Due the growing demand for male clothing, this blog will explore what the wants and needs are of the male consumers from a clothing retail website, and if their wants and needs are being met by online retailers.  Differences in gender are believed to influence, or perhaps moderate the interest in websites and how much an individual uses it (Rodger & Harris 2003).  The three critical determinants of men’s shopping attitudes and behaviour, according to Rodger & Harris (2003), are the following; Emotion, trust, and convenience.

There has  been a big increase in the male clothes market, for example between 2001 to 2006 the market grew by 13% to £9 billion (Tungate, M. 2008).  With increasing celebrities and public figures setting more ‘metrosexual’ trends, it is growing more common for men to change their wardrobe as females (Keynote 2012).

Mens garments, as a sub sector, recorded the highest period of growth of 23.2% in 2013 (Keynote, 2o14)

The growing demand for male clothing as discussed is growing, but what do males want from the online stores?

It has been shown that males prefer a much more ‘functional online environment’, in other words males are wanting a clothing website where the information about clothes is simple to find and where the ordering process is quick and simple (Close, A. 2012).  Further more the structure has to be relatively simple and straight forward, and it has also been shown that males prefer the use of imagery and descriptive wording when advertising the clothing products (Close, A. 2012).  Also it has been shown that if retailers bring  in customization features, for example being able to change the colour of the items, or specify the exact measurements it can  enhance consumer interest and loyalty (Tarafdar,M. & Zhang, J. 2007).  It has also been advised for retailers to concentrate on the aesthetics of the websites, such as the images and colours used, as this encourages prolonged use by the customers (Nsairi, Z.B. & Khadraoui, M. 2013).

It is all good to try and understand the theory behind what males want from shopping but it is another scenario trying to apply it to your website.  To try and demonstrate the application Asos’s mens section, (Asos, 2015), will be looked at and a few key points will be applied in a hope to demonstrate some of the theory.

The annotations above show some concepts which can be applied to the pages of male clothing websites, in an attempt to further obtain custom, or help to gain repeat custom.

To create a website that males are going to respond to the following factors need to be taken into consideration; it has to be functional; easy to navigate, yet needs the use of imagery and descriptive wording to capture our attention.  As demonstrated, applying the theory is not that difficult, however the prove is in the results….. so try it out for yourself!

References:

• Asos, (2015). Shop men’s clothes, jeans, shoes, t-shirts, shirts and more at ASOS. [online] Available at: http://www.asos.com/men/ [Accessed 30 Apr. 2015].
• Close, A. 2012, Online consumer behavior: theory and research in social media, advertising, and e-tail, Routledge Academic, London.
• Key Note. (2012). Men and Womens buying habits. [online] Available at: http://www.keynote.co.uk.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/market-intelligence/view/product/10564/men-and-women%27s-buying-habits?medium=download [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].
• Key note. (2014).Market update. [online] Available at: http://www.keynote.co.uk.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/market-intelligence/view/product/10958/clothing-retailing?medium=download [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].
• Nsairi, Z.B. & Khadraoui, M. 2013, “Website Satisfaction: Determinants and Consequences on Website Loyalty”, International Business Research, vol. 6, no. 9, pp. 77.
• RODGERS, S. & HARRIS, M.A. 2003, “Gender and E-Commerce: An Exploratory Study”, Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 322-329.

This blog will explore which social networking site is the most effective for advertising.  The following social media sites will be explored: Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in.  The amount of users, the demographics which you can reach and the costs will be explored to determine the best social media site to use for your advertising campaign.

Social media is an effective medium for organisations to advertise to their selected target market. According to Barbu, O. (2014) this platform has huge potential for marketing, what is more the user bases are ‘solid and credible’ sources for brand promotion.  Given the reach and capabilities of such platforms it is important to determine which site is best for your business.

The first social media site which will be analysed is Facebook:

In terms of its users Facebook trumps both Twitter and LinkedIn, they currently have 1 billion+ registered users! (wordstream 2014), and they have 699 million active daily users.  Users aged between 25-34 make up 29.7% of users and are the most common age demographic (Noyes, D. 2015). The advertising stats are as follows:

• There are 3 categories to Facebook ads; Online sales, Local stores and Mobile apps.
• When it comes to advertising facebook offers a lot of flexibility, the minimum amount you can spend per day is $1, of course that for any advertising campaign is unrealistic!  They allow you to set a budget of your choice, and the type of bidding either cost per click (CPC) or cost per impression (CPI) (Facebook.com, 2015).
• The average CPC in 2013 was $0.21 (Baer, J. 2015)
• The average CPI was $0.75 (Baer, J. 2015)
• ;The click through rate (CTR), globally, in 2013 was 0.36%. (Baer, J. 2015)

The second social media site to be analysed is Twitter:

Twitter has 982 million registered accounts, however only 271 million active users and only 43.4 million tweet more than once a day (Digital information, 2015). The biggest user age demographic is 18-29 year olds which make up 29% of its user base (Brodzky, B. 2014).

The advertising facts are as follows:

• There are three types of advertising; A promoted tweet, a promoted account and a promoted trend
• The average CPC is $1.35 for both a promoted tweet and a promoted account (Alleger, J. (2013)
• The promoted trend will cost you $200,000 per day! (Alleger, J. (2013)
• The average CTR is between 1-3%

The final social media site analysed is LinkedIn:

LinkedIn has over 347 million users of which 35% of the users access the site daily, what is more 1 out of 3 professionals globally are users (Wersm, 2014).  The biggest age demographic is 35-54 years old which makes up 39.8% of its users (blog).

The advertising facts are as follows:

• There are three main advertising formats; Sponsored updates (appear on the users news feed), display ads, and direct sponsored content.
• The average CPC is $3.50 (Wordstream.com, 2014)
• CTR average of 0.025% (KISS metrics, 2015)

Each site has been briefly analysed in terms of users, types of ads, cost of ads and average CTR, yet the answer to which site is best is still not apparent.  Facebook boasts the biggest audience  and has the lowest CPC.  Twitter  has a better CTR than both Facebook and LinkedIn, however they have less active users on a day to day bases.  LinkedIn has the highest CPC and the lowest CTR, which would be enough to discourage anyone, however it is a network filled with professional individuals, and as such it may be a case of quality over quantity  (Schaffer, N. 2013).  To truly ascertain the best social networking site you need to assess which has the audience you are targeting to, and make sure the costs are in line with you proposed budget.

References

Alleger, J. (2013). How Much do Ads on Twitter Cost? | Penna Powers. [online] Pennapowers. Available at: http://www.pennapowers.com/how-much-do-ads-on-twitter-cost/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Baer, J. (2015). 15 New Facebook Advertising Statistics | Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy. [online] Convinceandconvert.com. Available at: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research/15-new-facebook-advertising-statistics/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Barbu, O. 2014, “Advertising, Microtargeting and Social Media”, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 163, pp. 44-49.

Brodzky, B. (2014). Social Media User Statistics & Age Demographics for 2014. [online] LinkedIn Pulse. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141118182103-28964915-social-media-user-statistics-age-demographics-for-2014 [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Digitalinformationworld, (2015). #SocialMedia 2014: User Demographics For Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest – #infographic. [online] Available at: http://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2014/10/social-media-user-demographics-linkedin-tumblr-facebook-and-more-infographic.html [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015]

Facebook.com, (2015). How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook? | Facebook Help Center | Facebook. [online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/help/214319341922580 [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

KISS metrics, (2015). The KISSmetrics Guide To LinkedIn Ads – Part I: The Basics. [online] Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-linkedin-ads1/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Noyes, D. (2015). Top 20 Facebook Statistics – Updated February 2015. [online] Zephoria Inc. Available at: https://zephoria.com/social-media/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Wersm, (2014). Top LinkedIn Facts And Stats [infographic]. [online] Available at: http://wersm.com/top-linkedin-facts-and-stats-infographic/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

Wordstream.com, (2014). Social Media Advertising: Which Platform is Right for Your Business? | Wordstream. [online] Available at: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/09/24/social-media-advertising [Accessed 24 Apr. 2015].

In this the blog the question ‘Can you measure the return on investment (roi) for social media’ will be explored.  If you are unfamiliar with the the concept of the finding the roi from social media, or need further clarification, the following video should address most issues:

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

For businesses, measuring the ROI on social media is arguably very important, after all if your putting money into advertising or building a presence on social media site then you want to know whether its making you a return (Arno, C. 2015).  Unfortunatley however ascertaining whether you are getting a return can prove tricky, according to forbes (2013) 88% of 750 marketing proffesionals  did not think they could measure the effectiveness of their social media campaings, further more 52% stated there biggest frustration was trying to work out the ROI.

Some argue that the ROI simply cannot be done, and like alternative advertising methods, such as billboards, the only thing you can do is hope for the best (Wordstream, 2013).  However there are sources out there which offer guidance to try and quantify the activities on your social media which may lead to an answer; Forbes (2013) offer three methods to do this, using:

• Metric tools, such as conversion rates
• Interactions, analysing the ‘likes’ of your posts, plus taking into account the friends of the users who were exposed when they liked your post.
• Analysing traffic, such as analysing your website analytics against the Pay per click (PPC) campaigns

Hoffman, D.L. & Fodor, M. (2010) argue that most approaches organisations take to work out the Roi, are the wrong way to go about it, and further states that to work out the return the ‘traditional ROI approaches should be turned on its head’.  The argument put forward is that instead of calcuting the returns through the consumers responses, they instead should consider the motivation for consumers using social media and then measure the social media investments they make with a company.  To put this in context when working out the reutrn for the investments there are 3 factors,as  follows:

• Brand awareness (no.of ; followers, impressions, reviews/ratings)
• Brand engagement (no.of; Comments, active users, likes rate of activity)
• Word of mouth (frequency of appearance in timelines, no. of; posts on walls, reposts/ shares)

Roi is important for any individual or business wanting to quantify the benefits they recieve from investing on social media.  Two different approaches have been looked at, but even using those solutions can be; tricky, costly, and the result may still not give a definitive answer.  However the best course of action is to concentrate on the metrics which can be quantified, such as the click through rates (CTR), which google analytics is an effective and free tool which can be used to do such things.  Further metrics include the number of followers, likes, retweets, shares etc, although this wont give you a complete picture as to the return on your investment it will give you an idea, to some extent, how well the campaign is doing (Arno, C. 2015).

References

Arno, C. (2015). Is It Possible to Measure Social Media ROI?. [online] ClickZ. Available at: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2339947/is-it-possible-to-measure-social-media-roi [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

Forbes, (2013). CapitalOneSparkVoice: How To Measure Your Social Media Return On Investment. [online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/capitalonespark/2013/04/25/how-to-measure-your-social-media-return-on-investment/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

Hoffman, D.L. & Fodor, M. 2010, “Can you measure the ROI of your social media marketing?”, MIT sloan management review,vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 41-49.

Wordstream, (2013). Measuring the ROI of Social Media | Wordstream. [online] Available at: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/04/25/social-media-roi [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].