Social media campaigns, if conducted correctly, can be very effective in achieving a multitude of things. Therefore, high end department stores should follow these steps when creating them:

1. Create a social media marketing strategy

The first, and one of the most important things to do when creating a social media campaign, is to develop a strategic plan. Strategic planning is where you identify objectives and then plan how you are going to meet these objectives. Once you have carried out the plan you then have to measure how well you met the objectives, giving you guidance on how to improve for next time. Not only does this allow you to know exactly what you are trying to achieve on that particular social media campaign, but it also helps future campaigns success. (Tuten and Solomon, 2015). More specifically, included in the strategic plan should be social media goals, social media vision statements, SMART objectives, social profile branding, social media voice, community policy, brand user policy and a crisis plan. (Kim, 2016).

2. SWOT analysis (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)

It may be useful to conduct a SWOT analysis based the social media marketing strategy. Evaluating the main strengths will provide you with opportunists and discovering the main weaknesses will help to eliminate some, if not all, of the threats, that may otherwise have caught you out. SWOT analysis also helps you to become more aware of your key competitors, which is very important for high end department stores as there are many competitors, some that may not be as obvious as others. (Hill, 2018).

3. Selecting social media zones

There are four zones of social media. When creating social media campaigns, picking the suitable social media zones will help to accomplish the objectives that were created in the marketing strategy. These four zones include social community, social publishing, social entertaining and social commerce. Social community is looking at what social networking sites should be used. Social publishing is evaluating what content should be shared with what audiences and what content is most appropriate for the social networks that have been selected. Social entertainment assesses the level of entertainment that should be included within the social media posts. Finally, social commerce develops opportunities for customer reviews that will help to achieve more customers and increase conversion rates. To be most successful, all of these zones should be adopted where possible. (Tuten and Solomon, 2015).

4. Connecting

Connecting with your target audience is another one of the most important things to do when campaigning through social media. Creating a social media campaign that does not connect with people, or the right people, will simply be a failure. (Zarrella, 2010). There are a few things to do to ensure that your campaign is going to connect to your target audience. First of all you need to find out the pattern of activity on each social media site. This will enable you to know the best times to post your campaigns and ensure that they are reaching and connecting with your audience. Secondly, you need to look at your target audience and what their interests are to make sure your campaigns are going to appeal to them. Next you need to do primary research that aims to find out what social media site your customers use the most. Secondary research will not be useful for this, as the social media sites used by your target audience may be completely different to those used by the target audience of a different company. The different demographic characteristics of the target audiences may also have an effect on usage. Therefore, finding research about your in particular target audience is vital. (Mershon, 2012). There are many more steps that you can take to achieve the best connectivity with your audience. These can be explored further through the subsequent links:

https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/5-social-media-tips-for-finding-and-engaging-your-target-audience-new-research/

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-strategy/how-to-connect-with-your-audience-emotionally-to-drive-more-engagement/

More Useful Links:

The following link provides a list of social media marketing mistakes and should therefore help you to avoid them:

https://www.dreamgrow.com/top-10-social-media-marketing-mistakes-that-you-mustnt-make/

This video sums up the trends of 2017 that made social media campaigns successful:

Examples of successful social media campaigns:

The following are, according to Gilliland (2016), from Econsultancy, are some great examples of successful social media campaigns of high end department stores and fashion retailers. Looking at these may help to understand what you should include in your social media campaigns.

Burberry Kisses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRiZMVEIhas

This is a successful campaign as it created a personal connection with its customers and brought the brand story to life.

Inside Channel

This campaign was successful because, like Burberry Kisses, a brand story was created and brought to life by showing the brand history, which gave the audience a feeling of value around the brand.

Nike’s Better for It 2015

This was a successful campaign as it, not only created an empowering tone that engaged the female audience, but it also highlights how sport can increase your self-esteem, which is a very important message

More successful campaigns can be found via this link:

https://www.econsultancy.com/blog/68404-10-examples-of-great-fashion-marketing-campaigns

Reference List

Gilliland, N. (2016). 10 examples of great fashion marketing campaigns. [Blog] Econsultancy. Available at: https://www.econsultancy.com/blog/68404-10-examples-of-great-fashion-marketing-campaigns [Accessed 26 Mar. 2018].

Hill, B. (2018). Why Perform a SWOT Analysis?. [online] Smallbusiness.chron.com. Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/perform-swot-analysis-5050.html [Accessed 26 Mar. 2018].

Kim, C. (2016). Social media campaigns. New York: Routledge.

Mershon, P. (2012). 5 Social Media Tips for Finding and Engaging Your Target Audience: New Research. [Blog] Social Media Examiner. Available at: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/5-social-media-tips-for-finding-and-engaging-your-target-audience-new-research/ [Accessed 26 Mar. 2018].

Tuten, T. and Solomon, M. (2015). SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING. 2nd ed. [S.l.]: SAGE PUBLICATIONS.

Zarrella, D. (2010). The social media marketing book. Beijing: O’Reilly.

Not segmenting your audience

Not personalising messages for your audience is a common error that high end department stores are likely to make. They have a lot of different products but not every customer wants to know about every product. Therefore emails need to be personalised to the specific customer to keep them interested, for example showing them products that they are going to personally like. Ways to segment an audience include gender, age, previously purchased products, discounts and many more. This can be seen as ‘customer orientated marketing’. “Customer-oriented marketing attempts to find targeted groups of products with respect to a customer or a group of customers”. (Huang, Zhong and Yao, 2012). This technique of targeted marketing is also known as ‘product recommendation’. (Adomavicius and Tuzhilin, 2005).

Not making the subject line interesting

It is very rare that you would open an email that has a boring subject line. The subject line is the first thing that the customer sees, therefore meaning that it must be intriguing and make the customer want to open the email and read more. It is also a good idea to personalise the subject line, for example with the customer’s name, as this will ensure that the customer feels valued. This could be an error that a high end department store is likely to make as they have so many customers so this may appear time consuming, however creating groups of similar people will make this less time consuming as you can send the email on mass. This can be seen as direct marketing, which “attempts to find groups of customers with respect to a product or a group of products”. (Huang, Zhong and Yao, 2012).

Sending too many emails/ not sending enough emails

A study done by TechnologyAdvice, in 2015, explored the question ‘For what reasons have you marked a business’ emails as spam?’ They discovered that 45% claim that it is because they were receiving too many emails. (Kreimer, 2017). The same study found that the best way to improve an email campaign would be to decrease the amount of emails that are sent. (Kreimer, 2017). People simply get annoyed when they keep receiving pointless emails from the same company. However, on the other hand you must also be sure to send enough emails as you can run the risk of reducing engagement and revenue from your customers. (Kreimer, 2017). A high end department store constantly runs the risk of sending too many emails as they have such a large range of products. However, ensuring that email campaigns are targeted will reduce this risk.

Below is an example of a company that send too many emails. All of the emails show below, are exactly the same, suggesting their email system is flawed. This annoyed me and made me unsubscribe from their mailing list.

Lifecycle marketing

Creating successful targeted email campaigns require lifecycle marketing. This is when you should be “speaking to customers differently based on their stage in the buying cycle”. (LaBrutto, 2017). This could be an issue for high end department stores as, due to their large customer base, it may prove difficult to keep track of every customer’s activity.

Poor Email Design

The design of the targeted email must be aesthetically pleasing whilst also getting the message across and functioning successfully and easily. For example, it may look good to have a picture that when clicked on takes you to the company’s website, however how is the customer going to know that they need to click on that picture? Therefore having a simple link next to a picture is more effective and functional in this respect, whilst also still looking appealing. High end department stores may spend too much time in trying to make their emails look good and stand out over stores below them, that they may forget that it also needs to function well and get the message to the customer. (LaBrutto, 2017).

Targeted emails, if used correctly and effectively, are one of the best ways to constantly interact with your audience. This blog piece should act as a good guide for high end department stores when creating their targeted email campaigns to help them avoid the common errors. (Doz, 2016)

Below is an example of a GOOD email that I received. The subject line is captivating and makes it clear that they have taken not of my previous purchases to pick out products that they think I will like. (the picture flicks through a handful of different items). They have also used my name to address the email.

         
Below is an example of a BAD email that I received. The subject line is not intriguing and the email has not been personalised for me. There is a discount code which makes you want to go to their website, however it is a general one available to anyone so does not make me feel valued as a customer.

Useful Links

The following link will take you to a guide that suggests the best way to design an email.

https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2017/05/the-really-good-guide-to-email-design-bonus-checklist/

The following video talks about MailChimp, which is a helpful service that companies can use to generate successful targeted email campaigns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX-niyx19rA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX-niyx1

Link to MailChimp:

https://mailchimp.com/?awid=60436254&awag=53660641324&awad=250923369818&awkw=mailchimp&pid=GAW&source=website&gclid=Cj0KCQiAq6_UBRCEARIsAHyrgUwzGuq9NIVvzZuLAT1tpHyZovbFq7nz98jwYMIMUZXP3JPhVjcdW-waAv4ZEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CJXZg_WRtdkCFUqO7QodkG0LlQ

Reference List

Adomavicius, G., and A. Tuzhilin .2005. Toward the next generation of recommender systems: A survey of the state-of-the art and possible extensions. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Engineering, 17(6):734–749.

Doz, J. (2016). Seven Email Marketing Errors That Can Ruin Your Rep | DOZ. [online] DOZ. Available at: http://www.doz.com/marketing-resources/email-marketing-errors [Accessed 21 Feb. 2018].

Huang, J., Zhong, N. and Yao, Y. (2012). A UNIFIED FRAMEWORK OF TARGETED MARKETING USING CUSTOMER PREFERENCES. Computational Intelligence, 30(3), pp.451-472.

Kreimer, I. (2017). 5 Email Marketing Mistakes to Stop Making (and What to Do Instead). [Blog] Campaign Monitor. Available at: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2017/07/5-email-marketing-mistakes-to-stop-making/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

LaBrutto, M. (2017). 7 Common Retail Marketing Mistakes & How to Remedy Them. [Blog] Bluecore. Available at: https://www.bluecore.com/blog/common-retail-marketing-mistakes-remedy/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Benefits

Cost benefits

Weinberg (2009) claims that the main benefit of using social media for marketing is the cost advantages. Most of the popular social media sites are free to use, offering a choice of a small fee to boost posts. Using low cost pay-per-click marketing is also good as you can target a specific audience. These people are then likely to go on to share your posts meaning your information will spread quickly and reach new customers (Weinberg, 2009). Conventional marketing campaigns can cost a company millions of pounds, and achieve similar, if not less effective, results.

Customer Service

Using social media allows for better customer service and according to Hemsley (2000), “Customer service is another crucial area for social media marketing”. Having links to FAQs and places where you can talk to someone and get immediate replies, improves the customer service of your company and essential results in happy customers, who will then turn into loyal customers. Loyal customers can help your brand to reach new customers. If a customer is loyal, it is likely that they will talk about your brand to their friends. The benefit of this is that people tend to trust and be more influenced by people that they trust, so are likely to investigate into the brand that has been recommended. (DeMers, 2014). Customer loyalty is specifically important for fashion companies as there are so many different brands selling similar products, that if a customer is not pleased, they can find the same thing elsewhere.

Increased Inbound Traffic

If you do not use social media, this will restrict your inbound traffic. Only current customers are going to be lead to your website, or people searching for the key words that already are linked to your site. Social media is a great tool to increase this traffic, as it reaches larger audiences and new customers. Ultimately, the more traffic you have leading to your website, the more sales you will have. As there are so many fashion companies using social media, you must ensure that your posts, are engaging and make the customer want to see more, thus leading them on your website and hopefully converting them into paying csustomers. (DeMers, 2014).

Risks

Time commitment

A disadvantage of social media is that it is “time intensive”. (Nadaraja and Yazdanifard, 2013). Meaning that it takes up a lot of time. “The focus is placed on establishing long-term relationships that can turn into more sales”. (Nadaraja and Yazdanifard, 2013). As Barefoot and Szabo (2010), claim, there has to be an employee within your company that is responsible for each aspect of social media, for example writing posts, answering comments and queries and so on. If a company does not have an employee that is dedicated purely to social media, the company’s social media will not be successful in reaching new customers. Therefore, when deciding whether to use social media, companies must first analyse if they can rise to this time commitment. (Barefoot and Zsabo, 2010). For fashion companies it is advisable that they do take on social media as all competitors use it.

Not living up to expectations

“Social media is failing to meet projections as marketers consistently overestimate how much budget they will dedicate to sites”. (Vizard, 2017).  Suggesting that social media can actually be less successful then everyone believes. However, the reason for this could be that “marketers are making “minimal progress” in integrating their social media with their wider marketing strategy”. For social media to be successful, all the platforms must be used in conjunction. This can be a risk when using social media in the fashion industry, as they have so many different products to market, it may be easy for their different platforms to become less integrated, however, applying a suitable amount of time to social media each day will ensure that this does not happen.

Boohoo give a good example of a fashion company that have taken this into account and integrate their posts over different platforms, as show below:

Facebook:

Twitter:

User Generated Content

Unhappy customers are likely to complain about a brand on social media. Nadaraja and Yazdanifard (2013), claim that this user-generated content comes with a large amount of credibility from consumers.  Therefore, brands must keep on top of unhappy customers and try to make them happy before they spread too much hate, ultimately leading customers away. Unfortunately, “there is not much a marketer can do to prevent these occurrences”. (Nadaraja and Yazdanifard, 2013). The best way around it is to “immediately respond and neutralize harmful posts”. (Nadaraja and Yazdanifard, 2013). Controlling this is important for fashion companies, as there are so many alternatives so customers can easily find an alternative brand.

Boohoo demonstrate a good example of a fashion company that is on top of this, they have a separate page on twitter called “Boohoo help team”, as shown below, in the hope that this will limit the amount of complaints.

Useful Links

Below is a useful video for companies to watch regularly, to remind them what some of the benefits and risks of using social media:

Below is a link that demonstrates 6 ways to successful social media marketing:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/292169

Below is another helpful link that explains ways fashion companies can use twitter: https://blog.twitter.com/marketing/en_gb/a/en-gb/2014/eight-creative-ways-fashion-brands-can-use-twitter.html

References

DeMers, J. (2014). Forbes Welcome. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-media-marketing/#12be7951f80d [Accessed 4 Jan. 2018].

Helmsley, S. (2000). “Keeping Custom,” Marketing Week (UK), 23 (7): 39-42.

Hill, S., Provost, F. & Volinsky, C. (2006). “Network-Based Marketing: Identify likely adopters via consumer networks”, Journal of Statistical Science, vol. 21, no.2, pp .256-276 DOI: 10.1214/088342306000000222

Long, J. (2017). 6 Must-Do’s for Effective Social Media Marketing. [online] Entrepreneur. Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/292169 [Accessed 5 Jan. 2018].

Macmillan, G. (2013). Eight creative ways fashion brands can use Twitter. [Blog] Available at: https://blog.twitter.com/marketing/en_gb/a/en-gb/2014/eight-creative-ways-fashion-brands-can-use-twitter.html [Accessed 5 Jan. 2018].

Nadaraja, Rubathee & Yazdanifard, Dr. Rashad. (2013). Social Media Marketing SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES.

Vizard, S. (2017). Social media spend failing to live up to expectations – Marketing Week. [online] Marketing Week. Available at: https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/03/16/social-media-spend-failing-live-expectations/ [Accessed 4 Jan. 2018].

Weinberg, T. (2009). “The new community rules: Marketing on the social Web”. Sebastopol, CA: O‟Reilly Media Inc.

 Using the RACE model written by Chaffey in 2010, it is easy to suggest successful ways for fashion companies using digital marketing to reach new customers. Reach stands for Reach, Act, Convert and Engage. Here are just some of the successful methods you could use:

1. Encourage existing customers to sign up friends by giving them a discount code or voucher.

This is a useful way to reach new customers as you already have a database of people that fit your target audience, so it is likely that they know people that also fit into the target audience. Therefore, asking them to sign up friends and family will allow you reach new customers. Rewarding these customers with vouchers or discount codes will encourage them to sign up their friends rather than just ignoring the email. This would come under the reach section of the RACE model as it is building awareness among unique visitors and fans.

2. Do giveaways on social media.

When fashion companies do giveaways, there tend to be steps that you must follow to enter. For example, you must like a photo, share the photo and tag 3 friends in the photo. This will reach new customers and increase brand awareness of your company. Using different platforms for this could also increase conversion rates. Using your existing audience is probably the best way when using this method. Doing giveaways on social media would come under the act section of the RACE model as it is encouraging the audience to interact with the brand to generate leads. This could also be incorporated into the convert element of the RACE model as it is essentially achieving conversion to sales.

3. Launch a blog.

Blogs are useful tools for reaching new customers. You should write regular blog posts, at least one a week, to keep customers engaged. These blog posts should be shared on social media pages and on the company’s website. If you write about a variety of topics, more key words will be formed, and your website/blog will come up more often when people are searching for related things. Therefore, you are likely to reach new customers. This would come under the reach element of the RACE model as it is attempting to build awareness across social media.

Example of the fashion company, Boohoo’s, blog: https://thefix.boohoo.com/

As you can see this blog also uses hash tags which leads on to the next technique…

4. Use hash tags. #

Using hash tags on posts on social media will increase the reach of the posts, as it categorises them, making them more likely to appear in searches, therefore reaching new customers. If you use the same hash tags on your posts, when people click on them, it will bring up the rest of your posts with that hashtag, therefore driving more customers to your page. Using hashtags is also included in the act element as it is encouraging audience interaction.

5. Remember customer’s birthdays

If you remember customer’s birthdays and send them coupons via email, it is likely that they will tell their friends about this benefit, making their friends likely to sign up to the email marketing to also receive these benefits. This is a way to reach new customers through word of mouth and will also increase brand loyalty by making the customer feel valued. Remembering customer’s birthdays comes under the engage element of the RACE model as it is building customer and fan relationships to achieve goals and encourage participation.

Here is an example of a birthday email:

As you can see on the right-hand side of the email there are promotions for other items from other brands, which could also be a way to reach new customers. In this example, the email is from New Look but the advert is for Gap. Having your advert appear on the side when the customer is looking up similar brands can allow you to reach new customers that may not have previously thought to look at your brand.

 Using a range, if not all of these points will be the best way to reach new customers. However, the most useful ways will depend on what type of company you are, so assessing this before will help maximize the benefits and save you wasting time. There are also many other methods that can be used that have not been mentioned in this blog.

Useful Sources

The following blog is a useful source when evaluating successful ways for fashion companies using digital marketing to reach new customers: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/brand-marketing/

It is named Brand Marketing: How to reach customers in the digital age. It examines the challenges in new brand marketing and finding the digital media balance.

Another useful source is a blog written by Dave Chaffey fond through the following link: https://www.smartinsights.com/goal-setting-evaluation/goals-kpis/goals-for-your-digital-marketing/

This blog is based on setting goals for digital marketing, using the 5Ss which include sell, speak, serve, save and sizzle. This piece focuses on ASOS and how they adopt the 5Ss to ensure that their digital marketing is successful. This is a reliable source as Dave Chaffey is the author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing.

 The following video gives a good overview on digital marketing and the basics behind it:

References

Chaffey, D. (2010). Setting goals for your digital marketing | Smart Insights. [online] Smart Insights. Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/goal-setting-evaluation/goals-kpis/goals-for-your-digital-marketing/ [Accessed 22 Nov. 2017].

Rodriguez, V. (2017). Fashion Digital Marketing: 12 Ideas to Market Your Brand. [online] Uhuru Network. Available at: https://uhurunetwork.com/fashion-digital-marketing/ [Accessed 22 Nov. 2017].

Stringfellow, A. (2017). Brand Marketing: How To Reach Customers In The Digital Age. [online] OPEN Forum. Available at: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/brand-marketing/ [Accessed 22 Nov. 2017].

The Fix. (2017). The Fix : Latest Fashion News, Trends & Styles | boohoo.com. [online] Available at: https://thefix.boohoo.com/ [Accessed 22 Nov. 2017].

About Ikea

Ikea was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, who was just seventeen. Ikea is now the world’s largest furniture retailer and has been since 2008. Ikea designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture, kitchen appliances and home accessories. They have 365 stores across 45 different countries. (Harness et al., 2011).

What was their goal?

Due to Ikea’s large market share and vast amount of employees, they thought that it would be useful to create a programe that would connect all the business units together, as well as recognising the usefulness of social media and how it can be used to link regions, departments and applications. The fast paced nature of social media was taken as a tool that could benefit Ikea. Not only as it would allow them to understand real-time insights but also so that could share these with their employees, allowing them to make a difference in remarkably quick time. Ikea believed that this would morph them into a socially intelligent operation.

As social media is used by a large majority of the world, in my opinion, this idea of utilising it to help Ikea increase their brand awareness and customer reach, appears to be a faultless plan. Social media is free meaning it would allow them to market more at no extra cost and also view people’s opinions on the brand, highlighting areas that they need to work on.

Challenges faced

The idea of using social media and its benefits was widely accepted in most areas of the business, however they did face some challenges; the usage in different markets and departments was varied and the investment in the social media was therefore inconsistent. Another problem that they faced was that successful pieces of marketing and information were remaining isolated, meaning that they were not reaching the full potential of departments that could have found them useful.

I believe that Ikea could have avoided these problems if they had carried out an analysis of the social media, which they were planning to use, beforehand. This would have highlighted these problems before they had wasted their time creating successful marketing pieces and they could therefore have found ways to overcome these obstacles. I think that Ikea could have benefited from a step by step marketing plan.

Solution

Ikea decided to create a Listening Hub which was the first step towards them becoming the socially intelligent business that they were aspiring to become. This allowed them to build a social media command center where everyone could access customer insights across the organisation.

I personally feel that Ikea’s new listening hub has enhanced their social media dramatically, therefore increasing their target market and giving them a larger market share. Before creating the listening hub, their plan to become a socially intelligent business was failing, however the hub allowed them to share information easier and connect employees, not only together, but with the customers to allow for a more satisfying customer journey and higher customer loyalty. Without their want to become a socially intelligent business, Ikea may have stayed in the same position that they were in before, allowing other businesses to overtake them and as Brandwatch claim, “the Listening hub within Ikea’s headquarters provided the perfect setting to triage social intelligence”.

Therefore, you could argue that Ikea are now on the right path to becoming a socially intelligent business!

References

Harness, J., 1, R., 3, R. and S, R. (2011). 10 Things You Didn’t Know About IKEA. [online] Neatorama. Available at: http://www.neatorama.com/2011/04/22/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-ikea/ [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017].

Case study: Ikea and the Socializers, Brandwatch

By Tiffany Pocock

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