Starbucks and Social Media Marketing Strategies - Case Study Example

Starbucks advertising/marketing using Social Media al affiliation Starbucks and Social media Marketing strategies Introduction Starbucks is a multinational American coffee company and coffeehouse chain. Its headquarters are in Seattle Washington. The coffee company is the largest in the world surpassing the UK Coast Coffee. It operates in 63 countries with over 21,160 stores (Seaford et al. 2012). Its presence in all regions is well established, with quite a number of stores in different economic super power countries. According to Starbucks Coffee Company, (2011) the company has 12, 067 stores in the United States, in China the stores are 1 570, Canada has 1451 stores, Japan 1070 and United Kingdom 793 stores. The stores provide number of services and products that range from hot and cold beverages, micro ground instant coffee, whole bean coffee, pastries, full-leaf teas to snacks. Other stores depending on the location sell hot and cold sandwiches, pre-packaged food items and other items like tumblers and mugs. Evening locations in Starbucks also offer a variety of wines, beers and appetizers after four in the evening (MacArthur 2007). The Starbucks Hear music band and the entertainment division market music, books and films. Most of the company’s products are restricted to season and stores location. Some grocery stores serve Starbucks brand ice cream and coffee. Social marketing tools used Starbucks uses a number of social media platforms to engage it customers and market its products. Chua, (2013) points out that the company has outperformed other companies in using Facebook, Twitter Pinterest and Google+ as a platform for engaging their customers. Starbucks has about 34 million Facebook followers making it second largest company in terms of Facebook following after Facebook itself which has 90 million followers. Its advertisement in Facebook draws thousands of comments and hundreds of thousand likes. On Twitter, it has about 3.5 million followers with a customer interaction tempo similar to that on Facebook. The company tweets ten times in a day, sometimes provoking the customers to give feedback on the company’s services and products. Starbucks, also uses Pinterest to engage its customers. It is the leading company in this social media with over 75,000 followers. Unlike other companies, Starbucks has not neglected Google +, and it has over one million followers and attracts hundreds of comments in each of their posts. However, most of its contents are drawn from Twitter and Facebook. Lastly, the company utilizes Instagram too, to promote its products. Marketing methods and their use The company uses a number of methods while advertising on the social media. It does so by bringing on forth issues that call for fans engagement in their conversation hence creating awareness of their existence and development of new products. Further, they use public service advertising whereby the company is involved in educating clients on the products rather than trying to sell the products on the social media. Lastly, they use product placement advertising posting photos and small clips that are aimed at creating awareness among its online followers (Santamaría Sotillo & Ni 2008). The company has managed to reach out to his clients through this method and gain a lot of ideas on how to improve their products. This has made the company flourish and increase their sales through the years with the advent of the social media. Further, Starbucks conducts its campaign in a myriad ways with the aim of reaching out to a number of people within the shortest time possible. To begin with, the company takes care of the customer relationships by enhancing the current customer relations and not solely striving to get new customers (Gallaugher & Ransbotham 2010). The company ensures that it maintains a healthy customer relationship by laying emphasis on customer service in most of its online engagements. This has proven to increase the number of online followings that leads to the continued existence and marketing of their products. Secondly, the company goes to its customers, since it always tweets it on Twitter posts it to Facebook and pins it to Pinterest. Thus it goes directly to where its customers hang out most of the time. By utilizing both networks, the company reaches out to different audiences. In addition, the company engages with its customers by observing carefully, listening carefully and apply the new ideas obtained from customer interaction to better their services (Bloom et al. 2006). As opposed to other companies involved in social media marketing, Starbucks board does not make many posts or tweets or pins on their sites. For instance on Facebook, the company may post once in a week. This leaves their customers with much time to internalize the products and learn from them. Additionally, it creates more interest among its fans once they get a new post from the company, unlike other companies like Walmart, who make a number of posts on their Facebook pages (MacDonald, K. 2007). One of the disadvantages of making numerous posts per day is the fact the users might fail to pay attention a very important product being marketed since they will be used to getting the numerous updates that they cannot be able to read in a day. The marketing team in most instances does not respond to the clients concerns online. However, they analyse the comments of the clients and work towards making their services better. By making minimal tweets, posts on Facebook and pins, the Starbucks online marketing system has managed to be the leading in client attention with hundreds of thousand likes and comments a piece towards a single post. Apart from using photos the company also can write expounding on their new products or familiarise people with their products by giving a detailed description in an interesting way. Further, the company posts the prices of some of its products, hence informing customers about the availability of the products at the same time attracting them since they are informed of the costs they will have to incur. This provides the client can use the information to compare prices between rivalling companies. Risks on social media use with possible improvements Use of Social Media as marketing comes in with a number of risks, for instance, a public relations crisis might develop if a false information was provided to the clients. There is a likely hood of the online users bringing the claims that might go viral hence affecting the reputation of the company’s products, in general. Secondly, by using the online platform a company might expose its vital information that can lead to security breach that may lead hacker to accessing the vital documents and assets of the company. Thirdly, there is risk of the company offending its audience by the posts they make. Sometimes a job may not be conscious of its audience characteristic wholly hence by releasing some posts that are not all inclusive or violating the rights of others (Weber, L. 2009). . Furthermore, the company, may leak some of its information to competitors who may utilise I, hence risking the overall customer base of the company on that particular product. Lastly, some of the information released online in marketing, can be used in court as evidence. However, if one is aware and conscious of the social media marketing risks, they are likely to run a successful campaign with minimal issues with its customers. Starbucks does enjoy a massive online platform- over nine million online daily visitors. The advertising team can fine-tune its online program via utilization of different metrics. For instance, introduction of quality deals, products, rewards, and other online promotion to attract the existing and new loyal clients. Consistent use of Geolocation applications is another invention likely to attract more clients. Furthermore, it acts as a way of learning the clients’ behaviour. There are a number of improvements that The Starbucks Company has to put in place in the way it interacts with its customers, for instance the company makes very few posts on its social media, hence customers may miss the company and get more of the advertisements from the rivalling companies. At the same time, the company should try to answer those pressing issues of customers using the online platform so they can be motivated to continue their involvement (Palmer, A., & Koenig-Lewis, N. 2009). Conclusion Starbucks has utilised al the social media platform to engage its customers and utilised a number of marketing methods to reach out to a number of its customers with minimal costs in terms of adverts. The company manages to engage its customers with conscious on the number of risks that can arise from the online marketing. For instance, there are have been no issues in the online marketing of the Starbucks. It has managed its audience with a lot of care and diligence. That prevents public relations, crisis or offending them. Which has further drawn a larger following day by day. Reference list Bloom, P.N. et al., 2006. How Social-Cause Marketing Affects Consumer Perceptions. MIT Sloan Management Review, 47, pp.47-56. Available at: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=994490891&Fmt=7&clientId=27445&RQT=309&VName=PQD. Chua, A.Y.., 2013. Customer knowledge management via social media: the case of Starbucks. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17, pp.237-249. Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1367-3270&volume=17&issue=2&articleid=17084699&show=html. Gallaugher, J. & Ransbotham, S., 2010. Social Media and Customer Dialog Management at Starbucks. MIS Quarterly Executive, 9, pp.197-212. MacArthur, K., 2007. How starbucks strayed. Advertising Age, 78, pp.4-39. MacDonald, K. (2007). Globalising justice within coffee supply chains? Fair Trade, Starbucks and the transformation of supply chain governance. Third World Quarterly, 28(4), 793-812. Palmer, A., & Koenig-Lewis, N. (2009). An experiential, social network-based approach to direct marketing. Direct Marketing: An International Journal, 3(3), 162-176. Santamaría Sotillo, B. & Ni, S., 2008. Entry Modes of Starbucks. International Business, p.71. Available at: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-857. Seaford, B.C., Culp, R.C. & Brooks, B.W., 2012. Starbucks: Maintaining a clear position, Available at: http://library.capella.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1037815154?accountid=27965 LA - English. Starbucks Coffee Company, 2011. Starbucks Company Profile. Folklore, 12, pp.1253-6. Available at: http://assets.starbucks.com/assets/aboutuscompanyprofileq12011final13111.pdf). Weber, L. 2009. Marketing to the social web: how digital customer communities build your business. John Wiley & Sons Read More