Assignment 5: Marketing plan for social media

Emil Hermansson

MAR8PO067-2 10.11.2013

Table of Contents
1 2 3 4 5 Build a strategy ................................................................................................................... 1 Goals and how to achieve them ...................................................................................... 3 Channels & users ............................................................................................................... 4 Measure the effects............................................................................................................ 5 Risks .................................................................................................................................... 6

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 8

1 Build a strategy

As for all marketing, it is vital for the company to make a strategy for social media marketing. The strategy has to communicate with the companys other marketing and the organization itself. Therefore all strategies are different and each company should have an individual strategy designed just for itself. Strategy is to set goals and find a suitable way to reach the goals. (Carlsson 2009, 121.) A companys engagement in social media is a part of IT and marketing, but it might also concern customer service, internal communication and other things. The activities are based on the philosophy of the company and transparency towards the customers. It is important that the strategy is set by the company board with help from the marketing team and other divisions. Social media concerns the whole company on all levels. The strategy has to make sure the current business functions are supported and should therefore be connected with the business plan. Social media should not be seen as a separate project but instead as a part of the entirety. All companies, regardless of size have to make written documents of what they are doing to avoid confusion and forgetting the main goal. (Carlsson 2009, 121-122.) You dont need to be an expert to create a Facebook-account or a new company blog. Anyone in the company is able to tell how great your products are. The problem is that companies do not have goals set when they enter the social media. So the main things you need to define before starting are: What do you want to achieve with your presence in social media? How shall the input help your operation? How can the return be bigger than the invested money? (Holmstrm & Wikberg 2010, 86.)

Preparations

Goal

Target group/users

Content

Activities

Implementation

Follow-up & implementation

Figure 1. The process of building a social media strategy.

2 Goals and how to achieve them

A company needs to define why it wants to use social media and what the goals are. Just to have a profile on Facebook because everybody else does is not a good enough motive. Good goals are relevant and possible to measure. Relevant goals are connected to the companys goals in business overall. To get more visitors to the companys home page is not a goal. It can be a good partial goal to reach the actual goals that may be: A stronger brand. This can mean a more known brand, more loyal customers, change in attitudes and so on. More enquiries and customers. Better staff due to better recruitments. New customer groups. Better support and therefor more satisfied customers. Better products, due to product development based on customer feedback. Better internal communication. Increase in sales.

Purposes and goals should be defined for social media in general, but also for all activities separately. (Carlsson 2009, 126.)

3 Channels & users

You need to choose your target group. The company should have defined a target group and its most important customers. Focus on these. When you have defined your target group you should make a survey of the target group so that you can make a clear image of the relationship your target group has towards social media. Things you need to know are: Are they already present in social media? Which channels of social media are most popular among you customers? What are the reasons they use social media? How do they prefer to interact via social media? How do they react to communicating with you via social media?

Which channel is best suitable for your company? In some cases it might seem obvious to invest on active presence that Facebook among others offers. All channels and platforms have different functions and characteristics so you should investigate which one or which ones are most suitable for the goals you have set for your company. You need to take into account the resources you have. You need to be able to bring something extra to your customers, so do not just choose all possible channels and think they will manage themselves. Try to concentrate on one or just a few channels and choose these channels in accordance to your goals you have set. (Holmstrm & Wikberg 2010, 95-97.)

4 Measure the effects

The great thing with the digital world is that almost anything can be measured. The traffic of pages can be measured. The popularity of e-mails can be measures. Search advertising can be measured. Also the popularity of social media can be measured. Basically internet is an enormous data storage, because internet works so that computers communicate with each other and when they do there is always a data log of this stored. By using measuring results companies can make decisions that direct their business. Social media services have their own tools for monitoring the services. But the tool itself is not enough, you need to know what to measure and follow and this can be really challenging. Just to gain some data is not a good reason to measure anything. Things that should be measured are: The visitor amounts on social media pages and especially changes in visitor amounts. Why are there changes in the visitor amounts? Why are there many users at some time and no users another time? The average duration of a visit. Do people spend minutes or seconds on your page? Sales leads that come from your pages. The sources of the traffic. Where do people come from when they enter your page? Do they come through search engines, links or by directly entering the address? What do the results mean and is there something to be done about them? Numbers are fun, easy and absolute. You dont do anything with the numbers themselves, the essential is what you do with them and what the numbers mean. You need to follow data but also learn to use it. It takes only a few minutes to check the measurement results, but this is not enough. Analysing tools sends reports to your mail daily and these are often just directly moved to the trash bin. Therefore there should be many persons with access to these numbers. Study, train and authorize people in the company to use the tools. Use an hour every month to analyse the results and the meaning of the numbers. The most important measurement of all is if it has affected the sales or not. (Leino 2011, 165-167.)

5 Risks
Obviously there are pros and cons with social media and it is worth weighin the options before engaging in social media. Social media is not the right way for all businesses. One thing that many companies think about when entering social media is that this makes the company open up and they have to be more transparent about their business. How openly should the company and the business be presented? Do we give up too much information for the competitors? What if somebody steals our ideas? Therefor each company should think about what they can and want to tell publicly. The company should still remember that if they are too secret about their business nobody is interested and nobody will read what you post. (Carlsson 2009, 106.) Another concern for companies is that the time and money used is wasted and do not give any return in increased sales. This may happen if there is no strategy, no goals, no engagement, no endurance and no knowledge. Marketing in social media is depending on how you do it. Time is a resource and time used in social media is time taken away from something else. It might be worthwhile to start with testing first and to see how it works. If it does work well resources can always be added. The extra time spent might also reduce the time needed in answering phone calls and e-mails if the customers can find the same information through social media. (Carlsson 2009, 111.) A major concern companies have is negative comments and criticism by customers. Of course this happens and there has to be a strategy how to deal with negative feedback. The negative feedback can be turned into a positive thing. All companies want feedback of their products and services so that they can improve them. Social media also gives companies the opportunity to communicate with the dissatisfied customer and let the customer know that issue is being addressed. If there is a huge amount of negative feedback and no positive feedback, the problem is not social media but the product, service or company itself. People are also smart and they understand that some people exaggerate problems. (Carlsson 2009, 112-117.) All in all, social media is not for all companies. Companies should not enter the social media if they: Can not be transparent about their business or products. People in key positions do not understand what it is about. 6

Dont have enough knowledge, engagement and understanding. Dont have enough time and resources or willingness for long term work. Are not ready for the consequences. Are not willing to try and learn from mistakes. Feel that the content is better suited for a one way communication. Think short term work and immediate results are more important. Do not have relevant goals and a plan why they want to use social media.

(Carlsson 2009, 118.)

Bibliography

Carlsson, L. 2009. Marknasfring och kommunikation i sociala medier. Kreafon AB. Holmstrm, E. & Wikberg, E. 2010. Sociala Medier En marknadsfringshandbok. Bokfrlaget Redaktionen i Stockholm AB. Stockholm. Leino, A. 2011. Sosiaalinen netti ja menestyvn pk-yrityksen mahdollisuudet. Infor. Neher, K. 2013. Visual Social Media Marketing. Boot Camp Publishing. Cincinnati, Ohio.