Select a product, line of products, or brand from a company of your choice and r

Question

Select a product, line of products, or brand from a company of your choice and research the company’s social media marketing strategies. Carefully examine the social media presence for the product. In an analysis (750-1,000 words), identify how the company utilizes social media to promote the product. Address the following in your analysis:

What is the customer segment for this particular product, line of products, or brand?

Which social media outlets does the company use to reach the customer segment? Discuss elements of their campaign.

Examine the customer segment’s response to the company’s social media marketing (e.g., through evaluating user-generated content related to the campaign, sales data for particular products, etc.). Based on that response, how effective are the company’s social media marketing strategies?

Compare the company’s social media strategies to one of its major competitors. What does the company do well to distinguish itself and product(s)/brand?

Finally, recommend two specific strategies for how the company could more effectively utilize social media to better target its customer segment and increase its competitive advantage in the market.

Support your ideas and findings with descriptions of specific social media campaign examples and consumer and market research

Explanation / Answer

Solution:-

I like to choose the coffee product from Starbucks.

The target market for Starbucks is human beings primarily in the age bracket of 20 to 50 years with high income bracket, an awareness of social status and environmental consciousness.

A global company such Starbucks does not extensive advertising of its product and services. People are familiar with the brand, had been using the products. The only issue that comes is the retaining of the customers. The social media team at Starbucks gives customer individual attention and at offering the customer service of local coffee shop on a grand scale over its social media channels. This helps in retaining the customer at less cost and repeat sales.

The social media team understands that drinking coffee is better ways of socializing and by creating a place on platforms like face book and twitter they have made coffee drinkers to form community online. All social channels of the company have the same look, feel, and tone as their stores; the content is consistently unified around the company’s mission, message, and goals.

Sometimes sales is not the ultimate goal, but retaining, uniting the community and conveying the vision and mission through social media becomes the prime motive which helps in consumers attaching to the brand and experience the same at the stores nearby.

Starbucks is active on all social media platforms and the social media team of Starbucks has been doing a great job. Some of the contents well liked across the globe are as follows.

1. Pinterest. Starbucks really shines on visually-oriented social site and is posting appealing beverage-related eye candy. With one of the best pinterest account having more than 900 pins, is full of colorful images taken from third party Starbucks organizes competitions to create board under different themes to drive up numbers and engagement with the customers. It has more than 150000+ followers.

2. Twitter. Starbucks posts less than double digit a day, most of them linked to product images and schemes for the day and decent numbers to the customer’s quarries. Starbucks follows smart but unorthodox approach to customer response before they become pressing issues. It has 6.5 million followers on twitter.

3. Face book. Starbucks seldom post on face book as compared to other organization, but their posts are eye-catching, ultra-clever, striking good balance between fun contests, helpful tips and subtle sales messages. Most of times Starbucks does not respond to any comment at all. Starbucks have 37 million followers on face book.

4. Google +. Starbucks post contents from face book page and twitter feed every few days and still attracts lot of comments. It has around 2.5 million followers on google+.

Starbucks has been using some common elements on all the social media platforms to promote its product nd services which are as follows.

1. Connecting and engaging with the consumers on all social media networks with same theme.
2. Sharing of various campaigns on the all social media platforms globally without any differentiation or discrimination.
3. Engaging the customers by asking them about their experience and subconsciously obtaining permission to engage with them through promotional tools on social media.
4. Sharing of discounts and happy moments.

The company’s social media marketing team has effectively developed strategies to create differential advantage for Starbucks brand which are as follows.

1. Starbucks was the first brand among the restaurants to do promotion on face book.
2. Starbucks is among the first few social media marketers to engage directly with consumers with their consent. This has lead to well acceptance of social media followers with a base around 75+ million people.
3. Starbucks has built the brand recognition through customer engagement using competitors on social media. They had come out with contests asking the general public to post their own advertisement in newspaper on media to earn coupons and free gifts.
4. Starbucks team executes advertisement in real time to make them more effective and appealing.
5. Starbucks vision statement for social media team is “one neighborhood, one person and one cup at a time." Most of the companies do not have any vision for their social media marketing teams. As a result the social media team is much focused than competitors.

Two specific strategies how Starbucks could more effectively utilize social media to better target its customer segment and increase its competitive advantage in the market are as follows.

1. Starbucks need to continuously update the contents on various social media sites.
2. Create various analytical models & tools from the data generated from social media networks so as serve the customer in most efficient and economical manner.
3. Not to create any unnecessary controversy through social media, this may result in advantage to the competitors.

Hope it helps you.

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