The dramatic rise of social media has opened up new possibilities for marketers to connect with their customers (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016).

Figure1: (Jenkins and profile, 2019)

 

Here comes the question, what is social media?

Social media refers to the applications on tablets and websites that are designed for people to share content quickly, efficiently and spontaneously (The Balance Small Business, 2019). Digitalisation is the trend now and everything can be done in just one click. It has changed the way businesses are ran and the way people live where photos, ideas, events can be published on social media easily. Companies who implement social media as an integral part of their marketing strategy shows measurable results. However, it is advised that social media must be used adequately and not misused it for other purposes.

 

Why is social media the key to publicity?

 

1. Reach out to audience (Boost Views)

There are a lot of social media platforms out there such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and etc which you could promote your products.Companies tend to pay these platforms every month to promote their post. For example: In order to boost a post on Facebook, the organisation has to pay RM30 (which is 5.45 pounds) for a 10 days ad(Facebook.com, 2019). Companies will tend to arrange the budget for their social media promotion according to a percentage of the amount they budgeted for digital marketing.According to Jody Allard (The Freelancer, 2019), she tried out boosting her post on Facebook and not long after an editor contacted to work with her.

 

Figure 2,3 : (Facebook.com, 2019)

 

ZARA is a high fashion brand which also uses Facebook to promote their items. Zara’s Facebook page showcases their latest collections and their visual content involves lookbook-style photos. Also their clothes do the talking for them and drive the most engagement in terms of likes and shares (Unmetric Social Media Analytics Blog, 2019). ZARA uses social media campaign according to different seasons and encourage buyers to promote their items online and #livingzara.

Figure4,5:(Unmetric Social Media Analytics Blog, 2019)

 

It’s so easy to gain publicity for a company if the company is willing to pay to promote post on social media where viewers can be potential buyers.  Therefore, social media is the key to publicity as you can sell your products easily or even buy products by just a click.

 

         2. Influencers gain publicity

Influencers has been popular recently as they can be the image for the company to promote the particular product. Using social media influencers as the marketing strategy for a company can build relationships with the people who can build relationships for you. An influencer can reach consumers via their blogs and social networks that your brand may not be able to.Companies can work together with different famous people with high publicity such as celebrities or even influencers. Looking at Figure 6, Kylie Jenner gets sponsorships from different companies and it is definitely due to her popularity as she has 127million followers on Instagram. The amount of audience she has is incredible! Companies who work with her will get the privilege to promote their items. According to GroupHigh (2019), 90% of the customers tend to trust peer recommendations. Therefore, if an influencer promotes an item on social media, audience will be inspired and will want to dress the same as them. Therefore, company’s sales will keep growing by working with influencers as this is a great tactic to attract existing and new customers.

Figure6,7,8 : (Instagram.com, 2019)

List of influencers : https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/newcastle-social-media-influencers-instagram-15879359

        3.  Advertisement target to audience.

Companies tend to pay advertising companies in order for their product to turn up on certain websites. If you realised whenever you look up for an item online it will appear on your Facebook, Instagram ads. For example in Figure 7, it shows the product which I recently searched online and it appeared on other websites which I clicked on. This is the power of digital marketing and the key to it is data. Most of the company will analyse customers’ data and will make personalisations to it. For example ” Do you remember this product, James?” or “Anna, are you still thinking about this item?” . The company can tackle customers preference by making searched items appear on the specific customer’s social media platform. Companies are willing to pay advertisement and for their product as customers might not buy at first sight but customers will be tempted to buy it if it keeps appearing at sight.

Figure9 :(Cite This For Me., 2019)

 

Types of paid ads :

• Cost per click (CPC): When a person clicks on your item, the company has to pay the click. In Google AdWords, the average CPC is between $1 and $2 and this  approach drives sales (Hootsuite Social Media Management, 2019).
• Cost per a thousand impressions (CPM): You pay for the number of times the ad pops up regardless if it is clicked or not. This is a brand awareness approach, where customers might consider buying it after (Hootsuite Social Media Management, 2019) .

 

According to the article  Tafesse, W. and Wien (2018) ,  social media is a great way to tackle targeted audience and collect data based on their customer based market. The strategies used can be applied to evaluate if the ways mentioned above is compatible:

1. Customer engagement : Customer engagement is a concept where customers’ behavior and emotions response with a firm’s aim (Dessart et al.,2016). Customers must feel engaged and valued by the firm to create brand loyalty.
2. Personalisation:Personalisation is also a great tactic to gain customers attention as every customers wants to feel valued. Customers want to feel special and indeed personalisation will make them feel appreciated .
3. Marketing performance: According Effing & Spil (2016), social media strategy is important to support social media with firms’ strategic marketing goals. It also acts as an important role in underlining goal commitment and enabling optimal resource allocation decisions (Felix et al., 2017).

All these competencies can be seen in the ways I mentioned above and it proves that social media gains publicity by targeting correct audience with good marketing strategy.

 

The pros of using social media to gain publicity :

1. Create brand awareness: By spending some time per week, over 91% marketers claimed that there is increased in brand visibility and heightened user experience (Digital Doughtnut, 2019).
2. Cost effective:  Being cost-effective is important as it helps you attain a greater return on investment and hold a bigger budget for other marketing and business payments (Digital Doughtnut, 2019).
3. Create brand loyalty:By connecting with your customers through social media, you are more probable to upsurge customer retention and customer loyalty (Digital Doughtnut, 2019).

 

The cons of using social media to gain publicity:

1. Overwhelming : According to Tafesse, W. and Wien (2018), companies who are overly active on social media might be overwhelming for its customers who will be facing time pressure on social media. Customers might have peer pressure and gets annoyed if the product keeps popping out.
2. Engagement levels: Social media algorithms prioritises and present content to users based on engagement levels. If a company’s content cannot get  initial level of engagement, it is harder to reach a wider range of audiences. Therefore, high level of social media activity with little engagement can be hard to obtain positive results.
3. Misused : There might be scams and people might misused it to earn money inappropriately.

 

In conclusion, social media does gain publicity. In order for it to work, appropriate use of promotions and influencers will help boost views. Target your audience and use strategies wisely will make a difference. DON’T BE AFRAID TO START, JUST DO IT!

 

How to start social media marketing?

References:

Cite This For Me. (2019). Save Time and Improve your Marks with CiteThisForMe, The No. 1 Citation Tool. [online] Available at: http://www.citethisforme.com/ [Accessed 24 Feb. 2019].

Digital Doughtnut. (2019). 7 reasons why social media marketing is important for your business. [online] Available at: https://www.digitaldoughnut.com/articles/2018/february/7-reasons-why-social-media-marketing-is-important [Accessed 27 Mar. 2019].

Dessart, L., Veloutsou, C., & Morgan-Thomas, A. (2016). Capturing consumer engagement: Duality, dimensionality and measurement. Journal of Marketing Management, 33(5–6), 399–426.

Effing, R., & Spil, A. A. M. (2016). The social strategy cone: Towards a framework for evaluating social media strategies. International Journal of Information Management, 36(1), 1–8.

Facebook.com. (2019). University of Brighton Chinese Society. [online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/UoBChinese/ [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P. A., & Hinsch, C. (2017). Elements of a strategic social media marketing: A holistic perspective. Journal of Business Research, 70, 118–126.

GroupHigh. (2019). Social Media Influencers – Find and build relationships. [online] Available at: https://www.grouphigh.com/social-media-influencers/ [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

Hootsuite Social Media Management. (2019). The 7 Components of Every Social Media Budget. [online] Available at: https://blog.hootsuite.com/the-7-components-of-every-social-media-budget/ [Accessed 27 Mar. 2019].

Jenkins, M. and profile, V. (2019). Social Media Icon 3D Ball Hd For Wallpapers. [online] Iswallpaperbackgroundhd.blogspot.com. Available at: http://iswallpaperbackgroundhd.blogspot.com/2017/01/social-media-icon-3d-ball-hd-for.html [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

Lamberton, C., & Stephen, A. T. (2016). A thematic exploration of digital, social media, and mobile marketing: research evolution from 2000 to 2015 and an agenda for future inquiry. Journal of Marketing, 80, 146–172

The Balance Small Business. (2019). Learn What Social Media Is and How to Use It to Grow Your Business. [online] Available at: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-social-media-2890301 [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

The Freelancer. (2019). Should You Pay to Boost Your Articles on Social Media?. [online] Available at: https://contently.net/2016/05/18/resources/tools/social-media/pay-boost-articles-social-media/ [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

Unmetric Social Media Analytics Blog. (2019). Zara’s Social Media Strategy – How They Delight Their Customers. [online] Available at: https://blog.unmetric.com/social-media-strategy-zara [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

Wondwesen Tafesse & Anders Wien (2018) Implementing social media marketing strategically: an empirical assessment, Journal of Marketing Management, 34:9-10, 732-749, DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.2018.1482365

YouTube. (2019). How To Start Social Media Marketing As A Beginner In 2019 – STEP BY STEP. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94K-CxKNVk0 [Accessed 24 Feb.

The dramatic rise of social media has opened up new possibilities for marketers to connect with their customers (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016).

FIgure 1:(Philipp Rauschnabel, 2019)

“ What ’s the latest trend nowadays?” “ What’s the hottest product?”

Well, all these can be found through social media. There are a lot of social media platforms which are free such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and etc which you could promote your products. It’s so easy to gain publicity for a company if the company is promoted through social media where viewers can be potential buyers. Everyone can get access on the internet easily. Therefore, social media is the key to publicity as you can sell your product easily or even buy products by just a click.

Figure 3: (H&M, 2019)

In order to attract viewers, companies should promote social media campaigns. This is a type of customer engagement which it will be further discuss below. Social media campaigns are useful digital marketing channels which can inspire audiences. For example, H&M recently launched a “ My Style” and #HMxME campaign which is a tool that provides inspiring visual contents on social media and items displayed can be bought directly from the app (About.hm.com, 2019). H&M encourages customers to share bought items on their Instagram platform and hashtag “ #HMxME”. This can be a free publicity for H&M where influencers can promote H&M’s items to everyone.

Figure 2:(Cite This For Me, 2019)

Additionally, if you realised that whenever you look up for an item online it will appear on your Facebook account, Instagram or even on the ads on google page. For example in Figure 2, it shows the product which I recently searched online and it will appear on other websites which I go on to. This is the power of digital market and the key to it is data. Most of the company will analyse customers’ data and will make personalisations to it. Personalisation is the best way to attract customers.The company can tackle customers preference by making searched items appear on the specific customer’s social media platform. Customers might not buy at first sight but customers will be tempted to buy it if it keeps appearing at sight.

Figure 3,4 :(Instagram.com, 2019)

Figure 5:(Instagram.com, 2019)

Next, companies can work together with people who are famous with high publicity such as celebrities or even influencers. Looking at Figure 5, Kylie Jenner gets sponsorships from different companies and it is definitely due to her high publicity as she has 127million followers on Instagram. The amount of audience she has is incredible! Companies who work with her will definitely get publicity as she is a famous influencer. If she promotes an item on social media, her audience will be inspired and will want to dress the same as her. Therefore, company’s sales will keep growing by working with influencers as this is a great tactic to attract existing and new customers.

List of influencers : https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/newcastle-social-media-influencers-instagram-15879359

The journal article that was chosen :

Implementing social media marketing strategically: an empirical assessment

https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1080/0267257X.2018.1482365?needAccess=true

Implementing social media is a process where firms employ social media strategically, for customer purposes, by updating content regularly, continuous customer engagement and generating analytics and customer insights to drive strategic marketing actions (Wondwesen Tafesse & Anders Wien,2018). Thus, social media performance captures customer data through social media outcomes that result from customers’ preferences, towards firms’ activities on social media.  This helps companies to obtain data based on their customer-based market to create personalisation by acknowledging customers’ preferences from customers’ purchase and post-purchase behaviors facilitated by social media.

In order for marketing to gain success on social media, customer engagment is crucial. Customer engagement is a concept where customers’ behavior and emotions response with a firm’s focus (Dessart et al.,2016). Customers must feel engaged and valued by the firm to create brand loyalty. Personalisation is also a great tactic to gain customers attention as every customers wants to feel valued. Additionally, social media performance is highly incorporated with marketing performance. According Effing & Spil (2016), Social media strategy is important to support social media with firms’ strategic marketing goals. It also acts as an important role in underlining goal commitment and enabling optimal resource allocation decisions (Felix et al., 2017). Therefore, social media strategy is crucial to organising companies’ social media strategy.

However, companies who are overly active on social media might be overwhelming for its customers who will be facing time pressure on social media. Second, social media algorithms prioritises and serve content to users based primarily on engagement levels. If a company’s content cannot gather some initial level of engagement, its chances of reaching a wider range of audiences will be limited. Therefore, high level of social media activity with little engagement can be hard to obtain positive results.

Social media performance represents customer-based social media results that arise from customers’ preferences towards firms’ activities on social media, while marketing performance represents customer-based market outcomes that arise from customers’ purchase and post-purchase behavior facilitated by social media (Wondwesen Tafesse & Anders Wien,2018).In conclusion, the combination between both aspects will definitely be the most favorable outcome and the company who implements social media strategy will definitely gain success.

How to start social media marketing:

Source: (YouTube, 2019)

References:

About.hm.com. (2018). H&M group | About. [online] Available at: https://about.hm.com/en/about-us.html [Accessed 23 FEB. 2019].

Cite This For Me. (2019). Save Time and Improve your Marks with CiteThisForMe, The No. 1 Citation Tool. [online] Available at: http://www.citethisforme.com/ [Accessed 24 Feb. 2019].

Dessart, L., Veloutsou, C., & Morgan-Thomas, A. (2016). Capturing consumer engagement: Duality, dimensionality and measurement. Journal of Marketing Management, 33(5–6), 399–426.

Effing, R., & Spil, A. A. M. (2016). The social strategy cone: Towards a framework for evaluating social media strategies. International Journal of Information Management, 36(1), 1–8.

Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P. A., & Hinsch, C. (2017). Elements of a strategic social media marketing: A holistic perspective. Journal of Business Research, 70, 118–126.

Lamberton, C., & Stephen, A. T. (2016). A thematic exploration of digital, social media, and mobile marketing: research evolution from 2000 to 2015 and an agenda for future inquiry. Journal of Marketing, 80, 146–172

Philipp Rauschnabel. (2019). research: WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING?. [online] Available at: http://www.philipprauschnabel.com/2016/05/strategic-definition-of-social-media-marketing/ [Accessed 24 Feb. 2019].

Wondwesen Tafesse & Anders Wien (2018) Implementing social media marketing strategically: an empirical assessment, Journal of Marketing Management, 34:9-10, 732-749, DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.2018.1482365

YouTube. (2019). How To Start Social Media Marketing As A Beginner In 2019 – STEP BY STEP. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94K-CxKNVk0 [Accessed 24 Feb.

The main purpose of this blog is to compare H&M’s website to (ZARA) Inditex and Forever21 and critically analyse these websites’ features, layout ,target audience.

H&M and ZARA has two websites ( 1. Purchasing 2. About their background) while Forever21 has a combined website. H&M has a very nice website layout which is relatively attractive with a simple and bright look, Inditex has a relatively professional layout while Forever21 has a very basic with a fun design. H&M targets younger generation women who prefers cheap but high fashion goods which it will be further discussed below. However, ZARA targets both women and men which are very interested in high fashion, Forever21 targets younger audience.

Figure 1: (Fierceretail.com, 2018)

The above picture states that H&M is one of the brand that is highly purchased by younger generation people in comparison with ZARA and Forever21.

For all 3 companies’ purchasing website, the features are easy and practical to use, they have a very systematic drop box which states all items they provide clearly. H&M and Forever21 provides clear and systematic layout for their items with pictures and prices while ZARA’s item layout is rather complicated with different sizes of pictures.

All 3 companies have easy checkout  procedures,provides different types of payment method and has the ability to track items. For the delivery services, ZARA and Forever21 provides free delivery above 60Pounds, however, H&M doesn’t provide this services.This would be a factor which customers concern.

H&M aims to bring a convenient and inspiring experience for their customers.Therefore, H&M is working on integrating on their digital channels and further develop their online presentations and functionalities by personalising their online sites and apps (About.hm.com, 2018). (include Zara or forever21 briefly)

 

These companies aimed to achieve OCE satisfaction as below which these companies have aspects of it.

Figure 2 :(The Website 2, 2018)

For the background information websites, H&M and ZARA provides clear and lots of information which could be searched by customers. While Forever21 has a very brief description about their company.

Watch to know more about H&M’s value:

 

H&M is a renown company offering high fashion at a reasonable price.  Therefore, H&M’s website targets many religions, culture and lifestyle. Therefore, marketing has to be done by different segments such as demographic, geographic and psycho graphic (Gabrielajohnsons.blogspot.com, 2018). For example, segments of class, typically working class, lower middle class,and students; segments of age, mostly female of Y generation; segments by lifestyle, people who prefer to do shopping online rather than physical shopping and people who are busy working (Delirium, 2018). This can be referred to the personas provided below in (Appendix1.0 and Appendix 2.0). All there companies have websites similar targets as H&M which they consider segmentations by class, age and lifestyle  (Bhasin, 2018).

H&M’s customer journey (Appendix 3.0)shows that most female like shopping online while male prefers shopping physically.  The customer journey has a high relation to the personas and they are categorised into 4 sections which are awareness,research , conversion and post-sales engagement. Both male and female customers are more aware about H&M through social media and websites while males. According to research,  female prefer shopping online while male prefer shopping physically .  For post engagement sales, female prefer doing engagement with H&M through internet while males prefer doing it through stores.

In order to improve H&M’s website, H&M should do more publicity on social media and create more ads to attract customers especially male who are unaware about it. H&M should also provide more promotions for male’s items.

Appendices :

Appendix 1.0

Appendix 2.0

Appendix 3.0

References:

About.hm.com. (2018). H&M group | About. [online] Available at: https://about.hm.com/en/about-us.html [Accessed 22 Nov. 2018].

Bhasin, H. (2018). Marketing Strategy of Zara – Zara Marketing Strategy. [online] Marketing91. Available at: https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-strategy-zara/ [Accessed 22 Nov. 2018].

Delirium, P. (2018). Marketing Strategy H&M. [online] Academia.edu. Available at: http://www.academia.edu/12881172/Marketing_Strategy_H_and_M [Accessed 22 Nov.

Gabrielajohnsons.blogspot.com. (2018). Chapter 8: Segment and Target Markets.. [online] Available at: http://gabrielajohnsons.blogspot.com/2015/11/chapter-8-segment-and-target-markets.html [Accessed 22 Nov. 2018].

Inditex.com. (2018). Design – inditex.com. [online] Available at: https://www.inditex.com/en/how-we-do-business/our-model/design [Accessed 22 Nov. 2018].

The Website 2. (2018). .

Fierceretail.com. (2018). Generation Z prefers H&M, Forever 21 | FierceRetail. [online] Available at: https://www.fierceretail.com/digital/gen-z-prefers-h-m-forever21 [Accessed 4 Dec. 2018].

 

Bibliography:

Owler. (2018). H&M Competitors, Revenue and Employees – Owler Company Profile. [online] Available at: https://www.owler.com/company/hm [Accessed 25 Nov. 2018].

Slideshare.net. (2018). Brand Services — NEXT Berlin 2014. [online] Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/MartinJordan/brand-services-next-berlin-2014 [Accessed 22 Nov. 2018].

 

 

 

 

Personas for NUT N PIP!!

 

#entreprenör # butternut #runners #athletics

WANT TO HAVE SOME NUT BUTTER?

This is a student blog and I am here to write share with you all about the nutritious product – PIP & NUT!

This website showed us how Pip creates her own business. Through her own experiences and creativeness, she succeeded in creating her very own business.

Acoording to (Pipandnut.com, 2018), Pip is the entrepreneur of the firm. She is a runner and she always seeks for healthy food. This inspired her to make her own nut butters with nutritious ingredients. She started the biusiness in small scale and successfully brought it to the shelfs in Selfridges in 2015.Nowadays, Pip & Nut can be seen in more than 5000 stores around UK and europe. People tend to think that nuts are bad fats and avoid eating them However, Pip sells nuts which are good for health, full of energy and is definitely on the nutritious map. Pip even gives advises on these prpoducts or even how to make your own nutritious meal.

This business targets all segments of people from female to male from kids to adults from students to athelatics , etc. It can be consumed by everyone except for people who are allergic to nuts.

This company used crowdfunding in order to sustain thier business.According to Pip (The Telegraph, 2018) , she was really nervous as you will need to be really confident in pitching your product online. She ended up raising 120k in 9 days which is  a very rewarding thing for her business bringing 80 over investors to her. Her investors are from Sainsbury to Selfridges. She has projected 3million of sales and this has shown how per persistance and determination paid off. Now, Pip and her team are targeting supermarkets which will give way much more volume and will incraese in the variety of products.

Acooriding to my knowledge about it, I believe that with more publicity and focued on digital marketing , Pip’s business will bloom even more . With the help of influencers or sponsorship, Pip & Nut will be more recongnise and publicity will definitely help bosst volume and sales.  I feel that Pip has created a very interesting business, as focused on health issues and how to gain energy through nuts. It is a really great product .

Words from Pip:

start doing it and stop worrying. Even if it is small based, you will eventually see the progress in it and achieve success. This success will be show satisfactory.

 

For more readings:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/connect/small-business/business-case-study-pip-and-nut/

References :

Pipandnut.com. (2018). Nut Butter Cookbook | Pip & Nut. [online] Available at: https://www.pipandnut.com/cookbook/ [Accessed 16 Oct. 2018].

The Telegraph. (2018). How to create a health food business. [online] Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/connect/small-business/business-case-study-pip-and-nut/ [Accessed 16 Oct. 2018].

#BBSDIGMARKET