A Profile of Three Success Stories in Using Social Media to Increase Customer Engagement (Raport Written by International Students)
A profile of three success stories in using social media to increase customer engagement
Declaration
The above named students declare that the content of this Continuous Assessment project is solely the work of the individual whose name appears on this cover sheet. The work of any other authors has been cited and referenced in full.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 3
2. Social Media Marketing 3 2.1 Social Media 3 2.2 Using Social Media for businesses 4 2.3 Using Social Media to increase customer engagement 6
3. Tipp-ex campaign on YouTube 6
3.1 What is Tipp-ex? 7 3.2 The 1st interactive campaign on YouTube 7 3.3 The 2nd interactive campaign on YouTube 9 3.4 Conclusion 9
4. Red Bull’s Success on Facebook 10
4.1 A brief overview of the product 10
4.2 Red Bull and Social Media 11 4.3 Company’s key takeaways for successful engagement on Facebook 12 4.4 Conclusion 15
5. Ford’s campaign on Twitter and other social medias 16 5.1 Twitter 16 5.2 The Ford Fiesta Movement 16
6. Future perspective 18 6.1 Technological development 18 6.2 New opportunities 19 6.3 Challenges 20 6.4 Ideas for future development 21 6.5 Conclusion 22
7. Conclusion 23
8. Bibliography and References 24
1. Introduction
This report is a profile of social media and how different companies have succeeded in using social media to increase their customer engagement. We decided to break the report into 5 major parts. Firstly we will go deeper into the subject of social media and break down what it’s used for within the business world. The second part is our first success story and tells us about how the company Tipp-ex used YouTube to get even more recognition. After that we see what RedBull has done on their Facebook page for their different campaigns and the third company we will look at is Ford, who used Twitter, blogs and YouTube for their Fiesta Movement. All companies succeeded greatly in increasing their costumer engagement and their stories are shortly described. At the end of this report we looked at the future aspect of this subject, including the challenges and new opportunities that may come up.
2. Social Media Marketing
The name of our report is “A profile of three success stories in using social media to increase customer engagement”, and to fully understand the subject we chose to make the project about we have decided to first go deeper into it. In this first part we will focus on the phenomenon that is social media and the increasing use of social media marketing.
2.1 Social Media
When we hear social media we often think of social networking sites, even though these two do not equal each other. According to the dictionary Merriam-Webster, the definition for social media stands as follows
“Forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content”
There is no exact date when “the first social network” was created, but many stepping stones in the history of the internet could be seen as important to what we now know as social media. In 1978 the Bulletin Board System, BBS, was created that let users share information over the internet, and in 1979 a BBS was created in-between to colleges. What might be called as the first social media network, Friends United, emerged in 1997 with the purpose to let users find and connect with old friends from college. Later, all the social networks and microblogs we are a little bit more used to, like MySpace (2003), Facebook (2004) and Twitter (2006), emerged.
At the moment there are over 2 405 500 000 internet users in the world, 1 billion members on Facebook and 4 billion views a day on the video sharing site YouTube. The Internet is growing every day and it’s important for the social medias to meet the needs of the users. In the beginning social media was used mostly for communication between old and new friends, but lately the sharing of pictures and videos has become more and more important. That is why all kinds of social media are eager to make these features work better on their sites. Along with this there was also an increase in using social media for the promotion of different things, and this is why businesses also could start using the social media for marketing.
2.2 Using Social Media for businesses
It is unknown exactly when companies started using social media for marketing, but these days it is really uncommon for a company not to be involved in the online universe.
“More than 250 million people are active Facebook users. More than 346 million people read blogs, and 184 million people are bloggers themselves. Twitter has more than 14 million registered users, and YouTube claims more than 100 million viewers per month. More consumers are connected than ever before, and every second your company is not engaging them in social media is a wasted opportunity. So, get on board.” (Zarrella 2012: 1)
Companies use the social media marketing in many different ways, it is used for sharing information, promoting new products or services, hosting competitions and campaigns, getting to know the customers and getting the customers get involved.
There are many advantages to using social media for a business and some of them are that it’s free, it gets you closer to your customers, you get feedback constantly (and it’s usually more honest than any face-to-face feedback would ever be) and it’s a great way to improve your customer service. Using social media for the management of your customer service has become an expectation and it’s a great way to show your customers that you really care by replying to their questions and requests fast and by letting them know they are talking to a real person and not an answering machine.
Right now there are multiple Social Medias for different purposes. Some are specifically for sharing information while some are more for connecting and getting know one another. In this figure it’s drawn out which Social Medias are good for which purposes and also how much time it will cost your company to use these Social Medias, depending on how much you wish to achieve.
It’s important to remember that even if we are using social networking sites such as Facebook, which we may also use in our personal life, we cannot look at it like we are used to. The way we use Facebook for our company needs to be strictly professional and it needs to mirror our companies’ views and policies. This is one of the reasons why using Social Medias might become very time-costly for your company.
Over time some criticisms has been raised against marketing on the social media. In an online article Rhonda Abrons from Demand Media lists the different disadvantages of using social media as a marketing tool, and some of them are the lack of feedback control, being a local business but suddenly finding most of your “fans” to be distant and social media is quite time intensive, meaning that it takes a lot of commitment to make sure everything works like you want it to.
2.3 Using social media to increase customer engagement
For companies it has become more and more popular to use the social media to engage their customers in the company. Multiple companies use social media for e.g. competitions, where customers can make suggestions for the future, comment about products, play games or do basically anything. As long as they do it in the name of the company, it is good advertisement, right? This is such an easy way to get your companies name out there
3. Tipp-ex campaign on YouTube
Biggest platform of videos on the Internet, Youtube was created in 2005 and is now the 3rd most visited website in the world, having now about 800 million of users, and 72 hours of video uploaded each minute.
For the last few years, it has become a true marketing tool for companies to publish videos of their important events, such as the conferences, and also the corporates films and the TV commercials. Nowadays, the most of the companies have a YouTube channel.
YouTube presents several advantages: * It is efficient for viral marketing, because it’s easy to share on the other social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and to put on blogs and websites. Thus, videos can be spread very quickly. * It is easy and quick to use, the company doesn 't inevitably need a specific employee to manage it. * YouTube belongs to Google, so the videos uploaded on YouTube are better referenced on the Google research results. * If the viewer likes the video, he 's likely to go to the channel of the company and watch the other videos. * The videos are classified according to the content (sports, advertising, humour, etc.) and can be found thanks to key words associated to the video. * The company can define a category of people who will be targeted thanks to a demographic configuration of the video. * The company can get the viewers ' opinions, what permits to know what was good and what didn 't work in the video, and even about the product or service that is promoted.
3.1 What is Tipp-ex?
Tipp-ex is a brand of correction fluid and other related products founded in 1959 in Germany. Since 1997, it belongs to Bic. This brand is very popular in Europe, and has become a generic trademark; people use the “verb” 'to tippex ' when they mean ' to erase ', and talk about 'tipp-ex ' in a general way to say 'corrector '. Tipp-Ex is the first company that invented this kind of products, which are now sold in more than 150 countries.
The famous mouse correction tape was invented in 1995. In 2010, the company launched an interactive marketing campaign to increase its sales.
3.2 The 1st interactive campaign on YouTube
In 2010, Tipp-Ex entrusted the French agency Buzzman, specialized in interactive and viral marketing, to carry out an interactive video campaign on YouTube to promote the Pocket Mouse Correction Tape. Their objectives were to increase the sales of the pocket mouse correction tape and reinforce the notoriety of the brand. The target of that campaign was young people and SMB employees, a target group who use the Internet a lot. YouTube was the only media used by Tipp-ex in that campaign to promote its product; the brand didn 't use TV, press or poster campaign.
Then, Buzzman created the video 'A hunter shoots a bear ':
Two men are camping in a forest, and on the morning they see a bear. One of the men is about to shot it, but finally, he decides that the viewers have to decide the rest of the story. Two choices ( 'shoot the bear ' and 'don’t shoot the bear ') lead to the same outcome : the man gets his arm out of the video, catches the mouse correction tape and erases the verb 'shoots ' in the title of the YouTube video. Then, the viewer has to write a verb in the blank left by the hunter and what he writes will happen in the video.
Forty-two different videos were shot so that the viewer can try a lot of possibilities, and the videos were always made humorously. This interactive video permits to keep the viewer’s attention during several minutes, because he wants to try everything. The average viewer’s exposure was estimated to be 5 minutes.
Within 36 hours, the video had reached 1 million views, 100 000 shares on Facebook and 1 tweet/second.
The video became a real phenomenon, and all the medias talked about it: TV, press, radio, Internet, etc. To date, the video has been seen more than 35 million times in 217 countries around the world and has been shared 380 000 times on Facebook and Twitter.
According to Nathalie Hoffherr, manager marketing of Bic writing brands in Europe, the video permitted to increase the sales of the Pocket Mouse Correction Tape of 30% in Europe during the last quarter of 2010, and of 11% during 2011.
3.3 The 2nd interactive campaign on YouTube
Looking at the great success of the campaign made in 2010, Tipp-Ex entrusted Buzzman again to make a second campaign in 2012. It was a big challenge, because the level of the first one was very high.
The objectives of this second campaign were to support the sales of the product in Italy, France, Germany and England, where the competition is strong and to place Tipp-Ex at the top of the sales in Europe in this category of products.
Then, the viewers could rediscover the bear and the hunter of 2010 in a new story: 'Hunter and bear’s 2012 birthday party '. In this video, the characters are celebrating the bear 's birthday when suddenly, a meteorite is getting close to them. Like in the first video, two choices are offered to the viewer, 'End the party ' or 'Don’t end the party ', and both lead to the same result: the hunter takes the mouse correction tape and erases the '2012 ' in the title of the video and asks the viewer to write another year. For this, 46 different videos have been shot, and according to the year chosen by the viewer, the bear and the hunter will be celebrating the bear 's birthday during different eras of the History: during a time when there were dinosaurs, fall of the wall of Berlin, the eighties, etc.
The video was published on the 12th of April and at the moment, the video counts 9,5 million of views. The objective is to reach between 10 and 20 million of views, which seems like an achievable goal.
3.4 Conclusion
We can say that the agency Buzzman had a brainwave with those two campaigns. The originality and the possibility for the viewer to intervene in the story made this advertisement one of the best of the decade. But ultimately, it is going to be difficult for Tipp-Ex to do better in the future. However, the company has planned to make the same kind of campaign in 2013 in order to increase the sales of the 4 colours ball pens.
4. Red Bull’s Success on Facebook
4.1. A brief overview of the product
This part of the report will focus on the Red Bull drink, its successful marketing strategies and the policy of social engagement on Facebook. Let us start with a general company overview. From the Company History by Beiz, S., we have the following facts: Red Bull is known as a popular energy drink sold in a tall and slim blue-silver can; the drink is sold by the Austrian Red Bull GmbH which was established in 1987 by the Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz. In terms of market share, Red Bull’s annual sales equal ca. 3 billion cans which make it one of the most popular energy drink in the world. It is worth knowing that Red Bull took many marketing and ingredient ideas from an energy drink in Thailand called Krating Daeng. As Beiz points out in her overview:
“The founder took that and added his ingredients. He called it red bull because in thai krating daeng means red bovine or red gaur which is the animal it really is. […] The sun is there as well because the sun gives us natural energy…”
Red Bull’s target audience is people whose aim is to have a clear and focused mind, to be dynamic and performance-oriented combining it with a fun and active lifestyle. Therefore, the company slogan sounds as "Red Bull gives you wings" which perfectly fits to sports and cultural events and projects that Red Bull’s content creation process centres around.
4.2. Red Bull and Social Media
When it comes to social media, Brown, B. notes that Red Bull went social in 2010. In true fashion, the brand “took social media to the extreme.” According to Hitz, on Facebook Red Bull acquired 11,576 “Likes” in just one day, and 178,145 “Likes” in a mere two weeks. Fankhauser emphasises that today Red Bull’s Facebook page is among of the top 50 branded pages. Indeed, by today nearly 34 million people have liked their page. To compare, Coca-Cola’s page has almost 55 million “Likes” and Starbucks’s page has received around 32,900 million “Likes” so far. In addition, according to the statistics led by the Brands Redefining Social Media in 2011, Red Bull is one of the brands who have done the best job of engaging consumers through a great deal of social media platforms. I personally believe that one of the core strategies, quoted below, contributed to the success of Red Bull on Facebook. It says:
“The more you can get fans returning to your page and lingering, the greater the likelihood they will tell their friends about you and eventually choose your products and services.”
(Mershon: 2011)
Anyway, it is worth noting that Red Bull began to work on their fan base much earlier. In her article How Red Bull’s Content Strategy Got It Wings, Swallow E. argues: “The Red Bull team has created a multimedia experience from the start, incorporating film, photography and stories built for broadcast, print and digital media partners.”
As we see, innovative ideas, bold action, and smart thinking helped to spread the drink around the world. When it comes to Facebook page in particular, Mashable Social Media defined Red Bull’s fan page as:
“Easily one of the best on Facebook simply because it has been able to break out of the typical fan page mold by providing fun content that encourages fans to interact with, and ultimately connect with, the brand.”
Regarding Red Bull’s fan page as a showcase, May J. also points out that by launching Live Web TV that anyone can view right on Facebook and a variety of fun games and engaging apps, Red Bull constantly encourage users to interact with the brand. Moreover, it was Red Bull that started using Facebook as a recruiting tool by adding a careers board to a profile. To illustrate the main tactics of involvement mentioned above in short, we will take a closer look at some of the smart practices in details.
4.3. Company’s key takeaways for successful engagement on Facebook First thing to mention is their creativeness in introducing a large graphical invitation that encouraged the user to like the fan page. By pressing the Like button, the user was enabled to see the hidden video content. As we see, upon your first visit to their page, you cannot avoid their strong, but entertaining, call to action. There are two main opinions on the case: the first one, by Braziel, L., who believes that “it is a little strange that the largest call to action after becoming a fan is to visit the website, instead of continuing engagement on Facebook.” The second opinion, expressed by Blakley, S., which I support, says:
“It is not false that Red Bull offers many links that drive users off of the fan page, but this is one of the many tactics that makes Red Bull so unique and so successful. The links offered do not redirect users to random sites that do not in some way have a connection to the brand. The links take users to sites of athletes and sports teams in which they sponsor, as well as link users to its personal website and other social media sites. With such an approach Red Bull is able to effectively transition from product branding to lifestyle branding and this is what differentiates it from other energy drink brands.”
The image below illustrates the strategy:
Second, it is also worth exploring the Red Bull’s Timeline. In her article Why Red Bull Sets an Example for Facebook Timeline presence, Waschenko A. reports that also here the company took a different approach. Instead of just focusing on its product, the company’s Facebook page emphasizes less direct corporate content, i.e., by highlighting events that the company sponsors. Eventually, it gives their fans a feeling that Red Bull is more interested in promoting and celebrating a lifestyle than simply selling energy drinks. The Quisenblog tells us about one of the most recent and the most popular videos is about free-fall skydive called “Red Bull Stratos.” It was completed by an Austrian skydiver and B.A.S.E. jumper, Felix Baumgartner. On 14 October 2012, he jumped to Earth from a helium balloon in the stratosphere. If we consider a social media standpoint, the numbers were pretty incredible: ca. 7.3 million people watched the event live; nearly 216,000 likes, 10,000 comments and more than 29,000 shares were generated by a Facebook photo in less than 40 minutes. In my opinion, the company perfectly supports its slogan “Red Bull gives you wings” and all the campaigns revolve around it, which contributes to Red Bull’s popularity. Moreover, according to Huffington Post’s Janean Chun calls Red Bull’s sponsorship of Baumgartner’s jump “the most successful marketing campaign of all time,” noting that the brand “broke the traditional barriers of marketing, sponsorship and social media.” Considering the numbers of responds on Facebook, it is obvious that they promote the cool public image of what the audience desires. Associating themselves with popular athletes, and letting fans connect to those athletes on a separate social network gives Red Bull some instant cool points. It is important to add that Red Bull uses social media to play with their fans. Rather than offering one marginally entertaining casual game, Red Bull follows high entertainment standards one might find at a gaming company. Each game is fun and totally on target for the audience. But most importantly, the games afford Red Bull the opportunity to serve as a forum for players to compete and share their achievements with each other. One of the examples is Red Bull Timeline Timewarp Contest. Fans were encouraged to search through the brands timeline to find historical milestones that led them to clues. The initial clue was to go back to the first Red Bull ever sold – April 1, 1987. The snapshot is to be seen below:
As a final point, Red Bull effectively uses the Events Tab which enables them to let their fans know where to find them. The image below demonstrates the Events Tab:
4.4. Conclusion
To conclude, as we can see, the brand already enjoyed its advantages from having a convincing brand image and loyal fans before they actually joined Facebook and started using social media tools. By joining Facebook and creating a fan page, Red Bull managed not only to keep their fans loyal but also to promote the product even more successfully. The key takeaways, according to Mershon’s research, are being creative and not to be afraid to ask for a Like, finding innovative ways to keep fans on your page through games, TV, apps, videos, photos, etc., as well as using the Events tab to allow fans to find you face-to-face. The arguments that were presented in this research suggest that this company really understands their audience’s needs and uses the tactics of social engagement on Facebook, one of the most popular social media platforms that exists nowadays, quite effectively.
5. Ford’s campaign on Twitter and other social medias
Moving from traditional marketing to social media can be a challenge for some businesses. In the past the popularity of the company would be raised by a third party hired to do this for you. Nowadays companies find themselves often doing it themselves on e.g. Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. The brand that was willing to pay the most got more air-time and therefore more popularity. As the advertisement for the product increases, so does the customer engagement for the company. Social media is creeping in to every facet of our lives. It`s now used to inform customers and change opinions, the power of social media is something that touches all of us in some way. The issue facing companies is dealing with rapid change of the advertising world.
5.1 Twitter
One of the most powerful and successful social media networks are Twitter. Currently, 80% of the top 100 fortune companies are using at least one of the social media networks to engage with their customers, and statistics show that Twitter is the one most used. Twitter uses “hastags” (keywords marked by #) and location-tags to filter your search which makes it easy to find information about different things and to find what’s close to you.
5.2 The Ford Fiesta Movement
Ford is very open-minded about new marketing techniques and that is why they are in the top companies worldwide. This large company sustains numerous social media accounts across most of the platforms. According to Scott Monty, who is head of Ford`s social media declares that platforms such as Twitter have helped them amplify their message and gain trust through human interaction. This has resulted to more than 5 million people sharing and interacting with each other. In 2013 Ford has many projects including releasing on the market 3 electric cars which they will be relying greatly on social media to promote these vehicles. One of the most successful social media campaigns is called Fiesta Movement, launched by Ford in April 2009 to promote its Fiesta model. In an inventive and very original tactic, the company selected 100 top bloggers and gave each of them a Fiesta to use for the next six months. In return the bloggers were required to upload a video on YouTube about the car along with an individual account of their experience with the Fiesta, on their blogs. The Fiesta Movement campaign was a marvellous success. The 700+ videos created by the bloggers generated 6.5 million views on YouTube and created more than 3.4 million impressions on Twitter. The campaign generated considerable buzz about the new vehicle with more than 50,000 US customers (90% of whom did not own previously a Ford vehicle) wanting more information about the Fiesta. Ford sold 10,000 units in the first 6 days of sales!
Encouraged by the success of its Fiesta social media initiative and the tremendous success it had to interact directly with its customers, Ford penetrated deeper into the social media space to obtain direct customer experience. For example, data obtained from websites, owner-to-owner forums that have logged complaints about the quality of the automated voice on Ford`s SYNC system-helped Ford tweak the software to make the voice less louder.
A like is not engagement, don`t be fooled by cheap tricks! Posting photos and video on Facebook and Twitter can lead to an increase in shares and likes, running a competition on Twitter will gain more followers but careful, these might not be a real engagement! The only way people will engage in your brand is if you provide something of true value to them like Ford did in the Fiesta Movement. In the words of one my favourite motivational speaker Zig Zigler;
"You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want."
Secrets of Closing the Sale-1984
Twitter is one of the most game-changing inventions in the last decade. It has helped politicians win elections, moved thousands of people to accomplish a common goal in less than a day, and allowed companies to rake in boatloads of profits.
6. Future perspective
The following part elaborates how social media and especially social networking sites might develop and as a consequence might be used by companies in future to engage their customers. Special focus is laid on challenges businesses have to cope with in order not to fall behind competitors.
6.1 Technical development
The platform for this social media usage and development establishes the technological progress. Over the last years an enormous evolution has taken place and it will create even more possibilities and this faster. As shown by the three stories displayed above already existing companies, people and institutions which are able to utilise social media for their use. Customers are approached and contacted differently as they were used to before. To this development contribute the technical development. Nowadays almost every household in developed countries possesses at least one computer to go online with and to experience social media website. The latest figures reveal that over the past years the number of Facebook users has risen presently to over one billion people all over the world (Associated Press, 2012). At this moment those users are not only exclusively online on their computers anymore but also on their smartphones, smart TVs, tablets or even on their cars exist a possibility to connect to the web. Moreover public WI –FI in restaurants, cafes, bars, and trains as well as the mobile Internet allow people to go online at almost any place and at any time. This results in a totally different environment for businesses to approach their customers. Besides communication and multimedia devices become more and more similar to each other and some
6.2 New opportunities
The new technology enables marketers to contact and advertise their products on different devices at any time. By means of this it is enabled to gain direct feedback from your customers. Each phone usage or app usage can be forwarded to the company to gather information. One company who already implemented a similar system is DELL. Another good example how companies might engage their customers embodies the computer manufacturer DELL. Considering this company it is their strategy to get customers involved into the process of innovation and new product development. On their social media community platform “Ideastorm” people are allowed to post ideas and comments on existing products as well as delivering input for new products. By means of this process the customer perceives its product as an own creation. Moreover a feeling of being listened and supported establishes confidence at those customers. This example might receive an increasing number of followers in future to involve their customers into the idea generation process which companies incorporate to become more customer oriented.
Moreover the new technology offers the possibility to create games or entertainment products which allow the user to actually test their products. The aim is to persuade the customer by experiencing and testing the product before buying the product. By means of this tool companies already take the interest make the products popular. However this implies the requirement of really being able to convince by allowing a trial version.
Another opportunity represents QR codes which technique enables people by scanning their phone to be directed to certain content and interact with it. When implementing such a code into a TV show or advertisement further content or entertainment might be shown on the user’s device which involves them into your company. The following diagram depicts by using a circle how firms should approach their customers to reach their engagement.
Source: Smart Insights (2010)
6.3 Challenges
All the mentioned opportunities contain also challenges for companies. As more and more firms transferring their business to social media and attempt to interact with their uses the landscape becomes more competitive. This makes it harder for firms to outstand when all companies rival about customers’ attention.
Moreover marketers have to be aware of each campaign they create as problems might occur when they are not perceived as they should be perceived. McDonald’s suffered this problem when starting their home-grown campaign and forwarded their advertisement via the wrong communication channels. People were approached which did not want to be approached and some turned out as not liking McDonald’s at all. As reply they posted a lot of criticism on these social media networks and it is a proof how social media campaigns may affect a business negatively. This underlines that marketers need to keep in mind that the internet offers fast information spread and if information is once leaked it can hardly been stopped. Hence businesses have to be careful to whom they send advertisements and who they want to engage.
One of the major challenges implies customer engagement into social media by itself because companies have to be creative to use great social media campaigns as this represents one of the best future ways of gaining customers and advertising products respective increasing brand awareness. Marketers cannot rely on the status quo as TV advertisements will quasi disappear in future due to a lack of targeting ability and viewers’ opportunity to skip the advertisements.
A more general challenge represents the problem of being attacked by hackers or viruses as the risk is always evident when using online campaigns or tools to engage with customers.
6.4 Ideas for future development
The future on customer engagement might consist on contacting and involving them via apps on i.e. smartphones, tablets and smart TVs. On these products companies might offer their customers a trial version. By means of those they are able to experience the product or service either on their phone or on their TV by using a company’s app before buying the product. So with experiencing a product’s benefit beforehand people really know what they buy and that the product will meet their needs. Moreover by analysing customers’ consumer and usage behaviour it will be possible for companies to place banner ads which fit exactly to the customer’s preference and interests. In addition banner ads could entail a function people could click on to enter a certain area like further product information or game. By developing this idea even further content shown on TV is accompanied simultaneously with interactive from a social media platform. So businesses might use the trend of using a mobile device when watching TV to their benefit. Finally the future could be that people decide the TV programme by their interaction on TV and smartphone.
Another significant point is that social media usage by politicians and parties will increase enormously. Election campaigns probably will switch from events running on the street and cities to campaigns predominantly running on social media platforms as the US election already demonstrated. In the US for the most recent election the number of followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook seemed to overwhelm the importance of actual campaigns irrespective content and plans of improving the country’s situation. The main audience is already online and is most likely to be targeted and reached by social networks. Eventually in future even an online vote system might be implemented.
A further development might be that more and more education will also be created and offered on social media like using the YouTube channel or developing the existing iTunes university. Hence complete lessons and interactions will be established online without the need of being present anymore.
Finally according to Dale (2012) location based services represents a trend which will be explored greatly in future. This offers applications on your phone which tracks the User’s location and leads them directly to the nearest shop of the company’s products. Hence by using the application the customer experiences the game and as return he receives vouchers or free gifts for the next local shops. So businesses know from where people are and what they like and the customer receives discounts for interaction. In addition it enables the user to post reviews and feedback on products and services immediately. This offers a great opportunity for marketers to use this user engagement for their benefit as supporting customers to publish their opinion.
6.5 Conclusion
Finally as the best way of describing the future of customer engagement in social media it can be constituted that user interaction and involvement will rise even higher the upcoming years. Technological development enables almost unlimited possibilities which marketers have recognised and will elaborate in future even further. Social media employment still is growing and people are not able to imagine of the future opportunities which will arise. Instead of being used as information tool the web and especially social media will be present at any situation and at any place. Marketers should be aware of those possibilities and transfer those into their benefit. So in the end when using social media appropriately companies will profit from customers and vice versa.
7. Conclusion
As shown in this report, social media can be used for all kinds of marketing. And if it’s done right you can actually see your business soar. We have demonstrated how Tipp-ex, Redbull and Ford used different social medias to increase customer engagement.
Tipp-ex, who used YouTube to create an interactive campaign, saw a 30% increase in sales of the Pocket Mouse Correction Tape in Europe during the last quarter of 2010, and of 11% during 2011. And their second campaign currently has 9,5 million views.
Redbull on the other hand, constantly uses Facebook to get more fans and to keep them interested. They also sponsor and host a lot of events which can all be found on their Facebook page. They have also used their Facebook timeline for competitions etc.
It’s not only companies who uses Twitter for campaigning, but also politicians and athletes have in the past used this social media to get their fans more involved. In our example we looked at when Ford released their For Fiesta movement. They didn’t use only Twitter but also blogs and YouTube. This might have been the reason that there were more than 10 000 new Fiesta cars sold in the first 6 days of sale.
Finally we took a look at what companies can expect from social media for increasing customer engagement in the future. The hypothesis is of course that the use of social media marketing will grow even more in the upcoming years. The companies should be aware and prepare themselves for these opportunities that will arise from new technologies and new social medias.
The web and especially social media is a very strong tool for marketing and for getting your customers involved in your business. If it’s used in the right way it can be very useful and important for your company, but it’s changing every day and before we know it, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube will be outdated. So it’s not only the success of these companies that we find interesting but also the fact that we in the future will hear more and more things that we really couldn’t even imagine.
8. Bibliography and References
Books
Chaffey, D (2011). E-Business & E-Commerce Management. 5th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. pp332-444.
Charlesworth, A (2009). Internet Marketing - A Practical Approach. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.. pp13-28.
Elefant, C., (2011). The "power" of Social Media: Legal issues & Best practices for utilities. Energy Law Journal. 32 (1), pp.4
Zarrella, D. (2010) The Social Media Marketing Book, Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Websites
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Declaration
The above named students declare that the content of this Continuous Assessment project is solely the work of the individual whose name appears on this cover sheet. The work of any other authors has been cited and referenced in full.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 3
2. Social Media Marketing 3 2.1 Social Media 3 2.2 Using Social Media for businesses 4 2.3 Using Social Media to increase customer engagement 6
3. Tipp-ex campaign on YouTube 6
3.1 What is Tipp-ex? 7 3.2 The 1st interactive campaign on YouTube 7 3.3 The 2nd interactive campaign on YouTube 9 3.4 Conclusion 9
4. Red Bull’s Success on Facebook 10
4.1 A brief overview of the product 10
4.2 Red Bull and Social Media 11 4.3 Company’s key takeaways for successful engagement on Facebook 12 4.4 Conclusion 15
5. Ford’s campaign on Twitter and other social medias 16 5.1 Twitter 16 5.2 The Ford Fiesta Movement 16
6. Future perspective 18 6.1 Technological development 18 6.2 New opportunities 19 6.3 Challenges 20 6.4 Ideas for future development 21 6.5 Conclusion 22
7. Conclusion 23
8. Bibliography and References 24
1. Introduction
This report is a profile of social media and how different companies have succeeded in using social media to increase their customer engagement. We decided to break the report into 5 major parts. Firstly we will go deeper into the subject of social media and break down what it’s used for within the business world. The second part is our first success story and tells us about how the company Tipp-ex used YouTube to get even more recognition. After that we see what RedBull has done on their Facebook page for their different campaigns and the third company we will look at is Ford, who used Twitter, blogs and YouTube for their Fiesta Movement. All companies succeeded greatly in increasing their costumer engagement and their stories are shortly described. At the end of this report we looked at the future aspect of this subject, including the challenges and new opportunities that may come up.
2. Social Media Marketing
The name of our report is “A profile of three success stories in using social media to increase customer engagement”, and to fully understand the subject we chose to make the project about we have decided to first go deeper into it. In this first part we will focus on the phenomenon that is social media and the increasing use of social media marketing.
2.1 Social Media
When we hear social media we often think of social networking sites, even though these two do not equal each other. According to the dictionary Merriam-Webster, the definition for social media stands as follows
“Forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content”
There is no exact date when “the first social network” was created, but many stepping stones in the history of the internet could be seen as important to what we now know as social media. In 1978 the Bulletin Board System, BBS, was created that let users share information over the internet, and in 1979 a BBS was created in-between to colleges. What might be called as the first social media network, Friends United, emerged in 1997 with the purpose to let users find and connect with old friends from college. Later, all the social networks and microblogs we are a little bit more used to, like MySpace (2003), Facebook (2004) and Twitter (2006), emerged.
At the moment there are over 2 405 500 000 internet users in the world, 1 billion members on Facebook and 4 billion views a day on the video sharing site YouTube. The Internet is growing every day and it’s important for the social medias to meet the needs of the users. In the beginning social media was used mostly for communication between old and new friends, but lately the sharing of pictures and videos has become more and more important. That is why all kinds of social media are eager to make these features work better on their sites. Along with this there was also an increase in using social media for the promotion of different things, and this is why businesses also could start using the social media for marketing.
2.2 Using Social Media for businesses
It is unknown exactly when companies started using social media for marketing, but these days it is really uncommon for a company not to be involved in the online universe.
“More than 250 million people are active Facebook users. More than 346 million people read blogs, and 184 million people are bloggers themselves. Twitter has more than 14 million registered users, and YouTube claims more than 100 million viewers per month. More consumers are connected than ever before, and every second your company is not engaging them in social media is a wasted opportunity. So, get on board.” (Zarrella 2012: 1)
Companies use the social media marketing in many different ways, it is used for sharing information, promoting new products or services, hosting competitions and campaigns, getting to know the customers and getting the customers get involved.
There are many advantages to using social media for a business and some of them are that it’s free, it gets you closer to your customers, you get feedback constantly (and it’s usually more honest than any face-to-face feedback would ever be) and it’s a great way to improve your customer service. Using social media for the management of your customer service has become an expectation and it’s a great way to show your customers that you really care by replying to their questions and requests fast and by letting them know they are talking to a real person and not an answering machine.
Right now there are multiple Social Medias for different purposes. Some are specifically for sharing information while some are more for connecting and getting know one another. In this figure it’s drawn out which Social Medias are good for which purposes and also how much time it will cost your company to use these Social Medias, depending on how much you wish to achieve.
It’s important to remember that even if we are using social networking sites such as Facebook, which we may also use in our personal life, we cannot look at it like we are used to. The way we use Facebook for our company needs to be strictly professional and it needs to mirror our companies’ views and policies. This is one of the reasons why using Social Medias might become very time-costly for your company.
Over time some criticisms has been raised against marketing on the social media. In an online article Rhonda Abrons from Demand Media lists the different disadvantages of using social media as a marketing tool, and some of them are the lack of feedback control, being a local business but suddenly finding most of your “fans” to be distant and social media is quite time intensive, meaning that it takes a lot of commitment to make sure everything works like you want it to.
2.3 Using social media to increase customer engagement
For companies it has become more and more popular to use the social media to engage their customers in the company. Multiple companies use social media for e.g. competitions, where customers can make suggestions for the future, comment about products, play games or do basically anything. As long as they do it in the name of the company, it is good advertisement, right? This is such an easy way to get your companies name out there
3. Tipp-ex campaign on YouTube
Biggest platform of videos on the Internet, Youtube was created in 2005 and is now the 3rd most visited website in the world, having now about 800 million of users, and 72 hours of video uploaded each minute.
For the last few years, it has become a true marketing tool for companies to publish videos of their important events, such as the conferences, and also the corporates films and the TV commercials. Nowadays, the most of the companies have a YouTube channel.
YouTube presents several advantages: * It is efficient for viral marketing, because it’s easy to share on the other social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and to put on blogs and websites. Thus, videos can be spread very quickly. * It is easy and quick to use, the company doesn 't inevitably need a specific employee to manage it. * YouTube belongs to Google, so the videos uploaded on YouTube are better referenced on the Google research results. * If the viewer likes the video, he 's likely to go to the channel of the company and watch the other videos. * The videos are classified according to the content (sports, advertising, humour, etc.) and can be found thanks to key words associated to the video. * The company can define a category of people who will be targeted thanks to a demographic configuration of the video. * The company can get the viewers ' opinions, what permits to know what was good and what didn 't work in the video, and even about the product or service that is promoted.
3.1 What is Tipp-ex?
Tipp-ex is a brand of correction fluid and other related products founded in 1959 in Germany. Since 1997, it belongs to Bic. This brand is very popular in Europe, and has become a generic trademark; people use the “verb” 'to tippex ' when they mean ' to erase ', and talk about 'tipp-ex ' in a general way to say 'corrector '. Tipp-Ex is the first company that invented this kind of products, which are now sold in more than 150 countries.
The famous mouse correction tape was invented in 1995. In 2010, the company launched an interactive marketing campaign to increase its sales.
3.2 The 1st interactive campaign on YouTube
In 2010, Tipp-Ex entrusted the French agency Buzzman, specialized in interactive and viral marketing, to carry out an interactive video campaign on YouTube to promote the Pocket Mouse Correction Tape. Their objectives were to increase the sales of the pocket mouse correction tape and reinforce the notoriety of the brand. The target of that campaign was young people and SMB employees, a target group who use the Internet a lot. YouTube was the only media used by Tipp-ex in that campaign to promote its product; the brand didn 't use TV, press or poster campaign.
Then, Buzzman created the video 'A hunter shoots a bear ':
Two men are camping in a forest, and on the morning they see a bear. One of the men is about to shot it, but finally, he decides that the viewers have to decide the rest of the story. Two choices ( 'shoot the bear ' and 'don’t shoot the bear ') lead to the same outcome : the man gets his arm out of the video, catches the mouse correction tape and erases the verb 'shoots ' in the title of the YouTube video. Then, the viewer has to write a verb in the blank left by the hunter and what he writes will happen in the video.
Forty-two different videos were shot so that the viewer can try a lot of possibilities, and the videos were always made humorously. This interactive video permits to keep the viewer’s attention during several minutes, because he wants to try everything. The average viewer’s exposure was estimated to be 5 minutes.
Within 36 hours, the video had reached 1 million views, 100 000 shares on Facebook and 1 tweet/second.
The video became a real phenomenon, and all the medias talked about it: TV, press, radio, Internet, etc. To date, the video has been seen more than 35 million times in 217 countries around the world and has been shared 380 000 times on Facebook and Twitter.
According to Nathalie Hoffherr, manager marketing of Bic writing brands in Europe, the video permitted to increase the sales of the Pocket Mouse Correction Tape of 30% in Europe during the last quarter of 2010, and of 11% during 2011.
3.3 The 2nd interactive campaign on YouTube
Looking at the great success of the campaign made in 2010, Tipp-Ex entrusted Buzzman again to make a second campaign in 2012. It was a big challenge, because the level of the first one was very high.
The objectives of this second campaign were to support the sales of the product in Italy, France, Germany and England, where the competition is strong and to place Tipp-Ex at the top of the sales in Europe in this category of products.
Then, the viewers could rediscover the bear and the hunter of 2010 in a new story: 'Hunter and bear’s 2012 birthday party '. In this video, the characters are celebrating the bear 's birthday when suddenly, a meteorite is getting close to them. Like in the first video, two choices are offered to the viewer, 'End the party ' or 'Don’t end the party ', and both lead to the same result: the hunter takes the mouse correction tape and erases the '2012 ' in the title of the video and asks the viewer to write another year. For this, 46 different videos have been shot, and according to the year chosen by the viewer, the bear and the hunter will be celebrating the bear 's birthday during different eras of the History: during a time when there were dinosaurs, fall of the wall of Berlin, the eighties, etc.
The video was published on the 12th of April and at the moment, the video counts 9,5 million of views. The objective is to reach between 10 and 20 million of views, which seems like an achievable goal.
3.4 Conclusion
We can say that the agency Buzzman had a brainwave with those two campaigns. The originality and the possibility for the viewer to intervene in the story made this advertisement one of the best of the decade. But ultimately, it is going to be difficult for Tipp-Ex to do better in the future. However, the company has planned to make the same kind of campaign in 2013 in order to increase the sales of the 4 colours ball pens.
4. Red Bull’s Success on Facebook
4.1. A brief overview of the product
This part of the report will focus on the Red Bull drink, its successful marketing strategies and the policy of social engagement on Facebook. Let us start with a general company overview. From the Company History by Beiz, S., we have the following facts: Red Bull is known as a popular energy drink sold in a tall and slim blue-silver can; the drink is sold by the Austrian Red Bull GmbH which was established in 1987 by the Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz. In terms of market share, Red Bull’s annual sales equal ca. 3 billion cans which make it one of the most popular energy drink in the world. It is worth knowing that Red Bull took many marketing and ingredient ideas from an energy drink in Thailand called Krating Daeng. As Beiz points out in her overview:
“The founder took that and added his ingredients. He called it red bull because in thai krating daeng means red bovine or red gaur which is the animal it really is. […] The sun is there as well because the sun gives us natural energy…”
Red Bull’s target audience is people whose aim is to have a clear and focused mind, to be dynamic and performance-oriented combining it with a fun and active lifestyle. Therefore, the company slogan sounds as "Red Bull gives you wings" which perfectly fits to sports and cultural events and projects that Red Bull’s content creation process centres around.
4.2. Red Bull and Social Media
When it comes to social media, Brown, B. notes that Red Bull went social in 2010. In true fashion, the brand “took social media to the extreme.” According to Hitz, on Facebook Red Bull acquired 11,576 “Likes” in just one day, and 178,145 “Likes” in a mere two weeks. Fankhauser emphasises that today Red Bull’s Facebook page is among of the top 50 branded pages. Indeed, by today nearly 34 million people have liked their page. To compare, Coca-Cola’s page has almost 55 million “Likes” and Starbucks’s page has received around 32,900 million “Likes” so far. In addition, according to the statistics led by the Brands Redefining Social Media in 2011, Red Bull is one of the brands who have done the best job of engaging consumers through a great deal of social media platforms. I personally believe that one of the core strategies, quoted below, contributed to the success of Red Bull on Facebook. It says:
“The more you can get fans returning to your page and lingering, the greater the likelihood they will tell their friends about you and eventually choose your products and services.”
(Mershon: 2011)
Anyway, it is worth noting that Red Bull began to work on their fan base much earlier. In her article How Red Bull’s Content Strategy Got It Wings, Swallow E. argues: “The Red Bull team has created a multimedia experience from the start, incorporating film, photography and stories built for broadcast, print and digital media partners.”
As we see, innovative ideas, bold action, and smart thinking helped to spread the drink around the world. When it comes to Facebook page in particular, Mashable Social Media defined Red Bull’s fan page as:
“Easily one of the best on Facebook simply because it has been able to break out of the typical fan page mold by providing fun content that encourages fans to interact with, and ultimately connect with, the brand.”
Regarding Red Bull’s fan page as a showcase, May J. also points out that by launching Live Web TV that anyone can view right on Facebook and a variety of fun games and engaging apps, Red Bull constantly encourage users to interact with the brand. Moreover, it was Red Bull that started using Facebook as a recruiting tool by adding a careers board to a profile. To illustrate the main tactics of involvement mentioned above in short, we will take a closer look at some of the smart practices in details.
4.3. Company’s key takeaways for successful engagement on Facebook First thing to mention is their creativeness in introducing a large graphical invitation that encouraged the user to like the fan page. By pressing the Like button, the user was enabled to see the hidden video content. As we see, upon your first visit to their page, you cannot avoid their strong, but entertaining, call to action. There are two main opinions on the case: the first one, by Braziel, L., who believes that “it is a little strange that the largest call to action after becoming a fan is to visit the website, instead of continuing engagement on Facebook.” The second opinion, expressed by Blakley, S., which I support, says:
“It is not false that Red Bull offers many links that drive users off of the fan page, but this is one of the many tactics that makes Red Bull so unique and so successful. The links offered do not redirect users to random sites that do not in some way have a connection to the brand. The links take users to sites of athletes and sports teams in which they sponsor, as well as link users to its personal website and other social media sites. With such an approach Red Bull is able to effectively transition from product branding to lifestyle branding and this is what differentiates it from other energy drink brands.”
The image below illustrates the strategy:
Second, it is also worth exploring the Red Bull’s Timeline. In her article Why Red Bull Sets an Example for Facebook Timeline presence, Waschenko A. reports that also here the company took a different approach. Instead of just focusing on its product, the company’s Facebook page emphasizes less direct corporate content, i.e., by highlighting events that the company sponsors. Eventually, it gives their fans a feeling that Red Bull is more interested in promoting and celebrating a lifestyle than simply selling energy drinks. The Quisenblog tells us about one of the most recent and the most popular videos is about free-fall skydive called “Red Bull Stratos.” It was completed by an Austrian skydiver and B.A.S.E. jumper, Felix Baumgartner. On 14 October 2012, he jumped to Earth from a helium balloon in the stratosphere. If we consider a social media standpoint, the numbers were pretty incredible: ca. 7.3 million people watched the event live; nearly 216,000 likes, 10,000 comments and more than 29,000 shares were generated by a Facebook photo in less than 40 minutes. In my opinion, the company perfectly supports its slogan “Red Bull gives you wings” and all the campaigns revolve around it, which contributes to Red Bull’s popularity. Moreover, according to Huffington Post’s Janean Chun calls Red Bull’s sponsorship of Baumgartner’s jump “the most successful marketing campaign of all time,” noting that the brand “broke the traditional barriers of marketing, sponsorship and social media.” Considering the numbers of responds on Facebook, it is obvious that they promote the cool public image of what the audience desires. Associating themselves with popular athletes, and letting fans connect to those athletes on a separate social network gives Red Bull some instant cool points. It is important to add that Red Bull uses social media to play with their fans. Rather than offering one marginally entertaining casual game, Red Bull follows high entertainment standards one might find at a gaming company. Each game is fun and totally on target for the audience. But most importantly, the games afford Red Bull the opportunity to serve as a forum for players to compete and share their achievements with each other. One of the examples is Red Bull Timeline Timewarp Contest. Fans were encouraged to search through the brands timeline to find historical milestones that led them to clues. The initial clue was to go back to the first Red Bull ever sold – April 1, 1987. The snapshot is to be seen below:
As a final point, Red Bull effectively uses the Events Tab which enables them to let their fans know where to find them. The image below demonstrates the Events Tab:
4.4. Conclusion
To conclude, as we can see, the brand already enjoyed its advantages from having a convincing brand image and loyal fans before they actually joined Facebook and started using social media tools. By joining Facebook and creating a fan page, Red Bull managed not only to keep their fans loyal but also to promote the product even more successfully. The key takeaways, according to Mershon’s research, are being creative and not to be afraid to ask for a Like, finding innovative ways to keep fans on your page through games, TV, apps, videos, photos, etc., as well as using the Events tab to allow fans to find you face-to-face. The arguments that were presented in this research suggest that this company really understands their audience’s needs and uses the tactics of social engagement on Facebook, one of the most popular social media platforms that exists nowadays, quite effectively.
5. Ford’s campaign on Twitter and other social medias
Moving from traditional marketing to social media can be a challenge for some businesses. In the past the popularity of the company would be raised by a third party hired to do this for you. Nowadays companies find themselves often doing it themselves on e.g. Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. The brand that was willing to pay the most got more air-time and therefore more popularity. As the advertisement for the product increases, so does the customer engagement for the company. Social media is creeping in to every facet of our lives. It`s now used to inform customers and change opinions, the power of social media is something that touches all of us in some way. The issue facing companies is dealing with rapid change of the advertising world.
5.1 Twitter
One of the most powerful and successful social media networks are Twitter. Currently, 80% of the top 100 fortune companies are using at least one of the social media networks to engage with their customers, and statistics show that Twitter is the one most used. Twitter uses “hastags” (keywords marked by #) and location-tags to filter your search which makes it easy to find information about different things and to find what’s close to you.
5.2 The Ford Fiesta Movement
Ford is very open-minded about new marketing techniques and that is why they are in the top companies worldwide. This large company sustains numerous social media accounts across most of the platforms. According to Scott Monty, who is head of Ford`s social media declares that platforms such as Twitter have helped them amplify their message and gain trust through human interaction. This has resulted to more than 5 million people sharing and interacting with each other. In 2013 Ford has many projects including releasing on the market 3 electric cars which they will be relying greatly on social media to promote these vehicles. One of the most successful social media campaigns is called Fiesta Movement, launched by Ford in April 2009 to promote its Fiesta model. In an inventive and very original tactic, the company selected 100 top bloggers and gave each of them a Fiesta to use for the next six months. In return the bloggers were required to upload a video on YouTube about the car along with an individual account of their experience with the Fiesta, on their blogs. The Fiesta Movement campaign was a marvellous success. The 700+ videos created by the bloggers generated 6.5 million views on YouTube and created more than 3.4 million impressions on Twitter. The campaign generated considerable buzz about the new vehicle with more than 50,000 US customers (90% of whom did not own previously a Ford vehicle) wanting more information about the Fiesta. Ford sold 10,000 units in the first 6 days of sales!
Encouraged by the success of its Fiesta social media initiative and the tremendous success it had to interact directly with its customers, Ford penetrated deeper into the social media space to obtain direct customer experience. For example, data obtained from websites, owner-to-owner forums that have logged complaints about the quality of the automated voice on Ford`s SYNC system-helped Ford tweak the software to make the voice less louder.
A like is not engagement, don`t be fooled by cheap tricks! Posting photos and video on Facebook and Twitter can lead to an increase in shares and likes, running a competition on Twitter will gain more followers but careful, these might not be a real engagement! The only way people will engage in your brand is if you provide something of true value to them like Ford did in the Fiesta Movement. In the words of one my favourite motivational speaker Zig Zigler;
"You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want."
Secrets of Closing the Sale-1984
Twitter is one of the most game-changing inventions in the last decade. It has helped politicians win elections, moved thousands of people to accomplish a common goal in less than a day, and allowed companies to rake in boatloads of profits.
6. Future perspective
The following part elaborates how social media and especially social networking sites might develop and as a consequence might be used by companies in future to engage their customers. Special focus is laid on challenges businesses have to cope with in order not to fall behind competitors.
6.1 Technical development
The platform for this social media usage and development establishes the technological progress. Over the last years an enormous evolution has taken place and it will create even more possibilities and this faster. As shown by the three stories displayed above already existing companies, people and institutions which are able to utilise social media for their use. Customers are approached and contacted differently as they were used to before. To this development contribute the technical development. Nowadays almost every household in developed countries possesses at least one computer to go online with and to experience social media website. The latest figures reveal that over the past years the number of Facebook users has risen presently to over one billion people all over the world (Associated Press, 2012). At this moment those users are not only exclusively online on their computers anymore but also on their smartphones, smart TVs, tablets or even on their cars exist a possibility to connect to the web. Moreover public WI –FI in restaurants, cafes, bars, and trains as well as the mobile Internet allow people to go online at almost any place and at any time. This results in a totally different environment for businesses to approach their customers. Besides communication and multimedia devices become more and more similar to each other and some
6.2 New opportunities
The new technology enables marketers to contact and advertise their products on different devices at any time. By means of this it is enabled to gain direct feedback from your customers. Each phone usage or app usage can be forwarded to the company to gather information. One company who already implemented a similar system is DELL. Another good example how companies might engage their customers embodies the computer manufacturer DELL. Considering this company it is their strategy to get customers involved into the process of innovation and new product development. On their social media community platform “Ideastorm” people are allowed to post ideas and comments on existing products as well as delivering input for new products. By means of this process the customer perceives its product as an own creation. Moreover a feeling of being listened and supported establishes confidence at those customers. This example might receive an increasing number of followers in future to involve their customers into the idea generation process which companies incorporate to become more customer oriented.
Moreover the new technology offers the possibility to create games or entertainment products which allow the user to actually test their products. The aim is to persuade the customer by experiencing and testing the product before buying the product. By means of this tool companies already take the interest make the products popular. However this implies the requirement of really being able to convince by allowing a trial version.
Another opportunity represents QR codes which technique enables people by scanning their phone to be directed to certain content and interact with it. When implementing such a code into a TV show or advertisement further content or entertainment might be shown on the user’s device which involves them into your company. The following diagram depicts by using a circle how firms should approach their customers to reach their engagement.
Source: Smart Insights (2010)
6.3 Challenges
All the mentioned opportunities contain also challenges for companies. As more and more firms transferring their business to social media and attempt to interact with their uses the landscape becomes more competitive. This makes it harder for firms to outstand when all companies rival about customers’ attention.
Moreover marketers have to be aware of each campaign they create as problems might occur when they are not perceived as they should be perceived. McDonald’s suffered this problem when starting their home-grown campaign and forwarded their advertisement via the wrong communication channels. People were approached which did not want to be approached and some turned out as not liking McDonald’s at all. As reply they posted a lot of criticism on these social media networks and it is a proof how social media campaigns may affect a business negatively. This underlines that marketers need to keep in mind that the internet offers fast information spread and if information is once leaked it can hardly been stopped. Hence businesses have to be careful to whom they send advertisements and who they want to engage.
One of the major challenges implies customer engagement into social media by itself because companies have to be creative to use great social media campaigns as this represents one of the best future ways of gaining customers and advertising products respective increasing brand awareness. Marketers cannot rely on the status quo as TV advertisements will quasi disappear in future due to a lack of targeting ability and viewers’ opportunity to skip the advertisements.
A more general challenge represents the problem of being attacked by hackers or viruses as the risk is always evident when using online campaigns or tools to engage with customers.
6.4 Ideas for future development
The future on customer engagement might consist on contacting and involving them via apps on i.e. smartphones, tablets and smart TVs. On these products companies might offer their customers a trial version. By means of those they are able to experience the product or service either on their phone or on their TV by using a company’s app before buying the product. So with experiencing a product’s benefit beforehand people really know what they buy and that the product will meet their needs. Moreover by analysing customers’ consumer and usage behaviour it will be possible for companies to place banner ads which fit exactly to the customer’s preference and interests. In addition banner ads could entail a function people could click on to enter a certain area like further product information or game. By developing this idea even further content shown on TV is accompanied simultaneously with interactive from a social media platform. So businesses might use the trend of using a mobile device when watching TV to their benefit. Finally the future could be that people decide the TV programme by their interaction on TV and smartphone.
Another significant point is that social media usage by politicians and parties will increase enormously. Election campaigns probably will switch from events running on the street and cities to campaigns predominantly running on social media platforms as the US election already demonstrated. In the US for the most recent election the number of followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook seemed to overwhelm the importance of actual campaigns irrespective content and plans of improving the country’s situation. The main audience is already online and is most likely to be targeted and reached by social networks. Eventually in future even an online vote system might be implemented.
A further development might be that more and more education will also be created and offered on social media like using the YouTube channel or developing the existing iTunes university. Hence complete lessons and interactions will be established online without the need of being present anymore.
Finally according to Dale (2012) location based services represents a trend which will be explored greatly in future. This offers applications on your phone which tracks the User’s location and leads them directly to the nearest shop of the company’s products. Hence by using the application the customer experiences the game and as return he receives vouchers or free gifts for the next local shops. So businesses know from where people are and what they like and the customer receives discounts for interaction. In addition it enables the user to post reviews and feedback on products and services immediately. This offers a great opportunity for marketers to use this user engagement for their benefit as supporting customers to publish their opinion.
6.5 Conclusion
Finally as the best way of describing the future of customer engagement in social media it can be constituted that user interaction and involvement will rise even higher the upcoming years. Technological development enables almost unlimited possibilities which marketers have recognised and will elaborate in future even further. Social media employment still is growing and people are not able to imagine of the future opportunities which will arise. Instead of being used as information tool the web and especially social media will be present at any situation and at any place. Marketers should be aware of those possibilities and transfer those into their benefit. So in the end when using social media appropriately companies will profit from customers and vice versa.
7. Conclusion
As shown in this report, social media can be used for all kinds of marketing. And if it’s done right you can actually see your business soar. We have demonstrated how Tipp-ex, Redbull and Ford used different social medias to increase customer engagement.
Tipp-ex, who used YouTube to create an interactive campaign, saw a 30% increase in sales of the Pocket Mouse Correction Tape in Europe during the last quarter of 2010, and of 11% during 2011. And their second campaign currently has 9,5 million views.
Redbull on the other hand, constantly uses Facebook to get more fans and to keep them interested. They also sponsor and host a lot of events which can all be found on their Facebook page. They have also used their Facebook timeline for competitions etc.
It’s not only companies who uses Twitter for campaigning, but also politicians and athletes have in the past used this social media to get their fans more involved. In our example we looked at when Ford released their For Fiesta movement. They didn’t use only Twitter but also blogs and YouTube. This might have been the reason that there were more than 10 000 new Fiesta cars sold in the first 6 days of sale.
Finally we took a look at what companies can expect from social media for increasing customer engagement in the future. The hypothesis is of course that the use of social media marketing will grow even more in the upcoming years. The companies should be aware and prepare themselves for these opportunities that will arise from new technologies and new social medias.
The web and especially social media is a very strong tool for marketing and for getting your customers involved in your business. If it’s used in the right way it can be very useful and important for your company, but it’s changing every day and before we know it, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube will be outdated. So it’s not only the success of these companies that we find interesting but also the fact that we in the future will hear more and more things that we really couldn’t even imagine.
8. Bibliography and References
Books
Chaffey, D (2011). E-Business & E-Commerce Management. 5th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. pp332-444.
Charlesworth, A (2009). Internet Marketing - A Practical Approach. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.. pp13-28.
Elefant, C., (2011). The "power" of Social Media: Legal issues & Best practices for utilities. Energy Law Journal. 32 (1), pp.4
Zarrella, D. (2010) The Social Media Marketing Book, Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
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References: Books Chaffey, D (2011) Charlesworth, A (2009). Internet Marketing - A Practical Approach. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.. pp13-28. Elefant, C., (2011). The "power" of Social Media: Legal issues & Best practices for utilities. Energy Law Journal. 32 (1), pp.4 Zarrella, D Armano, D. (2011). Six Social Media Trends for 2012. [Online] Available at: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/six_social_media_trends_for_20.html. [Accessed on 06 November 2012]. Associated Press (2012). Number of active users at Facebook over the years. [Online] Available at: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/number-active-users-facebook-over-years-214600186--finance.html. [Accessed on 10 November 2012]. Beiz, S., 2012. Company history. Senior Project. [Online] (Published: March, 2012) Available at: http://sohabeiz.blogspot.ie/2012/03/company-history.html [Accessed on 10 November 2012] Blakley, S Cohen, H. (2012). Social Media’s Future: 5 Important Trends. [Online] Available at: http://heidicohen.com/social-media-future-5-important-trends/. [Accessed on 8 Nov 2012]. Dale, S. (2012). Future Trends in Social Media & Social Networks. [Online] Available at: http://steve-dale.net/2012/02/17/future-trends-in-social-media-social-networks/. [Accessed on 8 November 2012]. Fankhauser, D., 2012. How Red Bull Fuels Its Facebook Community With Winning Content. The Content strategist. [Online] (Published: February, 2012). Available at http://contently.com/blog/2012/02/15/red-bull-facebook-page [Accessed on 2 November 2012]. Green, C., 2009. Killer Facebook Fan Pages: 5 Inspiring Case Studies. Mashable Social Media. [Online] (Published: June, 2009) Available at http://mashable.com/2009/06/16/killer-facebook-fan-pages [Accessed on 9 November 2012]. Hitz, 2011. Case Study On How Red Bull Bring Into Play Social Media Strategy. Social Woot. [Online] (Published: November, 2011) Available at http://socialwoot.com/brands/red-bull-social-media-strategy.html [Accessed on 9 November 2012]. Merhson, P., 2011. 9 Facebook Marketing Success Stories You Should Model.[Online] (Published: September, 2011) Available at: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/9-facebook-marketing-success-stories-you-should-model/ [Accessed on 09 November 2012]. Mickey, 2012. Did it sell Red Bull? Or just plain Bull? The Quisenblog. [Online] (Published: October, 2012) Available at http://www.quisenblog.com/2012/10/16/did-it-sell-red-bull-or-just-plain-bull/ [Accessed on 7 November 2012]. Strong, K., 2012. 4 Creative Ways to Use the New Facebook Brand Pages. [Online] (Published: March, 2012) Available at http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2159597/4-Creative-Ways-to-Use-the-New-Facebook-Brand-Pages [Accessed on 9 November 2012]. Swallow E., 2012. How Red Bull’s content Strategy Got Its Wings. The Content strategist. [Online] (Published: January, 2012) Available at http://contently.com/blog/2012/01/24/red-bull-media-house [Accessed on 2 November 2012]. Waschenko, A., 2012. Why Red Bull Sets an Example for Facebook Timeline presence. [Online] (Published: August, 2012) Available at http://sproutsocial.com/insights/2012/08/facebook-timeline-red-bull/ [Accessed on 9 November 2012].
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Richmond, Riva. 2010. "Stolen Facebook accounts for sale." The Associated Press, May 2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22562690/ Sengupta, Somini. 2012. "Facebook delivers an earning slowdown." The New York Times, July 26. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/technology/facebookreports-a-loss-but-its-revenue-beats-expectations.html?_r=0 Shannon, Sarah, and Olga Kharif. 2011. "Flipping Friends into Customers." Bloomberg Businessweek 4217: 22-23. Shu-Chuan, Chu. 2011. "Viral advertising in social media: participation in Facebook groups and responses among college-aged users." Journal of Interactive Advertising 12 (1): 30-43. Smith, Clara. 2009. "Facebook Is the Future of CRM." CRM Magazine 13 (11): 12. Stepanova, Ekaterina. 2011. "The Role of Information Communication Technologies in the Arab Spring." Ponars Eurasia Policy Memo, 159: 1-6. Stop Lynas Save Malaysia Facebook page, accessed 9 February 2013, https://www.facebook.com/charitieyc.chia?ref=tn_tnmn#!/pages/Stop-LynasSave-Malaysia/198611483579242?fref=ts Vega, Alan. 2011. "Tagtile: Reward your customers." R-Tools Technology Inc, February 8, http://tagtile-reward-customers.reviews.r-tt.com/ Walker, Carol M., Beth Rajan Sockman, and Steven Koehn 2011. "An exploratory study of cyberbullying with undergraduate university students." TechTrends 55 (2): 31-38. Ward, Frances. 2012. "SA Tourism 's Cash for comment." Marketing, June: 39. Weber, Harrison. 2013. "Facebook introduces Facebook Card: Yet another way for businesses to rely on the social giant." The Next Web, February 9, http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/01/31/introducing-the-facebook-cardyet-another-way-your-business-wont-be-able-to-live-withoutfacebook/?fromcat=facebook Widdup, Kerry. 2010. "The Social Consequences of Social Networking Sites: The Impact of Facebook on Teenage Girls." 3PM Journal of Digital Research and Publishing, 62. Zeisser, Michael. 2010. "Unlocking the elusive potential of social networks." McKinsey Quarterly, June: 1-3. https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Unlocking_the_elusive_potential_of_soci al_networks_2623…
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Before evaluating some reasons why social media marketing has become so popular in today’s marketplace, what exactly does the buzz phrase social media marketing mean? A working definition for consideration has been provided by (Ward, 2012), “Social media marketing consists of the attempt to use social media to persuade consumers that one’s company, products and/or services are worthwhile.” By recognizing that social media is a powerful marketing tool to persuade or allure consumers, numerous companies like Pepsi, Starbucks, and Hyundai to name a few, have benefited and continue to benefit from it. Further evidence of this will be provided later on. Furthermore, many companies use social media sites or networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, LinkedIn, and others to generate a lot of…
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