Australia’s largest cinema chains Birch Carroll & Coyle and Greater Union is in the process of being relaunched and redeveloped but have they started their online move too early or without an effective digital strategy.
We understand that the process of rebranding a company is very expensive and time consuming but we don’t believe that AHL successfully planned to get the best benefit from their online campaign with Event Cinemas.
AHL is promoting Event Cinemas as a new concept in entertainment, that seeks to deliver the ultimate cinema experience. The Birch Carroll & Coyle and Greater Union cinemas are in the process of being redeveloped and relaunched as Event. The other problem is that many of the Birch Carroll & Coyle and Greater Union cinemas will continue to operating throughout Australia.
It seems atleast online the Event Cinemas is now the sole online brand which seems to conflict with their offline marketing which still heavily promotes Birch Carroll & Coyle and Greater Union, which seeks to compete against Hoyts.
It appears that some improvements have been made in the last few weeks, but there is still a lot of quick wins for Event Cinemas.
How do they handle Event Cinemas visitors?
To prove that the online campaign has not being successful a branded search for Event Cinemas shows Greater Union in the #1 result. The issue is that any visitors to GreaterUnion.com.au is redirected to EventCinemas so it is a wasted and unnecessary step for their visitors.
How do they handle Birch Carroll & Coyle visitors?
It appears that in the search results that Birch.com.au has completely disappeared but it is still being heavily advertised offline. This can potentially lead to confusion with consumers as they expect to see Birch.com.au in the results and Greater Union diverts to EventCinemas anyway.
You can see that yourmovies.com.au is taking some of that branded search traffic already.
Technical Analysis of their SEO
They appear to have started the process but have cut corners and failed to understand what they are doing, its benefit and why they are doing it. This is how they treat their visitors through redirection requests.
#1 Server Response: http://www.birch.com.au
HTTP Status Code: 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.greaterunion.com.au/
Redirect Target: http://www.greaterunion.com.au/
#2 Server Response: http://www.greaterunion.com.au/
HTTP Status Code: 302 Object moved
Location: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home
Redirect Target: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home
#3 Server Response: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home
HTTP Status Code: 302 Found
Location: /?ReDirect=True
Redirect Target: /?ReDirect=True
#4 Server Response: /?ReDirect=True
Wrong service type or malformed URL
How do they handle Greater Union visitors?
Event Cinemas has started showing up in some branded search results for “greater union” but are they following best practice?
The move from the existing Greaterunion.com.au domain to the new Eventcinemas.com.au has not been done effectively and provides an opportunity for their competitors and other websites such as yourmovies.com.au to take their branded “greater union” traffic.
Technical Analysis of their SEO
They appear to have started the process but have cut corners and failed to understand what they are doing, its benefit and why they are doing it. This is how they treat their visitors through redirection requests.
#1 Server Response: http://www.greaterunion.com.au
HTTP Status Code: 302 Object moved
Location: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home
Redirect Target: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home
#2 Server Response: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home
HTTP Status Code: 302 Found
Location: /?ReDirect=True
Redirect Target: /?ReDirect=True
#3 Server Response: /?ReDirect=True
Wrong service type or malformed URL
Event Cinemas Social Media Campaign
They don’t even to take the extra steps for the
Event Cinemas Facebook page, as there are a number of options available which have not been utilised. Some of the many Facebook username options that are available:
http://www.facebook.com/eventcinemas
http://www.facebook.com/cinemas
http://www.facebook.com/event.cinemas
So the key factors that are being ignore are refinements to their social media campaign and more effective search optimisation. Event Cinemas seems that they are being complacent online because of their domination of the industry, but their competitors can potentially steal their lead.
Some of the current competitors that can start to take market share away from Event cinemas include:
RSS - Posts
Posted by blogsticky.info on November 1, 2009 at 10:02 am
Thank you, this article help me