Social Media Marketing - Essay Example

? Social Media Marketing Transmittal Contents Transmittal 2 Executive Summary 3 Introduction 4 Social Media marketing 6 Problem Statement 8 Methods Used 8 Findings 8 Analysis 8 Recommendation 9 Conclusion 10 References 10 Executive Summary Indeed social media have emerged as one of the most popular, as well as effective means of marketing. This is because it commands a wide audience of different ages, backgrounds and social status, but mostly it captures the youth market that spends 90% percent of their time on social media. As a new company entering the market with strongholds such as Nike, Adidas, among others, Sneakers Seekers require aggressive marketing of their products in order to gain popularity especially among the youths. The company has performed admirably well, but they are yet to unlock the exponential potential lying in the social media marketing. This may be the only thing left for the company to claim its position as the best sneakers distributor. The use of Social media for marketing enables a business to engage their customers in the platform where they naturally spend most of their time. Identification of the social media platforms to use is the first step to high rewards from the sector. Animations and funny videos, when linked to the Facebook or Twitter pages, are the surest way to keep Facebook and Twitter youthful followers engaged and in the process, they gain more interests in the company’s profile. LinkedIn pages are also another social media feature that the company should have. These pages are important to get more branding for a business and an excellent platform to reach the target market on the network. This paper details how the Sneakers Seekers marketing team could employ an effective application of the social media approaches to increase sales by engaging more youths. Introduction Sneakers Seekers is one of the newest sneakers companies in the United States. The company has its headquarters at North Miami Beach, Florida 33179. Stoyan Doynov, who is its current CEO and president, started the company in 2008. Stoyan who says he started the company out of his passion for sneakers describes himself as “Sneakerhead” (Doynov, n.d.). Getting into a market with heavyweights such as Nike, Addidas, Jordan, Asics, Converse, Ewing, Fila, New Balance, Reebok, Vansvans and other must have been a very bold step for Doynov. The success that Sneaker Seekers has achieved is enough proof that will and desire can achieve milestones even where the ‘terrain is tough.’ The company specializes in sneakers and athletic footwear offering some 'hard-to-?nd' sneakers and shoes and has a permanent promise of a wide variety brand name sneakers as well as athletic shoes at lowest prices. Since its entry into the market, Sneakers Seekers has shown unprecedented growth. Only two year after the company opened, it moved into online marketing to open SneakerSeekers.com stores. By and by online marketing became the main marketing platform for the company. Doynov says that their beginning was a humble one, selling products on EBay (PRWeb, 2013). This was during the Great Recession. The company now has its own website and is authorized to sell numerous brands, which Doynov says they add to every month. (PRWeb, 2013). To sell more, the company focuses on fashion and offer exquisite products. They offer the most popular brands of sneakers on the market as well as fashion oriented sneakers ranging from Radii Footwear, Blackstone, Gola and Victoria. The most significant development came when the company moved most of its overstock inventory to FBA (PRWeb, 2013). Doynov says that this move enabled the company to operate with fewer employees, carry, more inventory, and achieve greater Amazon fulfilled velocity on its items as its listings. Amazon provided Sneaker Seekers an Auto Multi-Channel Fulfillment (AutoMCF) through which it could sell on Sears, Rakuten Shopping and Newegg as well (PRWeb, 2013) thereby reaching more potential customers. They were also able to list their slow moving and old style products. Through the new AutoMCF channels, Sneakers Seekers recorded a 20% increase in their sales. Sneakers Seekers further moved its online marketing strategy higher by creating a consumer friendly website where it could provide reliable online information about cheap brand sneakers to its customers (PRWeb, 2012). Through the website, the company also sells a rich variety of performance based athletic shoes. By offering lowest prices in the market and insisting on quality and variety, the company has become so appealing to potential customers. The demographic target for Sneaker Seekers include the teens, athletes, sports enthusiasts, parents and anyone interested in comfort and fashion. The largest consumer of the Sneaker Seeker products is composed of the youths. The largest market for Sneakers and the athletic school offered at Sneakers Seekers has been the youths. A market target for the youths will, therefore, be a guaranteed strategy to move the company into higher classes of glory. Social Media has evolved to be one of the most cost effective marketing strategies that pay off with relatively little efforts (Evans 2011). Good marketing strategy and the utilization of online marketing has seen the company become one of the best shoe selling companies in the U.S. and globally in such as short time. Today Sneakers Seekers is one of the first growing online shoe retailer in the United States (PRWeb 2013). Social Media marketing Social media marketing is a marketing strategy geared at gaining website traffic through social media sites. Social media offers a very effective platform to market a brand to a certain target group of customers. This kind of marketing in brief involves linking a company’s website to a social media platform and initiating interests among the social media users to view products on sale or promotion. Keitzmann and Kanhotto likens refers to the kind of sharing and communication initiated through social media as an electronic word of mouth. Word of mouth is known to be the most effective form of marketing ever invented. The whole concept about electronic word of mouth is that consumers share statements about a brand through the internet. Companies using social media marketing end up earning more from the marketing rather as compared to paying for the marketing. The use of Social media for marketing enables a business to engage their customers in the platform where they naturally live their lives (Evans & McKee, 2010). In the recent years, digital media developments have given birth, and there is a variety of companies to choose from depending on the needs of an interested user. Identification of the social media platforms to use is the first step to high rewards from the sector. Cocot (2013) provides an analysis of the most used social media site in the U.S. where foursquare and Instagram had the biggest share, closely followed by Twitter and Facebook. Cocot (2013), note that the Facebook and Twitter are the two platforms that are likely to have the highest growth and are gaining more popularity among the youths. The picture below is an advert on Sneaker Seekers FaceBook page A great social media page be it Facebook or Twitter needs to be fun to sustain the interests of the sites users. The pages need to be well designed and organized so that the company’s information mixes up with the fun materials. Animations and funny videos, when linked to the Facebook or Twitter pages, are the surest way to keep Facebook and Twitter youthful followers engaged and in the process, they gain more interests in the company’s profile. The pages incorporated catchy images and advertisement speaking the good of the company is a plus. Once the facebook and Twitter pages are well organized, the next step is to capitalize in attracting followers expanding the market accessed. King (2013) advises that offers generate the highest conversation, which increases the flow of leads and traffic to the page. The Social media company pages need to be linked with all the other media of digital media marketing such as SEO, search advertising, organic social media, Google remaking ads, and social advertising. A company must make all efforts to ensure the use of as many as advertising channels as there are (Evans & Mckee, 2010). This is a very effective strategy to increase awareness of the company’s products, and therefore, investments should be adequately provided in the area. Once the social media users have visited a company’s website through the links provided, and are speaking highly about them, search engines serve to maintain a higher visibility. Another essential feature that s business should have is a LinkedIn Company page(s). These pages are important to get more branding for a business and an excellent platform to reach the target market on the network (King, 2013). Videos and picture should be added on this platform where the company sells itself. Problem Statement Despite making great steps in online marketing, Sneaker Seekers is yet to unlock the exponential potential lying in the social media marketing. This may be the only thing left for the company to claim its position as the best the best sneakers distributor. Methods Used This study reviewed the Social media-marketing platform that most top shoe retailers in the U.S.A. are using. The list of top ten online shoe stores was obtained from TopTenReviews and Top10Links websites. From the two lists, the common top five shoe retailers were identified and then their social media marketing platform reviewed for activity and followers. This was also done for Sneakers Seekers to enable a comparative analysis of its efforts in Social media marketing with the top players in the field. Findings From the lists of the top ten online shoe stores in the U.S.A, five common retailers were identified in the following order of rating: Zappos.com, OnlineShoes.com, Payless ShoeSource, Footlocker, and Famous Footwear. Facebook and Twitter were the two online media platform used by all the companies and with significant activity. The table below shows the number of followers for either platform attracted by each company as at Nov. Table 1. Facebook and Twitter Followers for the top five online shoe stores Company Facebook followers Twitter Followers Zappos.com 1, 269, 821 14,278 OnlineShoes.com 19, 925 3,062 Payless ShoeSource 798,290 24,509 FootLocker 5, 338,303 487, 107 Famous Footwear 779,800 24, 769 Sneakers Seekers on the other hand only had 1,680 followers on its Facebook page and only 980 on twitter, clearly too low to compare with those at the top. Unlike the other top online marketers, Sneakers Seekers did not have an Instagram account. Analysis From the results above it is clear that Sneakers Seekers is doing little to tap the much benefits lie in social media marketing. The company does not attract many followers in its social media marketing. We have noted that Instagram has the largest share of social media marketing use all over the United States yet the company is yet to have an account. Its Facebook and Twitter pages also have few followers as compared to its competitors. The number of followers increases the possibility of potential customers visiting the company’s website, which come with increased sales. Recommendation Sneakers Seekers review revealed the magic that AutoMCF brought to the company just by increasing the visibility of its products online with more channels. The marketing team needs to follow up this success through the social media. Social media has a sort of multiplication effect since the followers share the information about the products to their friends and followers both online and offline. The effect is that traffic to the company’s website will increase and consequently sales will explode. The company already has a simplified; customer friendly websites is offering great deals in its prices. Taking its marketing further to social media sites will be a sure way to increase sales. The marketing team should consider creating the highest visibility of Sneakers Seekers by extensively to all the main social media cites. The marketing team needs to identify the sociable characters within the company to engage the followers. The social media pages should have efficient balance of products marketing and fun and must institute interesting debates at all time to keep the followers engaged. This will also serve to encourage the followers to share the information about the company and its products to a higher traffic as well as refer visits to the website. Since the Sneakers Seekers specialize in products associated with prestige and where quality is valued most, then the use of influential people in specific brands of shoes could bring highest interests among the youths. The company needs to utilize these figures to sponsor the promotion of the brands. Testimonies of these high profile figures could be the best thing to increase sales and traffic to your website (Evans & Mckee, 2010). In the website, the company needs to address all the questions that interested buyers are likely to ask which helps build confidence among the buyers and sales increases. The company through its employees must also maintain a presence in their pages and website to address any questions from potential buyers (Evans & Mckee). Liking its followers would further have the impact of building closer ties such with the followers on Facebook and Twitter. The company also needs to engage the followers in discussion and participate in any other discussion initiated by page group members. Organization of followers into smaller subgroups depending on interests also facilitates the creation of closer social ties (King, 2013). Updating the materials on the social media platforms, as well as the websites is also very important so that followers find reasons to be visiting often and tell other about you. Updates should be on topics that would provide opportunities for increased interaction. Evans and Mckee (2010) emphasize the need for online conversation while at the same time advising that the lead team to do the conversation must be strategically identified such that they are the sort of people who know how best to deal with the target clients. The youths, for example, are fond of slang language and abusive language, which the lead team must be ready to adapt to. Conclusion Effective application of the approaches indicated here will put Sneakers Seekers to a commonplace name among so many youths and sales will improve tremendously. The company has already achieved success in online marketing, and therefore, adding social media marketing to the company’s marketing will bring double benefits. As phones are getting more sophisticated, use of Twitter and Facebook can only be expected to increase. The earlier your company jumps to the opportunity the better control of the market will be. References Doynov, S. (n.d.). How Sneakers Seekers grew sales by 20% with Auto MCF. Retrieved November 15 2013, from http://www.sellbrite.com/case-studies/automcf-sneakers seekers.pdf Evans, D. & Mckee, J. (2010). Social media Marketing: The next generation for business engagement. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley Publishing, Inc Kietzmann, J.H., Canhoto, A. (2013). Bittersweet understanding and managing and electronic world of mouth. Journal of Public Affairs 13 (2): 146–159. Doi: 10.1002/pa.1470.   King, c. (2013). 21 Social Media Marketing Tips. Social Media Examiner. Retrieved November 15, from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/21-social-media-marketing-tips-from the-pros/ PRWeb (2012). Sneakers Seekers Launches Lowest Price Guaranteed Campaign for Authentic Sneakers. Retrieved November 15 2013, from http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/4/prweb9409879.htm PRWeb (2013). SneakersSeekers.com Celebrates Its 3rd Anniversary. Retrieved December 3, 2013, from http://www.onenewspage.com/n/Press+Releases/74vw2i08a/SneakersSeeke s-com-Celebrates-Its-3rd-Anniversary.htm Read More