apps Business Digital Marketing Email Marketing Social Media

My previous blogs have discussed a variety of digital marketing strategies that are available to organisations to construct. From creating an email marketing campaign to designing a game changing app leaving competitors behind, each digital marketing strategy has its undoubted benefits. But what I want to know is, who has been successful? Having gained an understanding of theory and practice whilst conducting my blogs I want to put it to the test and see which organisations digital marketing strategies I have been positively affected by.

Groupon

With well-designed emails and an increasingly popular app, Groupon have excelled in their digital marketing strategies. I am a regular user of Groupon and believe the business idea is unique and benefits from being personal to consumers. In case you didn’t know, Groupon is an easy way to get huge discounts while discovering fun activities in your city, with daily local deals consisting of restaurants, spas, hotels, massages, shopping vouchers, things to do, and a whole lot more, in hundreds of cities across the world (Groupon, 2015).

E-mail campaign

Once an individual is registered with Groupon users have the option to receive promotions and exclusive deals via email. Personally I am generally one to ‘opt out’ of such facilities however the Groupon email campaigns have been a useful information point for me. The emails are personalised to me, offering exclusive deals in my area based on my previous purchases. The subject line is generally straight to the point and the content of the email is short and sweet. From this I am able to gain quality information, regarding offers that I would not have been aware of otherwise. Of course not every time Groupon send me an email do I purchase I what they have to offer, but generally I open the email to see what the latest offers are. From this I am encouraged to visit their webpage, where a variety of deals are available to purchase, which is essentially the main purpose of an email campaign from an organisations point view.

Mobile app

Further to a successful email marketing strategy Groupon have designed an articulate app that consumers are delighted with. The app is user friendly and regularly updated making experiences of the organisation simple and effective. The app has a variety of categories for consumers to browse, which enables a user to navigate the app easily, tailoring their search to individual needs. I regularly use the app and have (touch wood) never had issues with purchasing products or the availability of items, which encourages me to reuse the facility as often as I can. With the availability of exclusive deals the app provides consumers with unique experiences that the webpage of the business might not be able to offer. I feel this is an effective design feature of the app to encourage user engagement. With 89% of consumer media time in mobile apps (Colwyn, 2014) it is important that an organisation promotes the use of its app on top of their website page and I feel Groupon have definitely addressed this opportunity and the customer review section supports this.

Size? – Social media

Size? are a global supplier of outstanding footwear and garments by a collection of the world’s best brands (Size, 2015). Size? positively engage with customers on all social media platforms with over 100k followers on Twitter, 120k likes on Facebook but more impressively 459k followers on Instagram and are an account I follow on all three platforms.

Instagram Campaign

The success of the size? Instagram page is not surprising, with the ability to showcase their latest products with exclusive deals on an ever-increasing popular social media platform, Size? truly exploit this opportunity. Over the Christmas period size? ran a digital marketing campaign solely for the Instagram account. The campaign offered followers the chance to enter competitions daily in order to win secret prizes from the store. Each day a new product was placed on Instagram and followers simply had to ‘repost’ the image with a relevant hashtag to be in with a chance of winning.

This campaign really stands out in my mind as one that exploited an opportunity from social media advertising and benefited greatly from doing so. By creating a competition around the Christmas period followers were inclined to share content to their peers and encourage users to visit the shared pages. With consumers looking to buy presents in the festive season anyway, size? ensured their webpage had the maximum exposure possible. The competition was also a way of building the brand image by creating content that was regularly shared by users. Although I didn’t win any of the prizes myself, I shared the competitions posts and regularly visited the company’s webpages on all platforms. I would also state that I have an active relationship with size? as a brand, that has certainly been built and encouraged through positive relations on social media .

Now there are of course a plethora of digital marketing campaigns that have positively affected me but these two organisations were the ones to stand out in my mind in terms of design and user engagement. Groupon utilise the email facility to provide customers with relevant information which encourages traffic to their website and app. Whilst, taking a different approach to digital strategy, size? ensure their social media accounts are relevant, appropriate and engage their followers to ensure a positive relationship is built alongside a strong brand image.

References

Colwyn, S. (2014) ‘New consumer media consumption research – Smart Insights Digital Marketing Advice’,

Groupon INC (2015) Groupon: Deals and Coupons for Restaurants, Fitness, Travel, Shopping, Beauty & more. Available at: http://www.groupon.co.uk (Accessed: 20 April 2015)

size? (@sizeofficial) (no date) Available at: https://twitter.com/sizeofficial (Accessed: 20 April 2015)

With one in four of us using social media networks worldwide the opportunity for businesses to advertise on such platforms has become increasingly popular in recent years. As of 2013 there are 665 million daily active users on Facebook and over 500 million registered accounts on Twitter, suggesting that the use of social media to advertise a businesses services is almost expected. With this in mind I wanted to better understand the benefits of social media advertising and the value that this digital marketing strategy can hold. Here are 4 benefits for an organisation from engaging with social media marketing:

Brand building

Social media is an excellent way to showcase a business and build a positive brand image online. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are an excellent opportunity to make an organisation accessible for new customers as well as increasing familiarity for existing ones. By creating articulate and informative social media pages for consumers to engage with, the online image of a brand is enhanced. This is because customer engagement becomes regular which leads to sharing content to an ever-growing online audience. Social media can give brand managers a powerful means to communicate their brands’ values while also letting consumers help define brand narratives in an impactful way (Botts, 2014).

Meaningful content

By using social media to advertise a business, marketers can be specific and direct with the content they share for intended consumers. An opportunity is created to deliver content that is aligned with brand values and a target audience. This will encourage users to share and comment on relevant posts, which further increases your brand awareness as mentioned previously. For professionals and firms, adding a content element exponentially increases the value of social media efforts because expertise is knowledge based (Golden, M 2010). From this an organisation can analyse information such as most viewed, most liked and most commented on posts in order to manage future content to ensure user engagement is maximal.

Feedback for improvement

Whilst social media provides and organisation with the opportunity to promote services, products and increase brand awareness, there is also the facility to receive feedback from customers whether positive or negative. This should also be seen as an opportunity for an organisation as a way to improve their services. For example, when a new product is launched then marketers can analyse social media responses to understand if a campaign has been successful or not. Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, talks about the importance of social media and its interaction with customers:

‘We soon found that these channels were an amazing tool for reaching our customers and the public. One of the first things we learnt was that our new social media accounts gave us a real-time view of how we could improve. Through customers comments, we started learning about issues with our products and services more quickly than ever before. In response, we set up systems so that a customer who has a question or a problem can get a quick answer from our team’.

(The full article can be found here:

http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2012/09/03/how-to-connect-with-your-customers-via-social-media)

Further to this, the feedback and conversation facility that social media provides means organisations can improve customer service. People want to be assured that if they have a problem, they can easily find help. By being receptive to customer needs on social media, business owners can increase customer loyalty to a brand (Roesler, 2014).

Boosting traffic

Social media channels are major generators, constantly bringing high volume of traffic to a webpage (Angelova, 2013). When quality content is created on social media then users are inclined to share information to their peers and encourage users to visit the shared pages. If an organisation creates well-designed social media platforms and adds content to compliment the social media engagement, then it is more likely to generate leads that a sales team can turn into sales. The idea is a viral spread, which is heightened by online communities and cross-pollination of content on several social media platforms (Weinberg, 2009). Below is a diagram that demonstrates the accessibility and connections that a variety of social media platforms and search engines possess.

By using social media as a key part of a marketing strategy an organisation can benefit in a number of ways. These four features discussed above are just the tip of an ice berg that digital marketers must address in order to maximise potential from their digital strategy.

References

Angelova, V. (2013) ‘7 Reasons Why Social Media is an Absolute Must for Business Branding’, 7 Reasons Why Social Media is an Absolute Must for Business Branding.

DeMers, J. (2014) The Top 10 Benefits Of Social Media Marketing. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-media-marketing/ (Accessed: 16 April 2015)

Preston, J. (no date) Richard Branson – the importance of social media. Available at: http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/richard-branson-importance-social-media (Accessed: 16 April 2015)

Reed, A. and Botts, S. (2014) Building Identity Loyalty Through Social Media – Think with Google. Available at: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/columns/building-identity-through-social-media.html (Accessed: 16 April 2015)

Roesler, P. (2014) Inc. Available at: http://www.inc.com/peter-roesler/5-benefits-of-social-media-business-owners-need-to-understand.html (Accessed: 16 April 2015)

Weinberg, T. (2009) The new community rules: marketing on the social web. United States: O’Reilly Media, Inc, USA