Real-Life Practical Advice on Social Media for UK Marketers : Part 2
This post is part of a series of articles exploring how to use social media to solve real life marketing problems facing marketers in the UK.
Each article is a response to a real-life question posed by a delegate at my masterclass at March’s Marketing Tech: Tailor Made conference in London. You can read every article in the series by clicking on the ‘Practical social media advice‘ tag.
The Real-Life Marketing Problem
“We distribute tickets for European Rail Tavel. It is difficult to depict customer experience as our products do not belong to us (the trains) and the experiences are so inconsistent.
We also have very restricted budgets so cannot afford digital media.
How to use Facebook or YouTube to get results?”
The Social Media Solution
It turns out that Virgin Trains provide a model answer! The UK train operating company has recently started producing a video podcast series titled ‘Our Man’s Video City Guides’.
I recently received an email inviting me to watch one and was pleasantly surprised to discover what a pleasure it was to watch!
Available as RSS feed and as free downloads, Virgin Trains ‘Our Man’s Video City Guides’ tastefully whet the appetite for train travel to continental Europe yet neatly sidestep any issues with individual travel experiences on Virgin Trains.
I’d be interested to find out what spurred the creation of these slick, professionally created video city guides. Customer demand? Or simply the need to use ‘new media’ for marketing?
I wonder because the videos target Virgin Trains target audience very effectively. One wonders whether each particular city guide was chosen because customers expressed an interest in travelling to that city or whether it is simply to stoke demand for rail tickets to that city.
In any case, though a fantastic use of online video, it suffers one huge drawback: there is no way to see consumer/customer feedback.
It is impossible to find out what other viewers think of these fantastic travel guides.
Virgin Trains have not made the videos available on YouTube and the lack of a ‘share’ or ‘embed’ link makes it difficult to send to friends but one can imagine that an impressed consumer would make the effort to share it amongst friends on Facebook/MySpace/Bebo. I for one would love to read other people’s responses to the invitation to grafitti the walls of the Sacré Coeur in Paris.
So how can the marketing team at the rail ticket distributor company that asked the question above make the most of its restricted budget? Here’s the real life practical advice…
Real Life Practical Advice
- Providing a video tour of several cities rather than individual city guides would be more cost effective for the budget-sensitive rail ticket distributor company in question. Capturing footage covering a handful of popular cities and destinations plus live customer testimonials would be just the ticket!
- Uploading the video(s) onto YouTube would take care of video hosting and efficient delivery; the one drawback of the Virgin Trains video podcast was that the content required a fair bit of time to buffer, giving the impression that the video was not going to load.
What Do You Think?
Impressed by Virgin Trains new commitment to new media? Want to comment on how good/bad/indifferent they are? Or perhaps you know of other travel companies doing the same. Let us know!
Share your thoughts in the comments.
Related posts:
- Real-Life Practical Advice on Social Media for UK Marketers : Part 1
- Real-Life Practical Advice on Social Media for UK Marketers
- Social Media Usage amongst FTSE 100 Companies in the UK
- Real Fresh TV hosts the UK’s first Facebook Q&A tomorrow, Join Us!
- Practical Marketing Training: The Learning Social Media By Doing Course
