Multichannel Marketing Approach
Early adopters/Word of mouth: This is the easiest and cheapest way to market CareCar, by making sure our early adopters have a good experience that allows them to spread the word about how great their ride was.
Paid advertisements: We will use our budgeting dollars to have paid advertisements on television commercial spots, radio ads, newspapers and digital media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Referral marketing: This will allow our customers to give referrals to first-time users so they can receive “CareCar Credit Dollars”, while allowing the first-time user a free ride. This is a win-win situation as we will get new customers and our older customers will be able to earn free credits.
Customer loyalty program: Recognizing our customer base and loyalty to them is extremely important. We want to incentivize our customers in using our application as much as possible, so for each ride they take with us, they will receive a 50 cent credit in which they can use as a discount towards future rides.
Partnerships: Partnerships with hospitals and senior living centers are crucial as a lot of our customer base could be coming from or to these specific destinations. Having a partnership in offering discounts to customers will create a solid foundation and understanding of who we are and what we do as it relates to our target audience of people between the age of 40 – 64.
Ratings and reviews: The more ratings and reviews we receive, the better we will know what our customer experience is like. Instead of asking our customers at the end of the ride how their trip was or to give a rating of their driver, we will give them a 25 cent credit for every review and/or rating they give. This credit will be for a future ride they take with us.
Influencer strategy: Incorporating influencers is key in marketing to audiences through different social avenues which includes partnerships with related influencers, capitalizing on IGTV and Facebook Live through different Q&A and speaker series and running targeted promotional advertisements.
Social Media:
Social Media Marketing Channels to Reach Customers
Social Media Marketing Channels to Reach Drivers
Facebook and YouTube are the “most widely used online platforms for US adults” (Pew Research Center) and Facebook was the most useful platform for reaching an Gen X and Boomers (Business News Daily). While Instagram is not the primary platform for older Americans, use amongst the segment is continually growing (Hootsuite). It is also the “platform of choice” for influencer marketing (Hopper HQ).
Finally, Twitter is one of the first places customers go to for customer support (Twitter), share reviews and quickly connect with brands. For this reason alone, we must be on Twitter and listening for brand mentions. Twitter is also an important channel for PR/media outreach (Forbes) and influencer engagement.