentiation is a very important concern because all their users have the same incentives – connecting with friends, befriending with new people and sharing all kind of information. Using one or another social network is a question of what possibilities the networks offer to their customers. So if MySpace decides to use OpenSource as an application network its potential customers would lose their incentives to join it because it wouldn’t offer them new possibilities different from its competitors.
Another concern about OpenSource is that at the time of the case study it is still not developed and it’s not sure if it will be developed at all. Deciding to join just an idea is linked to a big uncertainty, which is not advisable at that point of time when Facebook is growing faster and faster.
The other option for MySpace is to develop its own platform for applications as Facebook did. On the one hand MySpace should take into account that this solution would take time and also it’s linked with a big investment of money and resources. But on the other hand, having its own platform would bring a lot of benefits to MySpace. It would have the freedom of choosing the strategy of the platform in content of the applications and their purpose. Another advantage of an own application platform is that MySpace would keep its leading position among the social networks by keeping differentiating itself from the others.
In the short-term point of view OpenSocial is the better choice for MySpace because it’s liked with lower costs and less resources. But in the long run for MySpace it’s better to develop own application platform in order to stay competitive.

#1 Client profile

Messer group is headquartered in Germany (Frankfurt am Main and Krefeld) but is operating in more than 30 countries in Asia and Europe but also Peru and Algeria with over 60 operating companies.

For the global group, consolidated sales reached €705 million in 2007 and the total number of employees is around 4,400.
The Messer Group offers over 130 different kind of gazes (acetylene, xenon, oxygen, nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, helium, food gas, blend of gazes, etc…) liquefied or gaseous whose meet different needs of consumers from a wide range of sectors. They also provide expertise in application technologies to optimize the production process of its customers.
The group also offers various delivery methods: in cylinders, road or rail tankers, or even in on-site facilities at the customer’s company.
Founded in 1898 Messer is providing a long tradition in the gas business with a lot of expertise regarding industrial welding and cutting.

Their homepage is http://www.messergroup.com .
The goal of the website is to communicate clearly their strategy by presenting Messer as an innovative, customer-centered, family business with a rich tradition. The website is meant to be user-friendly with emphasis on products and technologies.

# 2 Market analysis

Messer is the largest owner-managed industrial gases specialist and has more than 60 companies operating in over 30 countries in Europe, as well as companies in China, Vietnam, Algeria and Peru.

Although gas is used in almost every manufacturing process the players of the market are not really popular. In general there are four main players in the market for industrial and medical gas: Linde Group, Air Liquide, Praxair and Air Products. Messer is one of the emerging smaller players in the market, handicapped through the companies history in the last few years.
Before 2004 Hoechst AG and the Messer family owned Messer, but in 2004 the family decided to buy-out the Hoeachst AG in order to transform Messer again in a family business. This “buy-out” was one of the largest deals of McKinsey in this year and was linked with a selling their stations in Germany, the UK and the US. Especially the German market was very interesting because Messer was a market leader with around 60% market share. There was also a non-competition clause for Germany until May 2008.

The key industries for Messer are steel and metals industries, chemicals, food and pharmaceuticals, the automobile and electronics industries, medicine, research and environmental technology.
Regarding the whole market Messers advantages are their long tradition, the trust of the industry in the family business and their expertise in industrial welding & cutting.
Online advertising is in this market important but not as important as in a business-to-customer (b2c) market. Messer had one big online campaign in the last few years:
Before May 2008 they were not allowed to use their brand name “Messer” in Germany because of the non-competition clause, which spilled out in May 2008. But because of the fact that Germany is the original home market of Messer they wanted to promote their reentry in the German market with some online advertising. So they bought the very expensive homepage http://www.gase.de to promote their reentry. After the entry they sold it back.

#3 Current marketing

As a gas producer focused on very specific target group MesserCorp has a common marketing strategy as all industrial B2B companies. They don’t have aggressive advertising campaign on common web sites or TV. MesserCorp puts adds only on some specialized magazines whose readers are exactly Messer’s customers – gas using companies. Another very important marketing activity are the industrial fairs around the world on which the company’s management introduces itself to new potential customers and searches for producing opportunities in new countries.

Another part of MesserCorp’s marketing is the online marketing and especially their website. As a webpage of an industrial company MesserGroup.com is simple but providing all necessary information about the company, their management and their products. Besides the pure company’s information on the website can be found also information about non-industrial activities such as safety and environment measures and social activities in the countries where Messer operates. Providing such information shows that the company is environmental and social responsible which increases their brand image among the environnementalistes.

As a weakness of MesserGroup.com appears the website visibility on Google PageRank. For keywords such as « industrial gas », « bavarage gas », « food cooling gas » the company’s website is not among even the first 100 pages. Another issue is that they do not do any online campaigns, so they rely only on their own website and on the offline marketing.

The only online marketing campaign Messer did in the past is Gase.de. From the company’s history we know that they had in Germany non-competition clause for …. Years and in 2008 just before entering in the German market again they bought the website Gase.de. Main goal at that time was to make aware their old customers that MesserCorp is entering the market again.
# 4 Conclusion

As an international company, Messer should have a strong communication strategy that allows them to target as many as customers they can. Their main target is all the professionals that may be interested by gases. In addition to their original communication strategy, participation to professional fair and advertisement in professional magazines they should use Internet and launch an online campaign.  Using Internet may allow them to find new clients that are not aware of the business of Messer and who are seeking for “partnership” in the gas industry.

# 5 Proposed AdWords Strategy
As a typical business-to-business (b2b) company the main target groups of the Messer Group are the manufacturing industry, medicinal laboratories and the food industry.  Within these groups especially industrial cutting, beverage production and gentle freezing of food are very relevant targets of Messer. Messer is responsible for providing the right gas/gas mixture for these lines of industry.

Defining a keyword is always depending on the focus of the marketing campaign. If the company just wants to increase their brand awareness Google AdWords maybe is the wrong way to do advertisement. The major advantage of Google AdWords is that a customer of this service can create a very specific online advertisement campaign. In our campaign our focus is on creating sales and increasing band awareness with specific segment marketing.

We especially want to focus on the food sector and industrial cutting. For this campaign we created keywords like “laser cutting machine”, “gourmet gas”, “freezing food”, “cooling down food”, “gentle freezing” or “carbon acid for beverage”.  In general we don’t have keywords like “gas” or something very unspecific, because we think that an advertisement for this keyword wouldn’t be very successful. We think e.g. that when a company wants to buy a new laser cutting machine and is searching for some offers on Google the possibility to create sales is a lot higher when we offer an advertisement like “Improving your productivity with Messer gases”.

Regarding negative keywords we figured out that a lot of people think of natural gas when they first here that Messer is a company, which is producing gas. So we suggest creating “natural gas”, “petroleum gas” and “natural gasoline” as negative keywords, because there is no link between this kind of gas and Messer.

As abovementioned we want to create very specific advertisements with Google AdWords. In order to create sales and to improve brand awareness we generated two Google AdWords Ads:

“Economic and gentle freezing of your food with Messer gas” (keyword: cooling down food, freezing food)

“Improving your productivity with Messer gas” (keyword: e.g. laser cutting machine)

In general, discussions about brands create brand awareness. For Dove, this is certainly the case because of their advertisement campaigns which differ from those of other companies. There is some kind of political or social message included in their advertisements of the ‘real beauty campaign’ which heat up discussions on the internet. On the blogs, there are mostly negative critics about Dove. However, this is with regard to their advertisements so it means the reactions are about the message included in it, not specifically about the products. In addition, Dove does not include its products in the advertisements of the campaign.
Among the blogs, Dove is perceived as a dared brand which tries to express what the average women looks like. Dove emphasizes on true beauty and naturalness, which concerns a true challenge by expressing this in its advertisements. To some people it is appealing while for some others it is not. This comes forth out of believe that the women in the advertisements are not really natural; there is some distrust among a group of customers when it comes to unknown possibility of putting on make-up and using Photoshop in the advertisements. This is what the discussions on blogs can result in; it can generate distrust as well as trust of the Dove brand among people and/or customers. What the effect is on the sales of the Dove products is not clear, the discussions mainly focus on the message of the advertisement campaigns.
In the end, the discussions generate favorable as well as unfavorable arguments for the Dove brand. The image of women in advertisements is a sensitive subject among women in the world. The term ‘beauty’ captures many different meanings among people and therefore it is a topic which can lead to endless discussions. Moreover, for Dove this means that it is not perceived as solely a brand for products however, also as a brand which tries to make people aware of the impact of brands and its advertisements in general.

Question #2 - Footnote 1 of the case leads you to a blogger who asks, with reference to the age of YouTube advertising, “Is marketing now cheap, fast and out of control?” Footnote 2 refers to Dove as having started a conversation “that they don’t have control of.” In “When Tush comes to Dove,” Seth Stevenson writes about the “risky bet that Dove is making.” Do you see risks for the Dove brand today?

By using YouTube for distributing advertisements, Dove found a cheap way to advertise. Moreover, for people it is a very easy way to watch the advertisements so Dove its way of reaching people is good chosen. On the advertisements there can be placed a reaction directly and some of the results are mentioned below.
Some people trust the brand more after the campaign, some people distrust. The distrust comes forth out of the idea that maybe Photoshop and a lot of make-up is used to make the women appear better in front of camera. These are meanings, it is unknown if it’s true.
Some people like the idea of using more natural women for such commercials, others don’t. Like men, there can be concluded that in general men like model types in commercials better.
From what appears from the discussions on the Internet, most of the people with a bad opinion about the brand are men. However, most of the women, which are the target group of Dove, have a positive opinion about the brand. In that way can be said that Dove does not really takes a risk as soon as people who are convinced about the brand are the target consumers and they outweigh the negative thinkers. Otherwise, Dove wouldn’t grow as they did till now. The only field where it is risky is for the non potential consumers that can speak in a bad way about the brand and then change the mind of the potential consumers. But what appears is that as more as people are going about the ads and the brand to speak in a good or bad way, as more it raises the brand awareness and also the loyalty of the consumers to their brand. Current users are ready to defend their brand because they can really identify themselves in the ads and so they want to believe in it, but these users are also not the one who are the most disposed to write on blogs and this is why more negative reactions than positive ones are seen but known is that it doesn’t reflect what most of the people (especially the target group) thinks in reality.
So, in the end, we think it is not risky for Dove to put an advertisement campaign in this way. Using this new way of distributing their advertisements only enhances the brand awareness and the attachment and loyalty of customers of the Dove brand.

description of the company:

b2b, gas company, global player, headquatered near frankfurt (germany), operating in a lot of industries, for example steel and metals industries, chemicals, food and pharmaceuticals, the automobile and electronics industries, medicine, research and environmental technology.

website: www.messergroup.com (available in a lot of languages -> english, german, french, chinese etc.)

goal: focussing on european (especially french) market. improving brand awarness and generating more traffic for the homepage.

There are several options for adCenter in order to streghten its positions in the online advertising market:

Recruiting advertisers

Main goal for every business is to gain newer and newer customers. In the case of adCenter the customers are the advertisers, so in order to be more profitable Microsoft should recruit more companies to sign up. adCenter uses several ways to do that – would-be advertisers, banner ads, and sign-up bonuses. Although their recruiting campaign is very good and their advertising platform is cheaper than and as efficient as Google’s one, there are still fewer advertisers using adCenter. The problem the new advertisers are facing is the sign-up system, which is much more complicate than Google’s one.

Recruiting small publishers to show contextual ads

On the other side of the chain in every business are the suppliers – here these are the publishers. For online advertising we can distinguish between third party small publishers, third party premium publishers and major search engines.
The first option for adCenter is to recruit small websites as its ads publishers. The main problem for that is that Google and Yahoo, Microsoft’s main competitors in this field, are already very strong in that market niche. Although there is enough space at the market for all three of them, Microsoft needs a competitive advantage for its product in order to compete with already established products. Such advantage could be about the price which is for the small publishers main factors for their choice.
Another possibility for adCenter is to offer its customers better click fraud avoiding system which is one of the main problems in the field of online advertising. According to the case in sense of high-quality traffic
Microsoft has such competitive advantage.

Recruiting premium publishers to show contextual ads

Another possible approach for adCenter is to recruit premium publishers in order to use their websites to show ads. In contrast to the small publishers, premium publishers could be trusted and…….(click froud)
In this case the premium publishers are distinguished in two categories – broad sites and focused sites. Both of them bring to Microsoft some benefits but also some costs. The audience which could be reached through the broad websites is more diverse, so more different types of product could be promoted. Another advantage is that people spend much more time on such sites. Another main point is that after the release of web 2.0. there are more and more websites with such content which could be possible publishers of adCenter’s ads. The only disadvantage of such broad websites have is their price.
The other category of premium publishers is the focused websites such as technological sites with who Microsoft has already established connections. Thanks to its strong position it the technology field adCenter has competitive advantage and is able to recruit the same number of publishers as Google but for less costs. The only problem of focusing too much on technological websites is that this will slow down adCenter’s growth in comparison with the other companies on the market.

Recruiting major search engines

Another way to publish ads is to buy traffic from major search engines. It’s the most obvious and convenient way for adCenter, but it faces a lot of challenges. The first main problem for Microsoft is that there are several main search engines, but they have already syndication agreements either with Google or with Yahoo. So for adCenter remain just the local search engines. Other disadvantage of the search engines is that publishing ads there is very costly and Google as bigger player on the market has already pricing competitive advantage.

Leveraging other Microsoft Services

First, a lot of people are Microsoft users and though Live search is incorporated in IE toolbar. Expected from young people and person interested in computing, rare are the Internet users that don’t use IE. Same observations concerning MSN but with a different target. Thanks to the other services Microsoft enjoys a real broad audience.
Second option by leveraging other Microsoft Services, would be to incorporate Live Search to Xbox and this way target young people who are generally more inclined to use Google.

To sum up, as Doug Scotland, we would have recruit new advertisers and so keep on going what Microsoft has done from the beginning.
On a short time point of view, Microsoft should recruit small publishers and though enjoy the growing advertising online market as forecast say that it’s going to double in 3 years.
On a long time point of view, Microsoft should focus in recruiting premium publishers and then enjoy the competitive advantage of Microsoft on the technology area. One of the option should be to target a brand new social Network, type facebook.com, and bet on a future success.
Then, Microsfot already enjoy a position of leader on the Instant Messenger market (MSN), in Internet browsing (IE) and in other operation systems. Part of the solution should be to incorporate ads on and though enjoy broader audience and target new customers.
Setting up syndication agreement with local search engines is an opportunity that need to be considered but that may take longer than the above options.

Question #2 – Suppose that Microsoft goes forward with the deal with Digg. Where will adCenter be in 12 months?

At the time of the case, digg.com was a website which mainly focuses on technology and which were enjoying a large audience from bloggers.  From experience bloggers are early adopters and are really actives on Internet. We predict that the website is going to enlarge its field and go forward than only technology. The audience may become broader too because bloggers rely a lot on word of mouth.
Digg.com may become in one year one of the more active website in terms of social network.
By going forward with the deal with Digg, Microsoft could enjoy the advantage of social network. As we pointed out on the first question, Microsoft should bet on the future on new social network website and so recruit premium publishers to show contextual ads.

The dilemma Heather Yates and Bill Bishop are confronted with is that they don’t know how to convince Windham, that they can offer the better solution.  There is a huge amount of data but the problem is, that Marvel, Windham and MedNet interpret them in a different way. That is a very common problem in the ‘online world’ because Internet can offer a lot of information but there is a difference between information acquisition and information analysis and interpretation. Sometimes this problem leads to ‘information overkill’.
Marvel wants to attract potential customers by focusing on click-throughs and low cost.
MedNet however tries another strategy. They focus on actual buyers and not only on click-throughs, which measures the numbers of customers searching for more information about a special product by clicking for example on a banner advertisement. Although impression is a very soft approach to measure actual purchase it finally can lead to more sales revenues.

Question #2 What does an advertiser want? Sales, leads, brand awareness? What are the best metrics for measuring these?

In general an advertiser wants to promote its products by drawing potential customers to pay attention to its advertisements in public media. Normally the advertiser wants a whole package of benefits, for example improving sales, market share and brand awareness, but it depends. It is also possible that sometimes an advertiser only focuses on short-term goals like increasing sales and productivity. Increasing market share and improving brand awareness are usually long-term goals and it isn’t always possible to distinguish between sales, leads and brand awareness because they are linked.
It is very easy to measure sales because you can use certain financial figures like turnover or sales revenue. Regarding the case having a look at the click-trough-rate is also a good possibility to measure the impact of your advertisement.
As market share and sales are very closely linked you can also use the click-trough-rate to measure the market share. In a global view you can also do a market analysis, a BCG-analysis with all the different products/services in this market or you can figure out the relative market share.

An easy way to measure sales lead is to observe the clicks or in this case the coupon barcode.

Measuring brand awareness can however be very difficult.  Arranging a market analysis or doing some market research are only two possibilities. Since brand awareness is part of the brand equity you can also use metrics for calculating brand equity. Nevertheless you can’t always use financial ratios to determine brand awareness, because brand awareness is deeply linked with feelings and impressions of a visitor/customer. That’s why impressions are the best metric to measure brand awareness in this case.

Question #3 What specific consumer behaviors determine whether or not a business model produces the results an advertiser wants?

Successful business models always lead to high sales and finally to high brand equity (brand loyalty, awareness, association, and perception of quality), a good word of mouth and market leadership.
In order to rate a business model you have to look at consumer behavior, which is always about the decision making (when, how, what, why) of a customer. If you adopt this fact to the online environment, a successful business model will lead to more clicks on the website and to a higher popularity of your brand in the Internet.
In order to have a better understanding of consumer behavior we are going to use the basic model of decision making (EKB-model):
The first stage is the problem recognition. The consumer becomes motivated to solve a problem or satisfy a need. In our case: people recognize that they are sick or have certain health problems. So they are searching for more information (second stage) in order to be able to make a decision. But at this point you can divide the audience of MedNet into two different groups. There is one kind of customer, who only wants to explore the website about finding general information and there is another group of people, who need quick help for their acute health problem.
This kind of customer enters the next stage, which is called ‘information evaluation’. On this level he compares different products/services and brands with each other in order to make decision (fourth stage) and finally to evaluate his decision (fifth stage). According to the case this will be the purchase of pharmaceuticals, which results in higher sales revenues, which is the major goal a successful business model.

Question  #4 What steps can MedNet take to address emerging competitive threats?

At first they have to accomplish a competitive analysis to see which are the main competitors and players in the market. According to the case these players are Marvel and Cholesterol.com. To analyze the market situation they could use Porter’s Generic Competitive Strategies Matrix.
If we use this model, we will see that Marvel is focusing on cost leadership. They attract potential customers with very low costs and a big audience. Cholesterol.com’s target scope is in a niche market, which leads to a differentiation strategy.
MedNet is placed between these two strategies and their competitive advantage and unique selling proposition (USP) is, that people trust their website and they use it when they are in a crisis. We think that this advantage should be backed by the creation of an internal community (e.g. forum) to have a variety of experiences.
Another possibility is to diversify the portfolio. Alternative medicine and especially Chinese medicine can help to broaden their audience. Since a lot of people don’t trust herbal medicine we recommend the creation of a special search engine for herbal and conventional pharmaceutical inside the MedNet homepage, so that users individually have a choice of what they want.
To improve attendance we also recommend advertisement in social networks (e.g. facebook, twitter, flickr) and special agreements with search engines like google.com becoming one of the first search results for searches concerning health problems.
We also discussed a partnership with colesterol.com to benefit from the special expertise of this website and to improve the reliability and know how of MedNet.

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