The Rockingham Group
Today in MKTG470 we had a guest speaker come in named Deb Van Horn. She is currently the Vice President of Support Services at The Rockingham Group. Ms.Van Horn has her B.B.A. and M.B.A. from James Madison University and has been with Rockingham Group for 10 years working in HR, Facility Management, IT, Marketing, and Operations. She is also currently a member of James Madison University’s College of Business CIS/MS Executive Advisory Board.
Social Media
Two of the main topics that Ms.Van Horn focused on was social media and online advertising. First discussed was the benefits of social media. A few benefits of using social mediums, in this case Facebook, for companies is that it can influence new sales, it facilitates relationship building with customers, its a good way to education and make people aware of your company’s product or service offerings and it provides a means to collect feedback from customers. The Rockingham Group’s Facebook page has over 600 “Likes” with 65% of them from the Female demographic and 27% percent are 55 years of age and older. To figure out how engaged their fans are on their page they use an Engagement Rate. This can be calculated by (Comments + Likes + Wall Posts)/ Number of Fans. They not only use this metric on themselves but also on competitors to see how they match up with their competition. Currently, 30% of fans are current policyholders. Facebook presence is beneficial to companies because this puts a name to a face and helps companies connect and get to know people.
Online Advertising
One of The Rockingham Group’s goal with online advertising is to stay visible. They advertise on Facebook for people to “Like” their fan page. They don’t pay for impressions but pay per action, meaning if someone “Likes” their site through the advertisement. They also sell products online through Facebook. This advertisement sends people directly to the quoter based on the type of product being advertised. The Rockingham Group is also present on Google, by advertising with text, image, and display ads. Overall The Rockingham Group has decent content with a performance rating of 36%compared to the industry average of 24% and have a pretty good click rate of 5% compared to the industry with 2.9%.
Thank You
Thank you, Ms.Van Horn, for coming to speak to our Strategic Internet Marketing class and educate us on e-marketing with The Rockingham Group.
Contact
To contact Ms.Van Horn, her email is dlvanhorn@rockinghamgroup.com.
