Samenvatting

This study provides an online marketing strategy for the online sushi restaurant guide showmethesushi.nl. This website will include and review all sushi restaurants in Utrecht by means of a star rating system and textual commentaries of both the website owner and visitors. People do not want to spend much time searching for a handy website to compare sushi restaurants in Utrecht. Therefore this online marketing strategy needs to make sure it sets the website apart from competitors and enables the target audience to find the website quickly. The research contained a survey with both open and closed questions that was conducted among the target audience; people who like sushi between 15 and 45 years old. In addition, interviews with the owners of the online restaurant guides Eet.nu, Dinnersite.nl and Couverts.nl were conducted. Lastly, an extensive competitor analysis was done of competitors Eet.nu, Dinnersite.nl, Couverts.nl, Iens.nl, Yelp.nl and TripAdvisor.nl. The website was analyzed and special attention was paid to the online marketings tools they use and their Unique Selling Points to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Different marketing strategy models were applied to the online marketing strategy. The SOSTAC model by Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2009) was used as an overall strategy process model to provide a clear overview of the recommendations. In addition, a SWOT analysis (Kotler, 2012) was made of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The Social Technographical Model (Li & Bernoff, 2008) was applied in the survey and the results have indicated that the target audience mainly consists of Joiners, Spectators and Critics. The Social Media Ecosystem by Schultz in 2007 (as cited by Hanna, Rohm & Crittenden, 2011) helped to analyze the competitor’s use of social platforms and to determine what kind of Social Media Ecosystem will help succeed showmethesushi.nl. Lastly, the Word of Mouth Marketing in online communities model (Kozinets, De Valck et all, 2010) and the Two Step Flow Theory (Two Step Flow Theory, n.d.) served as valuable frameworks while turning research results into recommendations. The research among the target audience showed that the majority of people between 15 and 45 like having sushi regularly and do make use of online restaurant guides. However, many respondents indicated that they would not make use of a sushi restaurant guide specifically for Utrecht because they do not live near Utrecht. Therefore it is important for showmethesushi.nl to extend the reach of the website by including sushi restaurants in other cities in the Netherlands as well. 2 To distinguish itself from the many competing restaurant guides online, showmethesushi.nl should focus on an easy to use locator of the restaurants as a Unique Selling Point. Competitors do not often focus into detail on the location of restaurants, but many respondents noted that being able to see quickly which restaurant is near them is an important factor for them. Furthermore, very important is that showmethesushi.nl will create an extensive Social Media Ecosystem. Recommended social media are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest. On these social media share and win actions can be organized to encourage interaction with the audience. In addition, the Social Media Ecosystem should include blogs, newsletters and a forum. The website itself should be as user-friendly as possible and not be overwhelming. Secondly, making the website personal in use will influence the visitor’s decision making behavior positively. Therefore visitors should be able to make a personal profile to interact with others on the website’s forum. Also, it is recommendable that restaurant owners will have a choice between different accounts. This will offer showmethesushi.nl the possibility to earn money, reduce the amount of work and restaurant owners can choose their own way of working with the website. It is very important that the website will be mobile optimized, since this increases the chance that people will return to the website. In addition, having a mobile application is necessary to keep up with competitors and to increase the user’s convenience. Corporate advertising on search engines and social media is not recommended. Chances are high that a big part of the target audience will not notice these ads due to banner blindness and the use of AdBlock. A more recommendable way of making money is to target people outside of Utrecht as well, this way expand the target audience and consequently attract sponsors. Finally, in order to succeed it is necessary to track the performance of the website to find out which tools are working and which are not. Therefore tracking the traffic of the website should be done by means of Google Analytics. In addition, Key Performance Indicators such as opening rate and open click rate should be monitored for the newsletters.