Social Media Marketing for the White Stuff Clothing - Case Study Example

Social Media Marketing Executive Summary The overall discussion of the report is based on the social media marketing planning for the White Stuff Clothing retailer of UK. This is one of the well known fashion clothing retailer which is specialized in apparel and accessories. The organisation has an appearance on Facebook and Twitter account. They have introduced different promotional videos in the YouTube which subsequently used as TV commercial to promote their new clothing line. The marketing department is not very focused towards promoting their products and activities through these social media sites. Lack of incorporation of the YouTube videos has resulted in less awareness within the consumers. The report has evaluated their current social media activities and therefore has suggested various strategies to strengthen their market position through different social media activities. These strategies include restructuring of Facebook page by utilizing different Facebook tools, introduction of F-commerce and restructuring the Tweeter page. It has also been suggested to add the selected YouTube promotional video to these restructured social media pages. Finally few monitoring and measuring tools have been suggested to analyze the performance of this strategic implementation. 2. Brief Overview The report is based on the social media marketing plan of the White Stuff Clothing, a well-known British fashion brand. This organisation had started its business in 1985 as “Boys from the White Stuff”. This company was founded by George Treves and headquartered in London, UK. White Stuff Clothing retailer is specialized in sells of clothing items and accessories for men and women. White Stuff owns 90 retail stores across the United Kingdom. They also sell their products through company owned websites and mail-ordered catalogue (Work Smart, 2015). Over the last two years the organisation has secured a respectable position within the top 100 companies mentioned in The Sunday Times. The organisation has recorded a profit of over 9 million Euros by the end of the year 2014 (Peddy, 2014). The UK fashion clothing and accessory industry is the most innovative and vibrant business segment within the country. This market consists of a number of leading players such as Next, Marks & Spencer, Mulberry, ASOS and Super group. The fashion cloth retailing industry has demonstrated a satisfactory sales growth over the period of last two years. The clothing industry has recorded 4.8% growth in sales within 2012 and 2013. As per statistical data the total household consumption of fashion clothing within UK is near about 59 billion Euros (Experian, 2011). The UK cloth retail industry is facing the problems of mature stage of its industry life cycle. Several external threats and increasing market competition are forcing retailers to improve their market strategies as per the ever-changing consumer demands (Experian, 2011). White Stuff Clothing has its presence within few of the social media sites such as Facebook and twitter (Peddy, 2014). The organisation is not very active in promoting their products and brand over the social media sites. The management of the organisation rather prefer to use their well-designed website and email catalogue to convey the organisational information (Rosemont, 2012). They generally utilize the information section of Facebook to impart the knowledge about their propositions. Though the organisation has a presence in Twitter, they have not yet utilized the Twitter Account Skin to convey information to the global audience. The organisation is also not promoting their YouTube properties and activities through their website (Rosemont, 2012). A social marketing plan has been designed for the organisation to increase their activities over the social media site. Creating a Facebook and Twitter page is not enough for the organisation. The social media marketing plan will assist the organisation to improve their promotional activities and communication with consumers through different social media sites. Therefore, few social media communication and promotional activities has been suggested to the organisation. 3. Analysis of the competition The fashion market of the UK is consists of various leading players such as ASOS, Wills and Cath Kidston, Aubin, Fat Face and Boden. All of these organisations can be counted as the leading lifestyle brands in the UK fashion market (Experian, 2011). In the present scenario the organisation is facing direct competition from the different marketing venture of their immediate competitor Fat Face (Quinn, 2014). They are specialized in the sales and marketing of fashion apparel, foot wares and accessories. The organisation has demonstrated a sharp increase in their e-commerce sales by 26% over the last year. This increase is representing 15% of the overall sales of the organisation. Fat Face has re-launched their website in the last year with various new and innovative features such as click-and-collect and order in-store. These features have assisted the organisation to increase their customer database by driving the customer engagement and maximizing the promotional benefits (Reference for business, 2015). Fat Face and White Stuff both have a strong and attractive websites to influence their consumers. Both of them are using e-commerce and email communication facilities. The main competitive advantage of Fat Face over White Stuff is their market visibility. The organisation has more than 180 stores across UK. They have established their stores in almost all the well known locations of UK (Reference for business, 2015). The most phenomenal feature of the marketing strategy of Fat Face is their strong presence in the social media marketing. In comparison to White Stuff, Fat Face is more visible in different social media sites. The organisation has improved their communication procedure with the potential consumers over different social media and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc. Their Twitter account assists them to engage their consumers in group conversations. It also helps them as a customer service platform through different blogs focused towards customer issues (Reference for business, 2015). This brand is continuously engaging new customers from different parts of the world through various communication blogs over the social media sites. It can be noticed that the organisation had maintained a strong network of followers over Facebook and Twitter (Reference for business, 2015). They have near about 19,000 followers on Twitters and demonstrate more than 100,000 likes on their Facebook page. The organisation utilizes their Facebook page as an editorial blog where they frequently update their new attractions and activities. Through these sites they are also welcoming reviews and feedbacks of their products and services (Reference for business, 2015). In the end of 2014, the organisation had introduced an online competition to win Land Rover. They had organised the competition through their Facebook page and Pinterest, which assisted them to attract near about 250,000 entrants to their social media marketing (Reference for business, 2015). The company also has their presence in other social networking sites such as Google+ and YouTube (Reference for business, 2015). 4. Traditional Advert White Stuff Clothing retailer is famous for their non-traditional marketing approaches. The organisation hardly follows any kind of television or newspaper advertisement. They generally promote their products and activities through their well-designed websites and email catalogues. The organisation also conducts different events, such as cake baking competition, in their stores to influence the consumer engagement (Quinn, 2014). Currently the organisation has launched few You Tube videos to update their consumers about their different seasonal collections. These videos have also been used as television commercial for the promotional activity of the organisation (Quinn, 2014). These TV commercials are designed in such a way that it communicate with the consumers about the different clothing and accessory options of the brand. The video of their autumn 2014 collection has been chosen to develop their social media marketing strategy. The video has demonstrated different clothing options of the organisation which influences the autumn fashion. It also has emphasized on different clothing accessories. The video has conveyed the comfort level of the clothing collection and their suitability in the daily life of the consumers. The video has shown the models, dressed up with the autumn collection, are enjoying various day to day activities. The link of the video is also provided for further reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NENgXqBl2b4&index=8&list=PLGgCxLarjfCk4JG5LNEu0wuZRcfIQQ9Su 5. Discussion The organisation already has its presence in Facebook and twitter. The main objective of the social media plan is to influence the communication and customer services facility through these media. The following steps of social media strategy will assist the organisation to increase their visibility in the social media sites which will enhance their sales potential in the domestic and international market. 5.1 Goal Before designing and developing the social media marketing strategies the organisation needs to set their goals and objectives. Following goals will assist the organisation to successfully execute their social media strategy implementation- The organisation already has their Facebook presence. This page has been used only for imparting some basic information about the organisation (Peddy, 2014). One of the main goals of the social media marketing is to advertise their product line through this Facebook page. They need to enable the communication facility with the potential consumers through this social media site. This facility will assist them to gather the feedbacks and preferences of consumers. The organisation has already posted few promotional videos over You Tube which has been used as TV commercial for new product promotion (Quinn, 2014). Their next goal is to create a short cut for these videos in their other social media sites (Facebook and Twitter) as well as their own website. These visual effects will help them to attract customers to their newly launched product lines. The company need to set up a new e-commerce facility with the collaboration of different social media site. This will ensure the growth in the sales ratio of the organisation. The main objective of this e-commerce is to enable the new and overseas consumers to easily purchase their preferred product over the Facebook page only. This facility will help the organisation to integrate their social media promotional activity and selling procedure. This will further influence their overall sales growth. The marketing authorities of White Stuff Clothing need to improve their customer service and customer interaction procedure through different facilities of Twitter. The goal of the organisation needs to be more customer engagement through this social media site. They need to create a strong content to post in their Twitter skin. The organisation needs to focus on their blogging and micro blogging activities to continuously update the consumers about their new ventures and activities. 5.2 Targeting the audience As per the You Tube video the autumn collection of the organisation are mainly focused on young and middle age customers who have an eye for casual fashion outfits. So the main target audience of the organisation should be the consumers from urban areas who are aged between 18-35 years. The advertisement has shown the clothing collection for both men and women. So the social media marketing strategy will be targeted towards all consumers irrespective of any gender differences. Most of the video has demonstrated the comfort level of the clothing lines during different travelling related activities. To support this attribute the marketing plan need to target the frequent travellers as their potential customers. 5.3 Developing strategies and choosing tactics The social media marketing department of the organisation needs to create few strategies and tactics which will assist them to successfully implement the goals for the benefit of the organisation. The primary strategy of the organisation would be focusing on promoting their new and upcoming clothing and accessory ranges through Facebook. The marketing department need to set up new strategies to utilize different tactics provided by this social media site to connect with new consumers. Running different Facebook contests, promotions and Sweepstake will be the major part of their social media marketing strategy. The organisation needs to appoint professionals to improve their Facebook page and to incorporate different tools to enhance the consumer communication procedure. Facebook provides an advertisement facility known as Facebook ads that can be seen in the side columns of the site (Shih, 2009). The organisation needs to design new advertisement strategy to provide short but attractive advertisements through Facebook column. Their social media planning also need to be attentive towards some other features of Facebook. “Sponsored stories” facility of Facebook is a tool which will assist the organisation to highlight different user interactions within their social media sites (Shih, 2009). The management need to promote different events of the organisation through these sites to ensure the maximum participation of consumers. This cost effective promotional procedure will assist the organisation to attract maximum number of new and existing consumers to visit their physical and online stores. Another important strategy of the organisation should be the collaboration with Facebook in terms of e-commerce facility. Apart from influencing social communication Facebook also offers an e-commerce facility named Facebook commerce (F-commerce). The third party F-commerce shopping application will be the best suited e-commerce tactics for the organisation (Harris and Dennis, 2011). Engaging third party will provide a relief to the management from getting engaged in the complex application procedures of Facebook. F-commerce will influence the regular visitors of social media site to purchase product of their choice from the company’s social media page (Harris and Dennis, 2011). The management need to hire few professionals to maintain the blogging and micro blogging within their Twitter account. This strategy will be focused on the continuous development of the contents of their twitter page. The new professionals will be appointed to optimize whether the brand has been represented properly in the Twitter page and to respond the queries and comments of the potential customers of the organisation. The organisation needs to adopt different strategies to offer lucrative schemes and discounts to the social media users. They need to collaborate with the finance authorities to design schemes of redeemable points and discount codes for the first joiners and the frequent visitors of their social media sites. 5.4 Creating content In their Facebook page the organisation need to create different sections for different clothing and accessories collection. The autumn section of 2014 will display the short key of the You Tube promotional video. The content of this page will include the pictures of all the new arrivals and best sellers. Each product picture should be associated with brief details about the design, material, price, discount schemes and availability of the product. The content of the page will also include product reviews and rating of different customers. They need to choose attractive names for each product categories which will demonstrate the product category in a fancy manner such as “New Essentials for This Autumn”. They need to create a different section to demonstrate all the present and future promotional activities. The Facebook page also needs to demonstrate different style reviews and discussions by famous designers. This posts need to be linked with the specific product categories. The content of Twitter also needs to be designed with different images and videos of products and accessories. The cover page of Twitter needs to be changed frequently with new slogans and pictures of products. Twitter page need to be updated with all the details of the current and upcoming trends in the clothing and accessories section. 5.5 Monitoring and measuring Different social media performance measurement and monitoring tools need to be utilized after the implementation of the strategies. These tools will assist the social media marketing department to analyze the success ratio of different activities (Ideya Ltd., 2013). They need to take the help of few Tweeter monitoring tools such as TweetReach and Twazzup. TweetReach will be beneficial to measure the implications and impacts of the consumer discussion over the Tweeter page of the organisation. It will also assist the organisation to find out potential followers (Ideya Ltd., 2013). Twazzup is a social media monitoring tool which will assist the marketing management to rapidly search various real time updates and activities on the Tweeter page (Ideya Ltd., 2013). Hootsuite is one of the best social media monitoring site which will provide an in-depth measurement of social media performance. This tool will help them to cover the performances of all the available social media sites. They provide weekly analytical tool to get an elaborated view about the sales ratio and consumer activities (Ideya Ltd., 2013). Reference List Experian, 2011. The changing face of UK retail in today’s multi-channel world. [pdf] Experian. Available at [Accessed 5 February 2015]. Harris, L. and Dennis, C., 2011. Engaging customers on Facebook: Challenges for e‐retailers. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 10(6), pp. 338-346. Ideya Ltd., 2013. Social media monitoring tools and services report excerpts. [pdf] Ideya Ltd. Available at [Accessed 5 February 2015]. Peddy, C., 2014. White Stuff: Traders delighted national clothing chain is coming to Derby. [online] Available at [Accessed 5 February 2015]. Quinn, J., 2014. How White Stuff doubled its profits in a year. [online] Available at [Accessed 5 February 2015]. Reference for business, 2015. Fat Face Ltd. - company profile, information, business description, history, background information on Fat Face Ltd. [online] Available at [Accessed 5 February 2015]. Rosemont, J., 2012. Social Snapshot: UK retail and social media. [online] Available at [Accessed 5 February 2015]. Shih, C., 2009. The Facebook era: Tapping online social networks to build better products, reach new audiences, and sell more stuff. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Work Smart, 2015. White Stuff Limited. [online] Available at [Accessed 5 February 2015]. Read More