BRANDING AND MARKETING COMMUNICATION

IDENTIFYING THE APPLICATION OF DIGITAL MARKETING

● Pick up a brand / company. Identify the application of digital marketing of that company. Analyse the
effectiveness and the benefit of the digital marketing activities of that company.

Introduction
Spotify Technology S.A. is an international media service provider that was founded in
2006 in Sweden. The company’s main business is providing a digital audio streaming
platform “Spotify”, including protected music, videos and podcasts from record labels
and media companies. Spotify is a freemium service, means basic features are free but
with advertisements or automatic music videos and extra features like offline listening
and advertisement-free listening are provided via paid subscriptions.

The Spotify platform was launched in October 2008 and since then the platform already
discovers, manages and shares over 50 million tracks, including 700.000 podcast titles.
Spotify is one of the most popular global audio streaming subscription services with 271
million users, including 124 million paid-subscribers. Users can browse by parameters
such as artist, album or genre. They also can create, edit and share their own playlist.
Spotify is available across 79 markets, including most of Europe, America, Australia and
parts of Asia and Africa. The platform is also accessible on most devices. We can access
the platform from Windows, MacOS or Linux computers and iOS and Android
smartphones or tablets.

The application of digital marketing activities of Spotify

Digital Marketing is the term that is commonly used to show the use of a range of
digital platforms to interact with an audience, it includes managing different forms of
online company presence in websites and social media, in conjunction with other online
communication techniques, such as search engine marketing, social media marketing
online advertising, email marketing, and partnership arrangement with other websites.
The application of digital marketing is in conjunction with traditional communication to
achieve marketing objectives.
 Digital Marketing is one of the ways for Spotify as their marketing strategy which
allows the consumers to explore different content formats. It's one of the useful ways to
reach an engaged audience with interesting text, audio and also video and display
opportunities. To do digital marketing, Spotify is using social media channels such as
Website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Online Community Blog .

1. Advertising Medium
● Website
Spotify has a website that it uses for both advertising their product and also all
information that you need about spotify. Spotify also provides a newsroom in
their websites that posts about new rising artists, stories behind the scene from
some artists about their song making process, and news about music and podcasts
in general. However the main thing that Spotify shows in its website is their
character as a freemium service. The first thing that we see when we open
Spotify’s website is that invitation to get Spotify for free. They create an
awareness for the website visitors that they can enjoy music legally for free if they
use Spotify apps. All that the new users need is signing up with their email
address or with their Facebook account and then they can immediately enjoy the
music or podcast.
● Facebook
Spotify has one main Facebook page that has 22.350.767 followers on Facebook.
Facebook has announced that it is working with Spotify to offer music through
the social network. But, as you'll read, you'll still need to have the Spotify app
installed for it to work. The service isn't offered through a specific Spotify app -
instead you'll now have a Music app in your Facebook profile sidebar. Spotify is a
featured service within this. The content that posted in Facebook uses the
autoplay setting and features a video of suggestions on which podcast, artist, or
playlist that you should hear for that day.
● Twitter
Spotify has one main account and each country has their own official Spotify
account. Spotify has 3.4M followers on Twitter. Their post frequency is around 2
until 5 posts daily, with lots of user engagement, retweeting, comment, and
sharing. The feedback that Spotify gets on Twitter is very responsive. Spotify uses
Twitter also for promoting their artists if they have a new news, song or podcast
and its followers can click on the link that is also provided in the tweet so the
followers can immediately listen to the new stuff.

● Instagram
On Instagram, Spotify has 5 Million followers. Spotify mostly posted 1 photo on
their feed each day and sometimes videos too. They frequently posted Instagram
stories with 1 to 3 stories each day to showcase new artists. By leveraging on the
personal nature of stories, it allows people to swipe and easily access the artists’
songs. They also make highlights of their story. Their Instagram posts are more
artist-centric with each post showcase individual artists and go in-depth into the
artist.
● Youtube
Spotify has a main account in youtube that has one million subscribers and 329
videos that contains promotions videos that featuring any musicians from all over
the world. This Spotify youtube account also promoted every country’s Spotify,
for example Spotify India. The post frequency of this youtube account is not very
often, but monthly, there will be new videos.

● Spotify Online Community Blog

Spotify’s online community has four separate forums: Help topics, Music chat,
Rock stars, and ideas. With 7.260.605 members and 215,613 Posts. The majority
of topics are in the help forum. Between 0 to over 4.000 comments are posted per
topic. Most likely occur in the ideas forum, with each averaging 300 likes each.
2. Direct-response Medium
Spotify uses advertisements on social media such as Instagram and Twitter to the direct
response marketing medium, also, Spotify uses notification alerts from the apps and
Email that has links to redirect the customers to the application directly. Direct response
marketing is a marketing tactic that demands a quick response from consumers who are
exposed to it. The goal with direct response marketing is to convince consumers to call a
number, visit a website URL, or take some other desired action. For example, I regularly
listen to a few Arctic Monkeys’ songs and TWICE’s songs on Spotify and sometimes
Spotify offers its own Arctic Monkey playlist to me that consist of Arctic Monkeys’
songs that I already know or probably I never listen to. This is one way Spotify engages
its users so its users will feel special and encourage users to discover some new songs.
Another way is when Arctic Monkeys released new albums on Spotify, Spotify directly
informed me through the notification alert and email on the phone. This picture shown
below is the notification alert of the new release Arctic Monkeys album & Twitter ads
that shows the recommendation of K-Pop Girlband, TWICE.
3. Platform for sales transaction
Since Spotify is a freemium service, means basic features are free but with
advertisements or automatic music videos and extra features like offline listening and
advertisement-free listening are provided via paid subscriptions. Spotify provides the
customers some services from free services to family package premium services. The
only platform that Spotify uses to do the sales transaction is their website. We can’t buy
the services and sign up only by their apps, we need to sign up first on their website and
choose our services, whether the free one or the premium one. After we choose the
service, we need to put our payment infos to their website that is linked to our email &
credit card.

4. Lead-generation method
Spotify acquires their leads by attracting them to its website or downloading its
application by generating engaging content that can be shared throughout various
mediums. Spotify uses its artists, local and worldwide, in the content to create an interest
and build trust to its leads. Most of Spotify’s contents are tweets, photos, video
invitations from the artists themselves to listen to their newly released music / podcast on
Spotify, behind the scene video about the artists’ songwriting process and in form of
Q&A video by the artists. Spotify spreads its contents across many media, from email,
blogs, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social channels. By including engaging
video and using big artist names on many social platforms, potential leads will be
indirectly aware about what Spotify is and what Spotify provides to its customers. When
many big artists and their favorite artists are also advertising Spotify, potential leads will
trust the platform more and begin to sign up. In this sign up form, leads become a part of
Spotify’s contact management system and email list.

Once the leads become a part of Spotify’s email list, Spotify will regularly send them
information around Spotify and persuade its leads to become Premium members.
Retaining leads’ interest in being part of Spotify’s email list is vital, so Spotify creates
customized email to send to its leads when they already use the free package. One of the
examples is Spotify sending email about the leads’ favourite artist who just released a
new song or album and Spotify provides the leads personalized playlist created by
Spotify that includes their new song or album in the playlist. Spotify uses the leads’
listening data, e.g. frequent streamed artists, to create this customized email so Spotify
will be seen as more engaging to its leads as they know which artist or song that the leads
frequently heard.
5. Distribution Channel
To distribute their digital products, Spotify made an application that is available
on mobile phones, tablets or desktop. People can download it for free from PlayStore,
AppStore and on their website. Users can stream to music at any time and anywhere.
They can access a large music library at low-cost, discovering new music.
Spotify is a very user-friendly and engaging product that continues to address user
needs through a low-cost subscription model and a personalized product. With the
support of exceptional engineering and design, Spotify has been able to create great user
experiences that have uniquely positioned Spotify as the leading paid music streaming
service.
 Display on Mobile phones apps Display on Desktop

6. Customer service mechanism

Spotify provides self-service customers on their support website,
https://support.spotify.com/us/article/how-can-i-contact-spotify/?in_footer. They put
the search column on the website’s home, and also there are 3 main topics which are the
frequently asked questions by the customers, the Account and Payment, Using Spotify,
and Listen Everywhere. Customers can click it and search the answers by themselves.
Customers can also ask for help by tweeting to Spotify’s twitter, asking questions
on Spotify’s online community blog, or customers can chat live to one of the customer
support advisors by email.
7. Relationship-building medium

Spotify uses Newsletter & application notification alerts for special deals to encourage
booking customers. Spotify provides news, promo, and events via email and notification
alerts on the application that can be seen by any customers.
Spotify also launches its “most concerted” global marketing effort to date to support the
development of its ‘Year in Music’ initiative as it looks to keep people engaged by
promoting music in the same way broadcasters promote TV shows. It’s ‘Year in Music’
concept, which allows users to create a personal review of their listening habits over the
last 12 months, in order to build long-term relationships with users by boosting
engagement. After curating their personal year in music, which includes top songs, most
listened to artists by season and first played song, users can then share their results with
friends via social media, which believes it will “reinforce and remind people how much
they value music” in their lives. As this picture shown below, we can see our most played
top songs in 2019, also in 2018, depending how many years you have used Spotify.
Spotify also has their way to make people join in the “Year in Music” campaign. They
posted a tweet which said that we can get a reminder for our own “Year in Music” by
only liking the tweet. Then, Spotify would notify us when our “Year in Music” is ready.
This notification system also creates a successful buzz around “Year in Music” campaign
because it was super easy for the users to join the campaign and Spotify would do all the
notification for us when the campaign is ready.

Spotify also created a “Year in Music” concept for their artist on its platform to share
with their fans, revealing how many times their fans stream the artist’s music, how many
hours in total those fans had spent streaming their music, how many listeners from how
many different countries listen to their music. This encourages artists to engage with their
fans to start conversations on social media with Spotify who is bringing them together.
The analysis of the effectiveness and the benefit of Spotify’s digital marketing

Spotify has already modified the way we consume track and audio content. It’s
less difficult than ever to pay attention to your preferred music and podcasts at the same
time as you’re on the go. Marketers are aware of the converting client behavior and they
need to make sure that they live ahead of the curve. Spotify brand advertising is a
developing trend that allows brands to head where their audience is.

Spotify operates a freemium model with the majority of its customers streaming
track to their mobiles or desktop through apps or net browsers. A majority of users begin
using Spotify as a free member before transitioning over to the paid premium service.
Users subscribe free of charge will get commercials among tracks which are part of the
Spotify revenue model. Users of the unfastened service encounter audio ads each five or
six songs, or approximately 3 mins of advertising and marketing for each hour of
listening. Some of the audio ads are an invitation for the free subscribers to join Spotify’s
premium package. It allows users to get a good feel for the product by at least allowing
them to have access to all of Spotify’s music library. The interrupting advertisements and
the inability to play particular songs will push a user to subscribe to Spotify Premium.

Spotify has used co-advertising and partnerships with publishers to increase it’s
reach by embedding exclusive formats of widgets on different sites. For example
Drowned In Sound has a month-to-month playlist which it embeds within its blog which
encourages its readers to have interaction with Spotify. A music magazine like NME
offers apps with a range of playlists which again will generate awareness and
engagement. Other partnership services enable Festivals and Charities to interact with
their target market via Spotify playlists.

To grow its target audience beyond its conventional younger audience Spotify
today invests greater in campaigns. In 2013 it launched a multiplatform campaign, with a
30 seconds advertisement spot at some stage in the season most suitable for NBC's 'The
Voice.' thirty second versions of the ads aired in 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno' and
'Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.'
 As we mentioned above, Spotify launches its “most concerted” global marketing effort to
date to support the development of its ‘Year in Music’ initiative as it looks to keep people
engaged by promoting music in the same way broadcasters promote TV shows. It’s ‘Year
in Music’ concept, which allows users to create a personal review of their listening habits
over the last 12 months, in order to build long-term relationships with users by boosting
engagement. This strategy is using customer data to create personal connections between
the customers and Spotify, so the customer feels engaged with the brand.

Customer information formed the basis of Spotify’s ‘Found Them First’ campaign, which
again appeared to build an emotional connection with the users by highlighting how their
listening habits have impacted the industry. If a user commenced listening to a selected
artist earlier than they hit the mainstream, for example, Spotify called them as a
‘tastemaker’. The information becoming into something really personal due to the fact
people want to look that they may be ‘the’ tastemakers. They need to understand that
their listening habits have a real meaningful effect. We need to tell an increasing number
of those stories that are deeply rooted in data. Building on users’ emotional connection to
music will be vital to Spotify’s marketing strategy going forward.

Spotify’s digital marketing channels strategy:

Media Type Current Proposed The Role

Owned -Website -Sales Promos To maintain and build

-Mobile App -Email marketing to long-term relationship
-Blog corporate customers with existing and
-Online Community potential users
-Sales promos : free trials,
discounts

Paid -Social Media -Facebook, Instagram, To support owned media

commercials Twitter ads and create earned media
-Advertising on Youtube -Mobile banner ads
-Influencer marketing

Earned -Online PR -Online PR The result of well-

-Shares -Shares managed owned and
-Retweets -Retweets paid media. Invest the
-Reposts -Reposts credibility among
-Reviews -Reviews existing and potential
-Community Discussion -Community Discussion users in the brand
 Spotify using algorithms to track and predict user behavior is useful in that it
builds brand loyalty. Because of that, Spotify now has millions of dedicated and engaged
users who see the value in the paid service. The platform might take time to learn about
users’ behaviors and preferences and then employs the use of a powerful algorithm that
creates customized playlists and recommendations based on this. Users can enjoy a full
customized service without any extra effort. All they need to do is use the platform as
they normally would, and the algorithm builds more content ideas around that behavior