How Starbucks Use Social Media to Promote Itself - Case Study Example

Starbucks Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 Discussion 3 Social media marketing tools that Starbucks use 3 Advertisement methods that Starbucks use 4 How Starbucks conducts their campaigns 5 Possible risks of using social media in this way 6 How could Starbucks improve the way they use social media for advertising/marketing? 6 Conclusion 7 References 8 Introduction In this present generation people leave a fast life. They don’t even have the time to go to a pub or a club to socialize. The places where the current generation socializes are social media sites. This presents a great new avenue and opportunity as a great location which the company can effectively use to market its product. For some specific product online social media sites are more effective tools for marketing as compared to other products. One of such products is Coffee. The coffee is a product which the people normally drink with their friends. So giving them a social media where they can connect with friends over discussion on coffee can be a very effective and cost efficient marketing tool. Some companies use social media to post updates about their company as frequently as they can where as other companies don’t post updates that frequently and rather use the social media sites strategically. In the following pages the case of Starbucks and how it uses social media to promote itself is described. Discussion Social media marketing tools that Starbucks use Starbucks uses different social media marketing tools efficiently to market it. Starbucks is known for a lot of different things such as coffee, beverages and it presence in almost every town in world. Starbucks also has a very good presence in the social media and uses the social media tool very effectively to market itself. Starbucks has established its presence is almost all of the major social networking sites. Starbucks has more than 33 million fans in Face book, 6.26 million fans in twitter, 2.98 million Instagram fans, 2.86 million fans in Google+ fans, 160k fans in pinterest, 32K subscribers in YouTube. Starbucks says that it uses the social media not ads marketing tool or as PR tool but to cultivate and create great customer value and relationship (Roman, 2013). Starbucks uses their social media tools such as face book quite differently than other such companies. Starbucks does not post on face book frequently like other companies such as wall mart. Rather it uses the social media tools to connect and give important information to its customers. The information and news feeds that Starbucks provides are captivating, innovating and helps in engaging with its customers. The Starbucks uses picture based social media sites like instagram and pinterest very effectively in order to share pictures of brilliantly designed espresso coffee or coffee cups. The coffee is a thing that is very visual and the pictures of beautifully designed coffee in cups is a good way to connect with customers and Starbucks knows it and can use it very well. Advertisement methods that Starbucks use Starbucks uses different advertisement techniques for different social media sites. For face book the technique that the company uses is quite different from other companies using face book. Other companies using face book go in for increasing their fan base on face book. However the company who only focuses on building the fan base looses the true value and purpose of creating the fan base. True value from the customers is reached when the relationship with them is made really strong and lasting. That is how the company forms a breed of loyal customers. Starbucks knows this quite well. They know how to use their fan base in order to generate good revenue. Unlike other companies in Face book like Wal-Mart, Levis etc Starbucks do not post on face book that often new updates. However Starbucks has been able to as it seems outperform other consumer brands in community engagements despite doing the exact opposite of what other consumer brands has actually done. The Starbucks uses its twitter account to connect with its customers and solve their grievances. It encourages its customers to tweet their grievances to the company. The company by managing the customer complaints over twitter helps to get a good control of the situation before it gets out of hand. How Starbucks conducts their campaigns When a customer has decided to go for a purchase and buys a product, the companies can engage with the customers to and increase and build on the brand loyalty by using social networking sites. For example Starbucks used social media effectively in a particular campaign when it needed to promote its coffee. When Mc Donald’s brought its own line of coffee in the market and branded it as Mc Coffee and started advertising it heavily Starbucks pulled up its socks and launched its own ad campaign. In their ad campaign what they did was to put up advertisement posters in six major cities. Then in order to engage its social media fans it challenged them to find these posters and be the first to click pictures of the same and be the first to post the photo using twitter. The winners of the photo contest would then be provided with a $20 gift card (Divol, Edelman and Sarrazin, 2012). The campaign was extremely successful and the benefits received out of the campaign by Starbucks far exceeded the budget that the company spent on the total campaign. In the campaign by Mc. D the company focuses on commoditising and bring it down to a level where all coffee is considered as same. In such a case the cheap coffee is what sells well. However Starbucks does not believe in this message and so it has brought its own advertisement campaign in which it has stuck posters across 6 cities in USA (Miller, 2009). The posters tell a lot about how Starbucks selects the perfect coffee beans and likewise stories in bold letter. This is done in order to engage its customers more with the coffee that it makes. The aim is to achieve that even if the customers do not have the time to read the entire message they will at least have passing glance on the ads and will be amazed by the sheer amount of words Starbucks has to say about coffee. Possible risks of using social media in this way The present generation leads a jet set life with no time to socialize in public places other than that of social media. This presents a great opportunity for the companies who interact with the customers and try to create a loyal fan following the social networks (Zarrella, 2009). The advantage of using social media to advertise a product is immense because it provides a less costly platform to promote a product or service but which if used effectively can prove to be far more beneficial than any other forms of advertising (Evans, 2012). However the downside of using any social networking site to promote about the company is that if the company is not particular messages that its tries to drive to its customers it can be easily misinterpreted. Once a negative publicity spreads and becomes viral about the company then it becomes very difficult to bring back good image about the company (Levinson, 2010). While the social networking sites can be an effective platform to advertise about the company there are enough risk factors associated and the company must be careful enough to detect the negative messages at the earliest and resolve them (Kabani, 2013). How could Starbucks improve the way they use social media for advertising/marketing? The Starbucks is already quite efficient in using the social media in an effective manner to engage with its customers. However there are ways in which it can improve the engagement with customers and better advertise its products. It is important to remember that social network journey across the consumer decision making process is not a monolithic journey but is comprised of four different functions (Barker, Barker, Bormann and Neher, 2012). The first function is to monitor the social media effectively (Edelman, 2009). Monitoring involves not only simple monitoring of the things happening in the social networking but also generate specific ideas that can go to the front line. It is not enough to monitor and track what is going on in the social media currently but to respond effectively to the concerns of the customers. Responding forms the second function; in the list of functions dealing with the effective use of social networking. The third function is to amplify that is the amount of publicity that the company can generate when one of the messages of the company is spread virally (Barefoot, and Szabo, 2010). The forth function is to lead customers to lead to newer possibilities. Conclusion Social media has become an effective tool to market and advertise about itself and its product by the company. However most companies in using the social media site as only to generate and increase the list of fans on the social networking sites. However increasing fan base is ineffective if one cannot use the fan base effectively and generate revenue out of it. Starbucks has been quite effective and efficient in using the social media to market itself and its products and more important to engage with its customers. However the strategy that the Starbucks uses to connect with its customers in the social networking space is quite different from what its competitors use. However the most startling fact is despite using a different strategy and rather an opposite strategy than its competitors it is quite successful in social networking space which shows that there is no written guidelines on which strategy is best. References Barefoot, D. and Szabo, J. 2010. Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook. CA: No Starch Press Barker, M., Barker, D. I. , Bormann, N. and Neher, K. 2012. Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach. NY: Cengage Learning Divol, R, Edelman, D. and Sarrazin, H. 2012. Demystifying social media. [Online]. Available at. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/demystifying_social_media [Accessed 7 February 2015] Edelman, D. 2009. A social journey. [Online]. Available at. http://www.mckinsey.com/tools/Wrappers/Wrapper.aspx?sid={ED70D778-05CC-4955-A80C-71511030767A}&pid={312CB0BA-D994-4408-9632-08F6AA7BEA49}. [Accessed 7 February 2015]. Evans, D. 2012. Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day. Indiana: John Wiley & Sons Kabani, S. 2013. The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue. Dallas: BenBella Books Levinson, J. 2010. Guerrilla Social Media Marketing: 100+ Weapons to Grow Your Online Influence, Attract Customers, and Drive Profits. NY: Entrepreneur Press Miller, C. C. 2009. New Starbucks Ads Seek to Recruit Online Fans . [Online]. Available at. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/business/media/19starbux.html?_r=0. [Accessed 7 February 2015]. Roman, E. 2013. Starbucks: Social Media Revenue Based on Relationships. [Online]. Available at. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ernan-roman/starbucks-social-media-re_b_2426209.html?ir=India [Accessed 7 February 2015] Zarrella, Dan.2009. The Social Media Marketing Book. CA: OReilly Media Inc. Read More