For Nikon's maiden foray into Search Engine Marketing, its initial hope was merely to increase awareness for its powerful online support system. Nikon hence entrusted its hopes with Hardware Zone SEM (the "SEM Team") to launch its novel online campaign. The Campaign exceeded Nikon's expectations with online site usage and customer service level increased significantly.
The Challenge
Nikon started its online regional technical support site in December 2004. Since then, they have been adding FAQs, new firmware and software updates to the system, and allowing its customers to contact Nikon through the system where its regional support officers are able to assist them with their technical enquiries. The system was very effective for its customers to obtain quality support from Nikon as this was accessible online. However, over the last two years, Nikon still received emails from customers seeking help for technical problems and know-how. Nikon realised that many of its customers were unaware that Nikon had a powerful support system online. Many online-savvy customers used search engines to seek for support and solutions that were generally available on the Internet. Unfortunately not all solutions were applicable and these users sometimes faced greater problems when the internet-found solutions created more complications.
The Campaign Overview
The SEM Team immediately saw the opportunity for Nikon to address this issue via marketing on the search engines. A comprehensive SEM campaign was conceptualised and implemented for the Asia Pacific region with focus on Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China & Australia. Consumers looking for online technical support could connect to Nikon's online support system by typing Nikon related search terms. These customers would see Nikon's ads prominently displayed on the search engine. From there, the consumers would be just one click away from getting assistance and information on their product directly from the official Nikon support site. The result was that the consumers were now able to get responsive and reliable support for their Nikon products and Nikon's support site became better utilised. Nikon was briefed every step of the project so that they could better understand and evaluate this new form of advertising. Regular reporting and briefing sessions were conducted between the SEM Team and Nikon.
Image: www.google.com.sg
The Results
Nikon was so amazed at the potential of SEM that they decided to incorporate SEM into their regional branding initiatives for their products. "Google Adwords has helped us improve our site's ranking and we have effectively channeled our users to the regional support system to obtain proper solutions for troubleshooting their technical difficulties and at the same time obtain quality support from our qualified customer support officers."" says William Lee, from Nikon Asia Technical Office. "Over the past three months, email enquiries have dropped significantly, and there is an increase in traffic to the support site. The monthly report submitted by HWZ is also thorough and detailed, which is a value-add to assist us in analysing our campaign results. Furthermore, we have happier customers as they are able to resolve their technical issues more swiftly."
More information on related campaign
Nikon had a revolutionary feature on their COOLPIX camera range called "COOLPIX Connect" which allows the user to share photos over the internet via wireless connection through the camera. The SEM team launched a unique branding campaign via putting ads on Google and the Google content network that includes sites like YouTube and Friendster. The good mix of image and text ads provided wide exposure on this exciting development in Nikon's product. In the space of a month, the COOLPIX campaign ads appeared more than 4 million times in Singapore and garnered more than 3,000 visitors to their new COOLPIX website! Going forward, Nikon expanded their SEM campaigns to encompass most of their products. SEM will now be an integral part of Nikon's marketing plans.
