Advantages of social media like Twitter(X)
One benefit that an organization derives from using social media is that it is cost-
effective and penetrates a customer base that is otherwise complex and costly. In this
generation, applying the traditional methods that involve a mandatory face-to-face interaction
with the consumers and officially launching the brand may be a slow and dissatisfying way to
market the company’s product or service if this has not been integrated into the social media
component of marketing (Handley 9). For example, InterContinental Hotels Group launched
their Indigo brand in Shanghai China through social media, and this proved to be the cause of
a major success in its penetration into this media market which is difficult to get into.
A second benefit of social media such as Twitter is that it enables the company to
advertise its brand even before the market has seen the product or service. The effect of this is
that a wide range of customers are able to get samples of the brand and experience it before
the official release or launch. For example, Ford has in the recent past incorporated a
marketing strategy that indulges in social media. Before officially launching the Ford Fiesta
Movement vehicle in the United States, it used a selected 100 people who it considered its
most adherent fans in Twitter to test the car, for six months. Then, using the same social
media, these fans evaluated the brand and this brought about an impressive 40 million
responses and 130,000 registrations of the car on FiestaMovement.com (Handley 5).
A third benefit of using social media is that this method is very effective in helping
the company to keep track of the satisfaction the customers get from the brand (Handley 8).
In the traditional methods, the company launches its brand and after the customer purchases
what it has to offer, the communication becomes scarce. But using the social media, the
company is easily able to maintain a constant level of interaction with the customer about the
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product or service that was offered. In this respect the social media means of campaigning for
a brand becomes more customer-oriented method of marketing.
Another advantage is that it revolutionarizes the level of dialogue between the top
management of an organization with the most basic of consumers. For example, the Chief
Executive Officers and Chief Marketing Officers who make use of social media are able to
engage even the customers who might otherwise be considered irrelevant to the organization,
have made an impact on the level of communication with the entities.
Barry Judge of Best Buy and Brian Dunn are good examples of this (Handley 4). According to Chris Stutzman of
Forrester Research, Barry Judge has taken the trouble to respond to a Twitter follower who
had only 10 followers about a query the customer had. The ability of social media to connect
such two people shows just how far it helps an organization to reach out to customers.
Disadvantages of using social media in marketing
One of the disadvantages of social media in marketing is that it lacks anonymity. This
method uses a mode where every word you type into the social media becomes permanently
fixed to that media (Handley 8). This is as opposed to the traditional face-to-face interactions
where not everything you say can be transmitted to every customer in the world through
online links. Due to the risk of mixing up information and thus failing to have a common
point as to the representation of the organization’s brand, the possibility of a mix-up of
information emanating from the same company necessitates the need for training over the
corporate values and involving all employees of that organization.
Another disadvantage is that of language barriers where a company has many
worldwide branches (Handley 8). Understanding the languages in the different countries does
not only involve solving the barrier, but the company must also learn the prevailing cultural
trends in each of the countries in which it has establishments. For example, InterContinental
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Hotels Group has penetrated some 90 countries, most of which have different languages and
therefore the company has to come up with a way of learning the languages before training
their personnel on how to execute the marketing strategies through social media.
Also, using social media is not as cheap as it may be presumed (Handley 8). Tom
Seddon if IHG say that it is not always the case that social media comes cheap. The trick is to
implement a cost-effective way of using the media. It could also be considered costly in terms
of time consumption, and this may attribute to the deployment of social media specialists in
many companies.
Another disadvantage of using social media is that in some instances the organization
will require a huge number of people to participate in the social media marketing. For
example, the shoe company TOMS which offers a free pair of shoes for every pair bought has
over a million marketers using the social media. The nature of their business, which is to sell
shoes in developing countries, makes marketing through social media their best and only
method of marketing (Handley 6).
How companies include social media in their promotion mix:
One way to properly incorporate social media into the company marketing is by
encouraging all employees to engage in social media interaction with the consumers
(Handley 3). In this way they make every employee a marketing tool for the company. This
includes the Chief Executive Officers and Chief Marketing Officers too. IHG’s Tom Seddon
acknowledges that 20% of the hotels’ business is done via the online media, that
approximately 80% of their customers interact through some social media and that this helps
in having a follow-up kind of relationship with the customers after they have transacted
business together (Handley 8).
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Another way to involve social media in the promotion mix is to integrate marketing
departments which separate web marketers from the social media specialists. As Jonathan
Petrino of Thomson Reuters explains, integrating social media with all other departments as
opposed to separating them helps both sections to function as single workforce. According to
Stutzman, creating a specialist for social media in the first place creates a different section all
together (Handley 3).
Question 2
Challenges in organizing a marketing department that integrates social media
One reason why it is challenging to integrate social media into the marketing
department is that the company has to come up with a combination of methods and designs to
work. At the same time, it also has to give some priority to human aspects, such that the
working force is reliable and people in this department are seen to cooperate with each other
on how they respond to issues on the social media (Handley 8). For example, ING Direct’s
Sophie Heller had to work with not only her own marketing department but also invited
volunteers from other departments to have a look at the company’s corporate values as well
as its perceptions (Handley 7).
Another factor that makes it challenging to incorporate social media into the marketing department is that it involves training of the personnel on how to interact with customers through the social media (Handley 8).Since this is a methods which is very different from the face-to-face interaction method used traditionally, the level of coordination and communication between the company and the customers must be handled differently.
Social media involves using words to type information into the media, which once
they have been sent, they become permanent fixtures on those online links. It is thus
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paramount that the persons accorded the responsibility to market through these media be
conversant with the various ways of dealing with customers in this manner. As Heller says
(Handley 6), social networks are likely to be a shock if the company does not put the
customer’s interest first. One of the ways this can happen is where the responses to the
customers’ comments are not favorable to the customers themselves. Thus the company must
invest some resources in training its social media marketing personnel on how to deal with
customer matters.
The other challenge is that a company may have to come up with a strategy of
connecting personnel working online to market the brand with those working offline. This
may prove to be time-consuming, since it involves changing the routine or normal working
habits of the employee to fit into a marketing program that accommodates effective use of
social media (Handley 7). Months of strategizing on this integration may prove to become a
challenge, but the benefits may indeed outweigh the circumstances that precede them.
Question 3
Importance of monitoring the company’s conversations about their brands
In light of the fact that the customer is now becoming the ultimate ‘king’ in the
marketing field, it is crucial for any company that desires to attract the customer to pay close
attention to whatever the customer has to say (Handley 1). Any entity that depends on
consumers but does not listen to them is bound to fail in achieving its goal. The use of social
media today is what the customer uses to communicating most of the queries, comments and
preferences concerning a brand, and hence it is important for the company to constantly
monitor all conversations that relate to its brand.
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The company must understand its customers well in order for it to assess their needs
and satisfy them. Only by monitoring the conversations that form the responses of the
customers will a company achieve this understanding, and therefore claim to think about its
customers (Handley 6). By so-doing, the company can adapt to a market that changes with
consumer behavior as well as media consumption, through taking responses from consumers
and responding to them appropriately.
Where the company goes a step further to relate with the consumers and to monitor
the conversations by having CEOs and CMOs who interact directly with the consumers, the
benefits have proved to be groundbreaking. The importance of this according to Stutzman
(Handley 3) is that failure of marketing personnel to adapt to the consumers’ change in terms
of technology means they fail to utilize the opportunity to get a hold of the consumers. For
example, Barry Judge, CEO of Best Buy, has over 17,000 Twitter followers. He answers
questions and comments on the followers’ opinions on matters relating to the company,
including the lesser active Twitter followers.
Over and above this, Best Buy advises its employees to adapt such a marketing style. It even manages a section of its customer services
through a medium where comments and question from the customers get answers directly
through the Twitter page Twelpforce (Handley 4). All major decision-makers monitor and
respond to Twitter followers.
It is also vital to monitor conversations in changing the traditional method of
measuring organizational goals through quarterly, half-yearly or yearly assessment reports.
Using the regular responses from customers online, the company is able to assess the
customer needs more directly and within a shorter timeline and more efficient means. For
instance, MoreThan introduced a campaign which resulted in listening to customers’
feedback to the company’s brand, and the success of the campaign was evident in the fact
that his daily reports have doubled since then (Handley 4).
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Monitoring also ensures that all the employees in the marketing and any other
employees involved in social media marketing respond to customer issues in the same way.
For example, Heller’s method in ING Direct involved having a system where all workers,
both those in the marketing department and those in other departments, to align their
understanding of the brand values as well as perspectives (Handley 7). Conflicting responses
may not help in maintaining a consistent flow of information about the brand if a thorough
observation of the conversations between the company and customers.
Question 4
The role of the content in the social media
The content in the social media helps the company interact with the customers by
responding to any queries they may have. Any company that claims to be ‘customer centric’
must be one that adapts a social media marketing plan that aspires to deliver an impressive
customer experience (Handley 6). The essence of having the social media is to use the
content generated as a result of the correspondence between the company and the customers
and apply it to adapt to the changes in customer preferences in the company’s products.
The content acts as the correspondence medium of the customers to the companies,
and in turn the company changes its approach to production and to marketing to go in line
with the customer needs. This content acts as the connection between the organization and
the customers since it is what links them together in a manner that is simpler than the
alternative, which involves looking for the customers physically in order to understand their
needs. It becomes the source of the policies that the organization refers to when planning
their goals (Handley 4).
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Question 5
ING Direct’s strategy regarding social media
Initially, ING Direct had less concern for social media responses, until 2009 when the
company hired Sophie Heller as vice-president of marketing and communications. The first
step to take, as she did, was to take an interest in looking at what people are saying about the
brand online. The point is, it is not what the company thinks that matter; rather, it is what the
customers and observers say though social media (Handley 7). Thus, the idea should be that
the company synchronizes its brand with the customers’ preferences. So ING Direct listened,
analyzed and understood the speakers and their ideas and concerns.
It put up in its website a response program which availed all customer queries online
to the employees of the company. In this, Heller ensured that not only the marketing
department was familiar with these responses from social media, but also those working in
other departments. By so-doing, the company built its brand through aligning all employee
responses to the customer queries.
The research used in arriving to these measures was all in the keen observation of
social media and search engines such as Google that regularly provide people’s views on
company brands. The use of this medium is on the Heller’s basis that the customer must be at
the centre of the corporate values (Handley 7). All the information used to make feedback to
customer issues came either from search engine results of any matter concerning the brand, or
from any social networks that showed up online.
By so-doing, Heller and her team in the marketing department gained knowledge about what was being said about the organization
and the brand. After this, they were ne ready to begin settling the queries and questions of
customers. With a consistent system in place to ensure that all queries coming from the
organization were responded to uniformly, and possessing the skills to know what the
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customers want, they were ready to go through the bolts and nuts of the issue of building their
brand successfully. People from Public Relations were made to work with those from
departments working offline, those working on promoting the brand, those working on the
Facebook and those dealing with internal correspondence. All these worked differently, but
were eventually brought together to have them understand the essence of the new mode of
communication (Handley 7).
Then, they developed a strategy to reach out to new customers by applying a fashion
that implemented a coaching initiative at a café in Paris owned by the company, so that
customers got the right advice as to what items they should purchase on the basis of their
budgets. The research used to arrive to this model was based on a research by the
organization itself. The research had revealed that four out of every 10 individuals most often
than not regret purchasing items in the sales.
The deduction they came out with in this research was that they could then get a new base of customers by using women’s magazines
as well as various other types of media. They implemented this by opening a Facebook page
and also by using game, and thus opened an opportunity to deal with the issue of sales in a
better method (Handley 8).
Question 6
The issues of launching a global campaign as set out by Tom Seddon
Seddon mentions that in launching a global campaign involves in part having
programs to ensure customer loyalty, application of confirmation emails and also utilizing
Public Relations to get to consumers. He goes on to describe the pertinent issues in such an
endeavor, saying that the campaign must incorporate a model that is capable of combining a
framework as well as fixed methods of working. While doing this, the company must take an
interest in the human resources being used in order that it ensures all personnel involved,
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All customers have a common understanding and can communicate effectively. The element
of trust must be cultivated among marketing personnel. This aspect to him is important and it
is at times not taken into consideration (Handley 8).
Then, when it comes to the issue of using the available social media, there arises a
necessity to implement training programs.
The reason is that this mode of communication with the customers is sensitive as compared to the direct interaction that takes place in face-
to-face talks. Such a mode of communication poses potential problems since the
correspondence relayed on the social media sticks there for good, hence it is important that
those involved be well acquainted with the dos and don’ts of such interactions. Coming up
with improved means of listening which are seen to be consistent is necessary for proper
correspondence.
At this stage Seddon mentions the problem that language barrier poses to the
launching of a global campaign, in that having a company operating in 90 countries
necessitates incorporating a program that listens to all the different languages in these
countries for effectiveness, before training people to work in them (Handley 8).
Another issue that a company must put in mind is the budgetary allocation of funds
for the social media. He says it is not as cheap as it might be expected.
The budget must therefore be cost-effective for it to have an impact in the launch. Where you have a complex
and costly media market such as was in Shanghai China to the launch of Indigo brand of
IHG, a cost-effective budget comes in handy to attract the needed attention from such a
market. Traditional means could not have achieved the same feat (Handley 8).
Finally, the issue of employee skills is also vital to the global launch. Different people
who are normally working differently are required to be involved in the same description.
This entails integrating the company messages on paid-for media, earned media as well as
owned media. His acknowledges that this entails some considerable amount of effort.
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PART 2: Question 2
AdWords campaigns
An AdWords campaign is a system that uses the AdWords program by Google as an
online advertising product using ad text, banner or social media ads through local, national or
international means of distribution of characters to represent the brand being advertised. Its
purpose is to lay out the brand in such a manner that it attracts the attention of website
visitors to the website, including at times mobile-optimized websites. The intended result by
the advertiser is to have potential and existing consumers to capture the advertisement and
use the information being relayed to them concerning the brand (Handley 10).
AdWords advertising campaigns are fed with unique messages about some specific
information which the customer may find of interest to them personally as they seek
information concerning a hotel. For instance, the wording may be designed to give the name
of a hotel in the place where specific customers are likely to visit and book rooms.
For instance the message may have a phrase which requests the customer that there is a hotel with
available rooms in the area where they are at the time. The idea in the AdWords campaign is
to optimize, or if possible, to maximize the traffic directed towards the site (Handley 10).
It does so without the customer having to download an application or anything in
order to view the advertisement.
The text sent to specific potential and returning consumers helps the organization realize a profit growth, as a result of more traffic of the keywords in
the AdWords campaigns being directed to the mobile sites of customers. Once the message
has been received by the customer, the customer only needs to read the message, without
having to struggle through bulky text. The text in the AdWords campaigns is usually limited
to a few characters and thus they do not take up a lot of space and are easily legible.
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Proposal on improving the mobile app of IHG
Customer experience
There exists a constant problem with all my mobile phone applications due to the fact
that mobile phones are built with default font sizes, and these font sizes are usually
significantly small enough to irritate me when reading the tiny messages I receive. This
problem is present even in the IHG application, and I really need to read the messages that
IHG sends me every time I book into one of their branches.
It’s especially frustrating when the reward app comes up and I cannot read clearly through the wording in the messages. I
would like IHG to come up with a better version of their app; one that deals with the problem
of default font size text in my mobile and allows the messages to be more legible in my small
screen phone.
Proposal
IHG can probably invest in developing an app that makes the fonts in the messages as
large as is sufficient for a small-sized mobile phone owner to read. I like small-sized mobiles
and so I wish to retain my phone instead of having to purchase the huge screen phones just to
be able to read text sent via the applications. Maybe it is possible for developers of such apps
to attempt to bypass the default tiny font sizes and come up with apps in which the user can
zoom in or have the text simply being sent in large font but still accessible through small
screen phones.
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Reference
Handley, Lucy. Gambling on the future. 2011. Online.
<http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/analysis/cover-stories/gambling-on-the-
future/3024219.article>