Initiative One: Customer development and growth strategic initiatives (social media)

The Advantages of this initiative is that it helps to provide a better experience and delivery to existing customers such as:

• Find exactly what customer wants and needs are in order to grow
• Create strong customer loyalty.
• This will let their target market know that they are interested in their wants and needs.
• Increase growth in terms of reaching a larger target market globally through the social media platform
• “Customers will have positive experiences with a brand” (digitalmarketingstrategymg329, 2015).

It has been specified that “Social media is the best marketing medium for creating relationships with customers. When used appropriately it offers two-way dialogue that marketing communications are all about. Which is more challenging to accomplish with traditional marketing campaigns” (digitalmarketingstrategymg329, 2015).

The Disadvantage of this is:

• Expensive to fund through social media which can be an issue.
• A risk that customers might not react to the brands new initiative ideas
• It becomes overly complicated, which can put off existing customers and push them away.
• The initiative idea on Social media marketing could offend customers
• Not representing the brand correctly, e.g. “Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner political protest ad” which led to a lot of backlashes.

Improvements that can help to enhance the social media initiative is through Google analytics. Google analytics enhance the performance of this initiative because it gives an insight for businesses to see:

• Who is visiting their site
• How they reached the website
• What they are viewing.
• Monitor different behaviours of customers
• What they are engaging with the most.
• identify users, locations, age, gender or interests

With this data, companies can analyse what the most successful techniques and approaches are, in order to boost customer engagement, which is also free for companies to use.

The malthouse model can be applied to this social media initiative because “Social media affect CRM and create pitfalls. The CRM house focuses on how different CRM activities—acquisition, retention, and termination are affected by levels of engagement” (Socialmediathinklab.com, 2018). It indicates that “Each element of the social CRM house creates pitfalls, which the company must avoid” and that “In order to assess whether its social-CRM framework is successful, a company must develop key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the performance of each component of the framework” (Socialmediathinklab.com, 2018). By applying this strategy it can give companies an advantage on what signs to look for and what to avoid and how to achieve the best results through this social CRM house.

Initiative Two: Enhance marketing capabilities (Live Chat)

“The role of marketing capabilities in achieving company’s market and financial success is enormous” (Adel Saleh M, 2015).This can be an advantage to businesses because it allows customers to engage with them creating a more personal relationship through a live chat on a website. “Marketing capabilities contribute to the international expansion of international new ventures by impacting firm’s decision to choose entry modes including higher resource engagement in foreign markets” (Adel Saleh M, 2015).

Marketing capability:

• Has led many companies to positive organisational results which were linked to the following “customer capabilities, functional capabilities, networking capabilities” (Adel Saleh M, 2015).
• Capabilities can increase the “potential range of strategic responses and, finally, enhances customer-based performance” (Adel Saleh M, 2015).

With the initiative to design a live chat room for an online website, it can help customer engagement as it is an important model.

The disadvantages of this initiative are:

• People will not know how to use this tool
• Might not work effectively on mobile devices.
• There is also a possibility people will not like the feature.
• Also, enhance capability marketing can be hard to get customers to engage with it at first because they are not familiar with the model or the idea so this can be a disadvantage.
• Costly

One suggestion that can enhance and improve this initiative is a popular website Hub Spot this allows companies to help improve their customer relations management, Sales, and marketing. It can be linked to an online website where it:

• Create an easier process for business
• Has Quicker interact with customers.
• Gives insight on what customers click
• Creates targeted messages.
• It has a live chat tool
• Team members can create a schedule and book people in if a customer is having difficulty with products/services.
• Employees can create personal profiles so customers know who they are speaking to.

This could enhance the initiative because it has a tool for live chats to help increase sales. It is free for a few month but it can cost “$50 per month per user which includes a lot and can really streamline your process” (Ferguson, 2018).

The Strategy that can be applied to the Enhance marketing capabilities is RAT and CAT this signifies a cycle of “capability exploitation and enhancement. (“The RAT-CAT Cycle.”) (Technology, 2018)

“As companies start to operate in new foreign markets, it will normally find that certain existing products, services or business model need to be modified to the local context in order to maximize the company’s competitiveness in the new market”  (Technology, 2018). “The result of this strategy is a continuous cycle of exploration, exploitation, adaptation, and enhancement”.  (Technology, 2018) If this is applied it can “help strategist understand the potential of the new assets and capabilities to enhance existing advantages” (Technology, 2018) and gain competitive advantage.

References

Adel Saleh M, A. (2015). The Role of Marketing Capabilities in Firm’s Success. [online] researchleap.com. Available at: https://researchleap.com/the-role-of-marketing-capabilities-in-firms-success/ [Accessed 23 Feb. 2018].

Technology, M. (2018). Building Your Company’s Capabilities Through Global Expansion. [online] MIT Sloan Management Review. Available at: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/building-your-companys-capabilities-through-global-expansion/ [Accessed 23 Feb. 2018].

Williams, A. (2018). 10 epic marketing campaign fails pulled after public backlash. [online] Cmo.com.au. Available at: https://www.cmo.com.au/article/617581/10-epic-marketing-fails-pulled-after-public-backlash/ [Accessed 23 Feb. 2018]. In-text: (Williams, 2018)

digitalmarketingstrategymg329. (2015). Digital Marketing Strategy. [online] Available at: https://digitalmarketingstrategymg329.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/digital-marketing-strategy-group-3/ [Accessed 23 Feb. 2018]. In text (digitalmarketingstrategymg329, 2015)

Ferguson, D. (2018). Straight Talk Review: Pros and Cons of HubSpot CRM. [online] Tech Smart Boss. Available at: https://www.techsmartboss.com/blog/straight-talk-review-pros-and-cons-of-hubspot-crm/ [Accessed 23 Feb. 2018]. In text (Ferguson, 2018)

Socialmediathinklab.com. (2018). Managing Customer Relationships in the Social Media Era: Introducing the Social CRM House. [online] Available at: http://www.socialmediathinklab.com/have-you-already-read-it-new-study-managing-customer-relationships-in-the-social-media-era-introducing-the-social-crm-house/ [Accessed 23 Feb. 2018]. In text (Socialmediathinklab.com, 2018)