Hi Students,
I’ve developed a keen interest in what this British ad exec has been publishing in looking at Social Media’s role in marketing communications. I uploaded his perspective on ‘What is Media Planning?’ on Blackboard. But when I went to his most recent I found it really intriguing. Please take a look.
Regarding the content of the “Fanfare For The Common Brand, let’s use it as a lens of how social media disrupts traditional media, including at this banner display advertising as traditional as it is considered a mature medium and loses it’s digital association in the common lexicon in my opinion. The fact that consumers use mobile devices is implicit. Pandora and Facebook skew heavily mobile and consumers spend about 5% of their media time using these two properties. This context should inform the below.
Suppose you were responsible for launching an e-commerce furniture brand similar to wayfair.com. How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem? What would you do first and why? What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
Q: How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem?
A:
According to Fanfare For the Common Brand by John V Willshire, social media must foster a conversation that is dialectic (promote debate) and dialogic (in a form of a dialogue). The best way social media can do this is through social media.
For example, the furniture company may pick a YouTube star who has a large female fan base. This is part of the “paid” ecosystem where the star is paid to perform various agreed services. Such service includes promoting the company’s various modern products such as bookshelves, kitchen utensils, or bedroom items. The story should be posted on various social media sites such as the stars own YouTube page, Twitter, and Facebook. The story should promote a lifestyle that fits the YouTube star’s character and allow fans to comment on the content.
Using the furniture company’s owned content, the company should have the story posted on its own site that is viewable through a desktop and mobile browser. This would allow visitors to know that a certain star is being sponsored to use such content.
Lastly, earned media may be exploited through the social media platforms by the company encouraging likes, retweets, comments, and posing a question to the fans about the star’s thoughts on the products. After reaching a certain threshold of likes, retweets, or comments, the brand should respond to those questions and use such data to better its products. As like Willshire’s PowerPoint presentation, it is better to make things people want rather than people want things.
Q:
What would you do first and why? What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
A:
The target audience of a furniture brand, such as wayfair.com and ikea.com, according to Alexa.com is primarily females who live in the United States. Social media may, thus, be designed to promote the brand using a comprehensive paid, owned, and earned content through story telling. Therefore, my target audience would be to females who ages range from 18 to 40 (generation y and z).
The focus of my comprehensive ecosystem would be on the paid content. Continuing from the previous question’s example, by paying a female YouTube star to promote my brand, paid content would function as the primary driver which generates a larger and newer fan base. Such a YouTube star can help my brand leverage a larger customer base which my brand did not previously have. The star’s ability to resonate with the established fan base would ease the way for my brand to connect with potential customers. Further, it may be less costly compared to using a celebrity as an endorsers or an advertising on print or media.
Perhaps a short YouTube video of how various products simplified the lifestyle of the star may suffice. Various segments such as pots and pans functioned as needed in the kitchen, and the modern bookshelves matched the modern architecture design of her home brought the star joy. Occasional vine videos should be utilized as well, as the content may vary from humor to happiness as well. The most important factor is that these attributes must foster communication and sharing between the brand and the potential customer or fan base.
Nobody can deny the role of social media in obtaining and forming POEM. For a e-commerce furniture brand, pursuing the dialogic strategy (per above) is most appropriate because most brands are doing it the dialectic way. Experimenting, fragmenting is essential in differentiating the brand from others. Getting feedback and opening channels of two-way communication is probably a great start. This is simply having an instagram account or a twitter is no longer enough: more sophisticated way (obtained via experimenting with smaller fragments/ideas) is a great way to test the waters.
Target audiences depend on the style of furniture. Initial market study is needed to determined for which age/cultural/ etc groups the furniture is most appealing. Those determinations will become the target audiences.
Social media as a part of the media ecosystem:
Social media, and further enhanced technology in general, has afforded brands to have the ability to emit an innumerous number of messages from various devices on the same brand – if they so choose. Building an ecosystem, or an interrelated web of various media platforms that work together to consistently and collectively support the marketing of a brand, is crucial and precariously teeters at all times (unless properly supervised). It is important to recognize that in today’s work, companies no longer serve as merely the provider of information when it comes to their brand – they are only a part of the whole process. “Fanfare for the Common Brand” John V Willshire points out, “I believe that the future of brand communications lies in finding a way to become part of communities, and communicate with them in a way that is shared, participatory, and reciprocal.” Willshire points of the interactive universe we now contend with, which means when attempting a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem, we are following a moving target. Willshire also pointed out that “social networks = ad networks” and “social agencies = ad agencies.” A comprehensive ecosystem for a brand would consist of paid, owned, and earned media. Paid media being print adverts, radio, commercials, online ads and addresses the nature of reaching prospects. Owed media would be a company’s website, FaceBook Page, and Mobile Apps (which are extremely important, serving the professor’s lead in statistics of consumers on cell phones), store appears, and brochures, which addresses reaching a customer. Earned media is social media, forums, and word of mouth which is spread by the brand’s advocates. Willshire also states that, “product brand material, which means that people will create the meaning for you…” simply stated, consumers will create the meaning of your brand, and if it is terrible then your meaning will be terrible. So – make good things!
Launching Wayfair.com with the media ecosystem in mind:
In launching an e-commerce furniture brand similar to wayfair.com, I would make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem by first ensuring that all channels have a method of integration. Paid media being print adverts, radio, commercials, online ads and addresses the nature of reaching prospects. Owed media would be a company’s website, FaceBook Page, and Mobile Apps (which are extremely important, serving the professor’s lead in statistics of consumers on cell phones), store appears, and brochures, which addresses reaching a customer. Owned media is critical in ecosystem and Wayfair.com should surely invest in their website and social strategies as well as mobile application. Earned media is social media, forums, and word of mouth which is spread by the brand’s advocates. Understanding the audience and media channels is key to engaging with customers, and social media means that there is real time transparency.
The Wayfair.com ecosystem:
Paid media should have social links to owed media and earned media and vice versa. The use of the hash tag is a great way to be able to tie a number of things together. Wayfair.com could #springfever from their Twitter handle on a beautiful day like today and affix that to a picture of the cover page of a printed ad which features bright and sunny looking home items. Their Facebook and Instagram account reference the tweet and hash tag and ask for consumers to “Show off their sunny wayfair.com style” and get the consumers involved. Wayfair could tie in youtube.com videos about redecorating to welcome in spring, or ten easy ways to spring clean, without cleaning. The key is – the ecosystem of paid, owned, and earned media is always on, always evolving, and always collaborative.
Intended audience & intended campaign:
The intended audience for a site like wayfair.com would be females between the ages of 18 to 35. This group is most open to social media sites like Instragram (easily tying into twitter and Facebook), which I think would be an excellent spring board to really tie in the paid, owned, and earned media. Having wayfair.com post pictures and links is easily consumed and the site’s focus on chic yet affordable furniture will likely lead to a number of great photos of items purchased and being used in consumer’s homes as well as paid prints taken by wayfair.com. It allows wayfair.com to personalize the content as needed, and consumers also personalize the content and repost.
I think that a possible great campaign that Wayfair.com could post would be a competition on the ‘best designed room on a budget’ or ‘best designed room with minimal space’ or ‘best converted room.’ Contestants could submit before and after photos, tag what items are from Wayfair.com, what paint they used, DIY steps they took, etc. and fellow consumers could lend a hand in a final vote. Wayfair.com could promote the competition on their site, social media, and start a hash tag trend.
I agree with most of the above. Targeting women between 18-40 is genius for an online furniture store. I would market at affordable and easy to do. The first thing I would do to build social media presence is launch some sort of promotion using the a social media platform. For instance, take Instagram and give your first set of followers a coupon. Another alternative would be to use Facebook; create some sort of challenge for future consumers that would benefit them personally and crate earned media.
Another important topic is consistency. You need to make sure your brand is consistent through out when launching a social media campaign. It’s extremely easy to lose the brand on line as consumers have the freedom to do as they please with logos etc. to a certain extent.
Tawanda
Given the circumstances of the question you posted, I agree with everyone else as well. Targeting woman in that age group (18-40) makes the most sense, however, I find these tactics more as a supplemental add-on to a marketing campaign and would not think it is merely enough as a POEM. I don’t think that marketing has taken a big enough shift into this space yet, and although these are all great ideas listed above, would not net the results you would hope for. While we have seen a tremendous shift in eyeballs from traditional platforms (TV) to second screen devices (mobile, table), I don’t think the volume is there yet to really have a social media campaign have the legs to stand on.
With all that being said, I think combining this tactic with other interactive ads and more digital campaigns will help confine the target audience you are aiming for. By keeping the ecosystem digital and mobile you are ensuring that only a certain demographic (people using these devices) can participate in your campaign.
In creating a similar furniture brand to wayfair.com social media would complement my POEM strategy. For things like furniture, reaching consumers through only social media will not cut it. I think the key is to be consistent in your paid media, such as digital advertising, your owned media – your site, email marketing, which will hopefully lead to more earned media and hopefully a larger following across social media. With furniture however, you really would not get that needed reach using just social media like you would with TV advertising, or even print (catalogs, circulars, etc).
I would definitely target the 18-35 female age group as well. I think getting to know your customer via social media is key here, as it will encourage participation. Maybe doing some sort of furniture webinars & urge your audience to participate in comments, where they have a chance to be heard. Also, creating contests on FB and Instagram for best furniture design idea will probably draw more audience to social media sites and really help you understand what your client base likes. Offering a discount for social media followers would also perk up the fan base there.
There are a lot of great points above but I’m going to disagree with a few of the sentiments. Not just to be a devil’s advocate but I feel some of these mentalities are a bit outdated. Sure, there is a ton of data that shows that primarily women buy furniture online at Wayfair, but why concentrate on such a controlled audience and not consider who is buying within the entire industry? Studies also show online furniture shopping customers are highly educated 24 to 36-year-olds with a wide range of household incomes (some $55,000 to $110,000, depending if luxury brands are included). Within that, there are four to five key customer segments, all different in terms of age, location, and recreational activities. I liken this to our discussions of personas from past assignments. It would be wise to target customers in each of these segments a little differently.
In response of the proposition to make social media the primary communication channel for a company like this, I think it may be a little more challenging. It can be difficult to generate traffic that is both profitable and relevant from a lot of media sites. I personally think Facebook is a channel that may not generate much success within this industry. Even utilizing such targeted and specific demographics, you are tossing out your products to people during their social free time. This reminds me of when I was a kid and I had to ring doorbells during dinner to try and sell people trinkets so I could go on my field trip. It results in a lot of doors closed in your face.
The alternative is being available when customers are actively researching their next purchase and catering that design to the proper social media channels. One would likely see greater success utilizing giveaway campaigns, promoted on related blogs and through email campaigns. This is likely to generate a lot of traffic and social media discussion. Akin to this, establishing those relationships with other content-creators would be key for an online furniture business such as this. There is a variety of earned media in Tumblr and blogs centered on furniture design and recommendations, and it would be wise to seek them out. Pinterest is time-consuming to maintain, but look what a company such as Warby Parker has done for that industry with Instagram. Similar tactics can be applied here. Look at the furniture company Hem, which has evolved with this type of mentality from what started as Fabulis, a social network for gay men. They are now considered a step-up from Ikea with the same affordable prices. Also, see what Warby Parker and others do to create excitement with groups and creative fan invites. They also simultaneously spread the message that they excel at customer service, and as a former customer of Wayfair, I think it would do our company well to concentrate on this area.
Ultimately, perhaps Instagram may not be the answer but I think it would better to focus on mastering 1 or 2 forms of media, rather than being mediocre at all of them. Perhaps email and YouTube, or focus on the aforementioned blogging campaigns are the best way to approach this type of market. I would also spend the time on Google Adwords and analytics, as you can establish a far greater web presence and generate far more traffic.
I actually really like wip’s suggestion above of a YouTube video concerning the products, but I would forego the use of a Hollywood star. If you look at WayFair’s TV ads, they star relatable everyday people, and I often regard this as more effective for products such as furniture, as opposed to Beyonce’s ads for L’Oreal. My biggest takeaway from Wilkshire, and also a recent interview I read (I will try and find the link) is to not be a “cheese pizza” in social media. Yes, almost everyone likes cheese, but it’s plain and boring and almost no one absolutely loves it. You need emotionally charged content and you need users of social media to love your content.
Suppose you were responsible for launching an e-commerce furniture brand similar to wayfair.com. How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem? What would you do first and why? What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
The first thing that I would do in launching an e-commerce furniture brand would be to gain awareness and attention from potential consumers. As mentioned in a post above, I would pursue similar target audiences to competing furniture brands such as Wayfair, Ikea, West Elm, Anthropologie, etc. I would specifically target millennials because they are more likely to actively use social media and e-commerce to influence their purchases. According to Willshire, “Attention is the most valuable raw material there is for brands.” In order to gain that initial awareness, the furniture brand will need to invest in some sort of paid media such as online advertisements and commercials, as well as owned media such as YouTube videos and even promotions. In order to spread awareness and gain more attention, social channels such as but not limited to Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest should be activated and used. Pinterest and Instagram will be crucial for gaining awareness because furniture is very visual and appeals to one’s aesthetics. I believe that Instagram and Pinterest are the most appropriate channels because the target audience will want to see the furniture how visualize how it will look in their own homes or apartments. Twitter/Facebook posts will also be useful to advertise promotions and deals, but Instagram and Pinterest will be crucial to gain attention from users.
Additionally, in order to generate earned media, which is extremely crucial because it relies on consumer’s providing it for the brand, the furniture brand will need to engage in participatory conversations with their followers on social media. The furniture brand should encourage followers to post photos of furniture in their homes, and provide incentives for them doing so. The brand also needs to be ready to respond on social media on solve issues that customers may have with the brand in order to maintain a positive customer service reputation. Basically, the brand needs to be communicating to their followers on social media and not allowing the conversations to stop. The brand needs to keep sharing content with its users because the better it is at updating and responding to its social channels, the better its earned media will be. In today’s age, millennials are affected more and more by social channels, and companies do have the ability to earn great social reputations. They just need to prioritize social and constantly keep working to improve their social platforms.
Integration will be key to making social media the core communication method for this new e-commerce furniture brand that we would be interested in launching. With regards to my owned media (webpage), the first thing I would do is make sure that our social media touchpoints (facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, etc) would be prominantly displayed on the landing page of the website. I would also make sure that these touchpoints were referenced in the “contact us” section of the webpage as well. By consistantly making it known that this is the company’s favored way of communicating, it should hopefully make consumers want to check out these different pages. I’d utilize SEO to also make sure that the company’s webpage is coming up on Bing and Google searches as close to the front of the line as possible.
The social media would hopefully generate earned media for the company. Retweets, favorites, likes, shares all would help drive presence across the internet. If the content is good and resonates with people, social media can be a very important piece to the earned media puzzle, as it allows us to have a continuous conversation with potential customers.
For paid media (any form of advertising), I would makes sure that our social media handles are referenced, or at the very least leverage the site logos to let people know that we have accounts on the different platforms. As mentioned in the powerpoint, it is so important that we are getting the message across in the right manner. If the message is not being perceived in the manner we are looking for, there is no point in doing the advertising.
As a furniture brand that operates digitally, I would want to make sure that my target demographic is interested in my product, and also using the internet based touchpoints that we plan on leveraging. It is at this intersection where we will find our most likely and profitible customers.
As John Willshire points out, “What you say bears little relation of what you sell, which means that people will create the meaning for you.” Social media will help us create the meaning for the furniture brand. But we first have to grab attention since social web is built on raw attention. I think blogs that were mentioned above are an effective source to attract consumer’s attention. Paid media such as print ads in subway trains would also contribute to the process. Investing in search engine marketing and Google ads is another way to get consumer’s attention. Company’s website should be the main owned-media touch-point. I agree with the previous comments that Instagram and Pinterest are the best platforms for social media marketing, given the visual impression that they leave on consumers.
Once we have garnered consumers’ attention, we should concentrate on the conversation: engaging consumers, listening carefully to what regular people are going to do with the product and how they are going to react to it, asking good questions, talking to more actual users. All of the above will enable us to make things that people want.
For the target audience, I would suggest pursuing millennials- both women and men. We should use branded videos featuring personas that share lifestyles, demographics, shopping behavior, life stage, etc. with the target audience.
For a furniture brand similar to WayFair, social media should definitely the main channel of communication. I agree with previous comments that the target audience should be millennials are actively on social media. Rather than Facebook, I find that this generation is veering more towards sites such as Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and Youtube to share what they are interested. For example, Ikea often does collaborations with Youtube personalities that feature their products. When choosing social media personalities, it is important for brands to choose someone who fits share the same interests and lifestyles of their target audience. Often these social media personalities are sponsored through affiliate links or paid for their reviews. Popular blogs such as Apartment Therapy and DesignSponge can also direct traffic to your main website. I think one of the most difficult aspect when using social media as the main channel of communication is the rapidly changing trends in this world. Once upon a time, Facebook was the top. Nowadays, many millennial spend their time communicating using other social media sites or apps such Instagram or Snapchat.
I disagree with most of the comments regarding targeting women in the age group 18-40 as I find that far too broad. It’s most more important for industry such as furniture to focus more on lifestyles. For a company that is using social media to target the a generation that does not conformed as strictly to traditional roles, it may be easier to appeal to this audience through lifestyle campaigns.
Suppose you were responsible for launching an e-commerce furniture brand similar to wayfair.com. How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem? What would you do first and why? What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
If I was launching an e-commerce furniture brand, I would need to differentiate my brand from the competition immediately. It’s easy to target women 18-40, as that is the main demographic. However, there are plenty of men that should be targeted as well. I am a prime example, as I have never heard of wayfair.com. I’m not sure if they have ignored the male population in their advertising or marketing, but I would guess they have. I would opt for a disruptive social media presence and advertising technique. Look at Dollar Shave Club, which is an e-commerce business that looks to compete with the likes of Gillette. They use snarky humor to push their brand and create awareness. My Twitter/Instagram handles would be weigh in on current events, have snarky dialogue, and post funny pictures. As the “Fanfare For The Common Brand” slideshow illustrated, nobody is excited when a toilet paper brand joins twitter. They need to provide content as well as information. The content here would be humor. As an example, I was talking with a female friend of mine about Instagram and she brought up the Chubbies account. Chubbies sells short shorts to men, but has an active social media presence to drive people to their website through their humorous content. The point here is that Chubbies are designed for men, and yet my female friend was well aware of not only their brand, but their social media presence. It is too easy to just target women 18-40 on this furniture site.
My initial target audience would be anyone from 18-50, especially woman as they tend to be the general shoppers for home products. My target audience would be this large due to the fact that wayfair has various products that target a wide age range (appliances, furniture, products for families with recent new borns and young childred). This typically encompasses a wide age range. This being said, I feel that leveraging Facebook and sites like Groupon to get some initial deals would likely work. However, given that the circumstance is to have something as quickly as possible, I would consider partnering with a vendor site like Amazon or Ebay to get the products out there as soon as possible. Leveraging an existing ecosystem with millions of potential customers would help reach a wide target audience.
I also wouldn’t underscore the importance of email marketing. Once you understand the basic needs of your customer get them to sign up for your email lists. Offer discounts or even free decoration advice. Lace your emails with social media links so that the customer can share easily with friends and spread the word. Offer links and partnerships with channels like Martha Stewart (realize it’s a bit old for the designated target audience, but she is still one of the most looked up to decorators for all ages). Additionally, get yourself on design blogs, like Architecture & Design.
I really like what users jw151703 and km149287 had to say about broadening the audience, and utilizing humor in a creative way to generate followers on social media. I am reminded of a lot of the products I see retweeted on my twitter feed, not because of the promotion they are running, but the funny quote or picture they put on Twitter. Even Seamless/GrubHub do a lot of “caption this photo” contests, and ridiculous puns, that urge a community to become involved. It’s this type of engagement that gets more users involved and relies on word of mouth to get the brand name out there.
I don’t agree that targeting women 18-40 is the way to go. Sometimes it can be very easy to choose your target audience by looking through Twitter. If you are trying to market furniture, the best way to do this is to follow interior designers on twitter. Market to interior designers, that you could possibly build a relationship with moving forward. You can also sift through all of the interior designers followers to figure out who to market further to. If the product is good, people will notice and retweet it. Retweeting it can reach millions of people within seconds. Time and time again, I click on advertisements and links that celebrities and athletes retweet. A family who follows a specific interior designer could benefit from knowing that this online furniture store exists.
There are many interesting points made by my fellow classmates, but no one has pointed out yet that a 18-40 target demographic is very wide and should probably be broken up into subsegments especially if social media is our main platform to awareness. Women 35+ are more active on Facebook than millenials, and Instagram has been pointed as the social media channel with the most engaement and channel that people check most frequently. Millennial are not using Facebook in the same way the generation before them did. I would target two segments the 18-29 year olds and the 30-40 year olds. By segmenting in this way, we can target each demographic in a unique way, focusing content creation for Facebook and Pinterest on the 30-40 set who have more disposable income to spend on furniture and use Facebook as a way to stay in touch or reconnect with friends.
For the 18-29 group I would use Instagram and Snapchat to appease the instant gratification nature that this millennial group is attracted to. Like Willshire said “attention is the most important raw material”. This is how i would target owned media.
For both of these demographics a strong earned media strategy hinging on influencer marketing would be key. As influencers are ambassadors to your brand, they also breath new life into it, and reach new consumers in an organic way (hopefully…if done right). For a furniture ecommerce brand I would turn into into a lifestyle positioning similar to what Ikea does on their channels.
Speaking of ikea, i would love to leverage a similar augmented reality technology they recently did with their catalog and perhaps make it into a rich media unit or an interactive tab on our new furniture sites Facebook page.
For a social campaign to be successful, paid, earned and owned media must work together and tell a consistent digital story. Knowing which platforms are best at targeting your key demographic and what types of content engage best on each channel.
1. Social media is a perfect way to build a comprehensive POEM ecosystem. Using the big social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram is a wise way to grab potential customer’s attention. For instance, Pinterest is an image-oriented platform that has “Home Decor” page to share hundreds of product images, home-decor blog articles as well as decorating tips from furniture online store. The Pinterest can also showcase furniture’s offerings, product information, official website link and decorating ideas that give some valuable suggestions for frequent asked questions in the comment area without directly promoting the company.
For many social media channels, images and videos are easier for consumers to interact with and enjoy. The furniture company should frequently post some playful things on its Facebook , especially for popular holiday, sports events and famous TV shows. Additionally, Writing on the social media platforms should keep it simple and special such as a special, theme idea for holiday home decoration.
But too much content of selling will definitely lose audiences. People will feel disgusted with tons of promotions. The trust in company is always built on the long-term “friendship” between the companies and their audiences on the social media platforms. It is wise to create a conversation like how to effectively organize personal and working stuff on the table instead of shouting current sales of storage boxes. People don’t like promotion piece of content or pictures all the time, sometime interesting, non-promotional piece of content that are helpful, insightful and entertaining would attract more followers on Instagram.
After watching some promotions on the social media platforms, consumers are relying on friends or others’ experiences from online reviews. Those comments will guide current and potential consumers to make a decision on buying products. The furniture company should also keep in mind that it is better to respond and ask people who make offensive and negative comments to contact the company so as to resolve the issue privately and timely.
2.To analyze comments about furniture selling posted on the social media channels is the first step to make social media successfully. The furniture company should collect the data what gets likes or comments of good or bad feedbacks and analyze appetite for furniture in different ages.The goal is to figure out what kinds of furniture is most interested by target audiences, and to create engagement and conversations through the content the company posted. The company also need to hire staff who has knowledge of social media and has the enthusiasm for engaging consumers across big social media channels in order to manage and measure the consumer preference.
3.I would target audiences in millennials, especially for potential consumers who are the primary shoppers for home products because millennials are most affected by social media channels. They frequently use the social media channels to kill time and gain some shopping ideas so as to make decision on buying products.
How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem? What would you do first and why? What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
As mentioned above, I agree the best way to use social media as the primary communication channel is to use some type of social media platform to create substance that can be shared. As Willshire mentioned the social media must foster conversation. Bringing some type of substance to a social media platform that would promote sharing will increase the brand awareness at a substantial rate.
A first step would be to set a budget for Facebook ads that would allow the brand to participate in Facebook auctions for advertising. Using Facebook ads you are allowed to choose your target market. I would also agree that the target market should be primarily females, but I would argue an older age than the previously mentioned 18-40 group. This is why Facebook ads are a perfect place to begin the social media communication. Facebook as of late has been swaying towards an older crowd of users; these users are a perfect target market to share the brand with their friends.
Paying for these Facebook ads would only be the first step in the future of social media for the brand. The brand could then move on to other platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest. Another paid media idea is “mom blogs.” Blogs such as mombloggersclub.com have over 21,000+ bloggers who share their views on household items. Advertising on these blogs is another way to increase brand awareness as well as drive traffic directly to the website.
How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem?
Social media is a crucial part of communicating and interacting with current and potential customers. Incorporating a comprehensive POEM ecosystem into social media can be challenging but is definitely necessary. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, SnapChat, and other social media platforms must be utilized or the furniture company risks being left behind by the competition. In the current media landscape, these social media tools are critical to a company’s survival. The modern consumer checks these applications multiple times per day so companies not using social media are missing out on huge opportunities. For paid media, I would create display ads within these social media platforms. I would also promote sponsored posts so they could reach more people as they scroll through their newsfeeds of various social media platforms. For owned media, I would keep our social media pages and feeds up to date. I would make sure to have creative, relevant content posted regularly to each social media site. With interesting content we can keep our followers entertained and more likely to return to our page to check for updates. This would build longer-term relationships with our customers. Earned media would come organically because the content we produce is aimed to be sharable. With each share or like, more people will become aware of our ecommerce furniture brand. Placing spots for traditional online reviews will be important as well.
What would you do first and why?
I would start by creating visually stimulating posts and designs on our social media pages. Catching the consumer’s attention is what we need to do first. Besides using interesting images, working out imaginative titles and headlines is important too. Captions, quotes, and descriptions will engage the customer as well. Running contests and promotions to get people excited is another effective strategy.
What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
I would pursue Millennials. They are the generation actively using social media and they have enough money to spend on furniture. It’s likely that they are at a time in their lives where they are buying their first house, condo, or apartment. They all need furniture and social media can point them in the right direction (to our furniture brand!)
Similar to many fellow classmates above, I too believe that youtube, facebook, instagram and pinterest are the main communication platforms for our furniture brand. Noticably one classmate pointed out that older millenials spend more time on facebook, while instagram and pinterest generate more attraction in the younger crowd. Youtube seems to cover both demographic segments quite well, albeit the audience to paid “youtube star promotion” channel featuring some popular youtube host, tend to be younger millenials.
According to Willshire the nature of social media is dialogic, thus our social media presence has to be fun, visually attractive, and responsive to foster greater interaction. I strongly agree that a humorous social media presence goes a long way in brand promotion. To further facilitate dialogic conversation, we should seek the gamification of our social media presence. On facebook and instagram, we can host weekly raffle (gift card) that encourage fans to participate in the form of telling their own stories, likes, and reposts. We should also seek to link up with varies of content-makers on tumblr and blogs focus on furniture and interior design, we can offer incentives to these content-makers the same way we recruit youtube celebrities, traffic from their page could be very valuable to us.
I think that I agree with a lot of what has been said in terms of who to target, and how to target them. However, I think it might be useful to step back and re-assess how we make the choices of how to target our media. I think this is where we can get the most use out of Willshire’s presentation.
In creating the owned media, an e-commerce site similar to wayfair’s is ideal. It highlights current sales, featured brands, and featured styles, while maintaining a pretty standard e-commerce store. In addition to the primary site, I would recommend (as others above have) setting up accounts and pages on the major social media outlets, such as Facebook and Instagram. On day 1, the social media should highlight many of the same things that the brand website does. They should draw attention to many of the same sales and featured items that are shown on the main page as a means of creating general awareness about what is going on right now with the site. The idea here is to simply generate traffic between pieces of owned media, and ultimately leading the user to the online store. This will change as we begin to understand our earned media approach.
In generating earned media, it is useful to look at Willshire’s analysis of dialogic media. I think the key is his quote of Matt Edgar. “Services demand a dialogue, a collaborative learning effort between customers and service providers.” This statement would be the foundation upon which I establish how I am going to obtain my earned media, and even further, how I could change my paid media to be closer to the dialogue. For me, the key is the phrase “learning effort.” As stated in the question, the fact that social media and mobile devices are used is implicit. The challenge is figuring out what to do on those platforms. To understand this, you need to first understand what the conversation is before you try to enter it. Therefore, I would focus a great deal of effort on listening. What are people talking about in regard to wayfair.com and other sites like it? What is the online conversation like around furniture buying? Are there common questions that consumers are asking with regard to our brand? Who is asking the questions? What do people like about our brand? What negative things are being said about our brand? What are hesitancies towards our brand? Who is having this conversation? What other conversations are these people having? All of these questions are answerable because they pertain to a conversation that is already happening on social media every day. If there is no conversation (which I would think is highly unlikely) then my goal would be to help start it and inject our brand into social media.
Once I understood the landscape of conversation around my brand and products, I would begin to tailor my current owned media towards common items in these conversations. At a very high level, if users are talking about wanting furniture in a particular style, I would attempt to highlight pieces that catered to that conversation. If they are experiencing frustration understanding our shipping policies, we can answer those questions on the main pages our owned media: “All items ship same day!” But once we have begun to understand what the conversation is, we can make adjustments to our brand to account for it and then do something that was never before possible: address customer concerns directly. For instance, if we find that customers are talking about not being able to find a white desk on our site, we can make adjustments to our inventory to account for that. Then, we can go back to those users and address their concerns directly, in a public conversation on social media.
Furthermore, understanding who is having these conversations is critical to generating further earned media. What is the age of these users? What is their gender? Then, you can answer questions about how much television this demographic watches, what they read, etc. Once you know that, you can target your paid media more accurately.
What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
According to IBISWorld Industry Report (Ruiz, B. (2014, August). IBISWorld Industry Report OD5076. Online Household Furniture Sales in the US. Retrieved from http://clients1.ibisworld.com.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/reports/us/industry/default.aspx?entid=5076), major market segmentation includes:
• 60.8% – Consumers aged 25 to 54
• 17.5% – Consumers aged 55 to 64
• 12.2% – Consumers younger than 25
• 9.5% – Consumers aged 65 and older
I suggest it is logical to pursue the largest segment of people aged 25 to 54. “The majority of consumers in this category are employed individuals with steady income streams. As such, they are able to freely spend on big-ticket items like furniture. Within this group, consumers aged 35 and 44, represent the greatest number of new homeowners, who purchase furniture for their new houses. Consumers in this age group often earn more money than younger Americans and, thus, can afford higher-quality furniture. This segment is expected to increase its share of revenue in the next five years as the economy continues to recover and many people in this demographic go back to work” (Ruiz, 2014). According to this description, I would segment two groups: 25-34 years old and 35-44 years old, and go with two different offerings – more vibrant and innovative styles for younger group, and more affluent and higher-quality furniture for older. The marketing effort will primarily focus on female audience as a decision-making group.
How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem? What would you do first and why?
For launching an e-commerce I suggest that first important thing and KPI will be brand awareness and website traffic. At this point convergence of all POEM is crucial. It would be challenging to rely on social media (SM) at the first step – it is important to bring it to a scale first. Thus, I would start with combination of owned and paid media to create a clear brand image. Website should be user-friendly, full of engaging content and well-optimized for organic search. I imagine it full of visuals, designs and color schemes for both target groups, designer blog and chat, useful metric tools for customization, effective furniture grouping and listing, and easy checkout process. Paid search ads will be initial tool for driving traffic – Google Adwords, Bing Ads and Facebook. Simultaneously I would launch social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+ and YouTube (with all social icons present on the website, as well as sharing option for designs, favorites and purchased items, leveraging hashtags). Also, I would consider printed catalogue, email newsletters and TV ads.
Once social media achieves a sufficient scale, it will become the primary communication channel for engaging content and promotions. For instance, I would launch campaign on Instagram and Facebook for the best self-made interior design with a furniture from website, designer projects competition, campaign on YouTube featuring local designers-winners who renovate a room of the SM competition winner from the scratch and with our furniture (co-branding options), designer advice section etc. Also I would leverage sponsored blogger reviews, including video-bloggers, designers and real estate stagers, and participate in professional online communities and forums. All campaigns will be broadcasted across all accounts and with references to each other and website (WildFire as an option).
I think that a new furniture brand can utilize social media as a space where customers can share how they use the products and ideas for ways to expand on current products. Purchasing furniture online can be difficult because there are so many variables (size, color, materials) that might be overlooked when relying on website images, encouraging customers to share their photos might encourage more dialogue between customers and allow brand evangelists to evolve. Social media can also be used for finding product innovation by observing and learning how consumers modify products to fit their lifestyle. I am amazed that Ikea seems to be at odds with the ikeahackers website instead of using popular hacks and creating new products (or product bundles) to support their customer base. In John Willshire’s presentation he puts emphasis on the communication between the brand and consumer, and it seems that with the tools available, it is almost unimaginable to create and sell products without listening to the customer and reacting quickly to their comments and opinions.
I agree with the other posts that discussed email campaigns. A thoughtful, targeted campaign can drive traffic to the website. For paid marketing, I would use display networks that target websites and blogs that focus on design. As a new brand, it might be very expensive to compete against larger brands for the top category terms in an adwords campaign, but I would still try to find some more specific terms to advertise. If we focus on increasing male shoppers, I would make reviews easier to access on the website, as well as providing detailed product specifications. Men are using social media for product comparison and information gathering, so providing more information than a competitor might make the product more attractive.
How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem? What would you do first and why? What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
Audience Target
1) Women 21-35 early professional, $25 – $50k / per year
Even though we want to put social at the center of this campaign, we still have to recognize that the owned media website is the most important element. Without a well designed and functioning sales channel, our social efforts will have little success. As we build out the social communication channels we should always be sure we are reinforcing our e-commerce site and, one way or another, directing all content its pages.
Considering this, we can create a social campaign that connects and reinforces all other elements within the campaign. To capture our target market’s attention we will have to be everywhere it is that this group looks for information on discount, high quality, home goods.
Let’s begin with the non-social elements first and the show how social will enhance and bring out the investment we make in these other areas.
We could start a disruptive campaign across all channels called “Love Your Home” featuring Fabio and RuPaul. In the ad series the host give home decorating advice,by candelight, with smooth jazz background and frequent special guests cheekily reprising roles from old TV shows and professional wrestling careers. The focus of the video is that both hosts and their guests are not so much in love with you, the viewer, as they are with sexy home goods choices.
Paid
(Paid ads will highlight special offers or unique products, sometimes with discounts, drawing all traffic to the web URL. On the site advertised offers will be prominently featured)
Commercial TV (Lifetime, Oxygen, Bravo, TLC, etc)
Print ads (Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, etc)
Product placement on RuPaul’s Drag Race
Owned
High functioning and well designed e-commerce website.
– Main and product pages properly SEOed and re-targeted
– Robust reviewing platform by product
– Style and decoration suggestion areas liked to campaign personalities
Earned
-Features on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and other high profile national daytime TV.
Social Channel Utilization (the unification of earned and owned)
– Start a “Love Your Home” Youtube series featuring Fabio, RuPaul, and special guests.
-Be sure site inventory is properly indexed on Google Shopping
-Pintrest postings featuring special offer and featured items with links to product pages
-Utilize Facebook and Twitter as customer service/advice channels to support purchase and post-purchase experience.
-Promote and engage in active discussion about home decorating ideas and post purchase experiences.
-Share interesting content from other related social feeds
– Youtube partnerships with product reviewer personalities and significant home decorators
Q: Suppose you were responsible for launching an e-commerce furniture brand similar to wayfair.com. How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem? What would you do first and why? What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
A: As John Willshire discussed in his slides, social web platforms are dialogic in nature, not dialect. This means that rather than trying to transmit your interpretation of what the brand means, you should understand that a brand is an interplay of ideas that holds many different meanings. I would make social media the primary communication channel by creating opportunities for meaning to be made through being part of a community and communicating with customers in a way that is shared participatory and reciprocal. Customers will create meaning for the brand along with the company through dialogue and collaboration.
As others have pointed out I think age 25-40 is a good target audience for an e-commerce furniture company.
Paid – Display advertising in magazines such as Good Housekeeping and Real Simple. Facebook and Google AdWords advertising targeting our audience. Partner with interior design and furniture bloggers through Pinterest, Instagram and others to promote brand.
Owned – A high quality ecommerce website is extremely important. Included on the website would be reviews, sales and discount promotions on the homepage, and allow customers to upload video reviews or short video tutorials for assembling.
Earned – As John Willshire also pointed out in his “What is media planning” slides, earned media has to entertain, educate, be useful, or be connective. I would utilize the company’s social media pages on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest for those purposes. One way to be connective would be to invite people to share their home interior designs. We would use social media to educate and be useful by posting home improvement tips while also having it be a channel for customer support.
I agree with many of my classmates in their assertions about the importance of targeting women, but I do believe that the age target would likely skew a little older than 18-34. Although this is a coveted age bracket for retail, aiming at women 25-54 seems like it will go much farther. It’s one thing to get your brand and brand messaging in front of a lot of eyes, and young eyes are often responsible for a great deal of spending, but if you’re not reaching a group who identifies with your brand, and who has an inclination to spend on your brand, you’re wasting your time and advertising dollars.
I would utilize paid search advertising to generate interest at the search phase, which is key for a retail business like this, especially for a lesser known company. Also, as much as people want to argue about the death of television, or at least the death of television advertising, this needs to be a piece of the pie to make a dent for a company seeking to drive awareness. Vignettes will run in female-skewing programming, including daytime television. We can potentially create partnerships with certain brand-fit networks such as Lifetime to align with a strong female brand. In this way, we can also negotiate to have our commercials and brand messaging shared directly through their digital/social platforms.
For a brand like this, Pinterest would absolutely be at the core of my social strategy. According to studies by Business Insider and full service agency Modea, Pinterest users are largely affluent women, with a sweet spot in the 25-34 range and not a very significant dropoff in the 35-44 range. Studies show that people trust the words of their friends over the pandering of brands, and Pinterest is the perfect platform for these personal referrals. Our imagery can easily be taken and pinned to fan boards, with comments associated with it. Women looking through Pinterest for ideas on their next bedset or nightstand or patio furniture can easily find these examples.
I would also hire a company like Curalate, to up the dialogic ante. Curalate is a marketing and analytics leader that specifically focuses on visuals around the web. They would be able to help us with our reach, in engaging with current and potential customers and, in determining the success rate and areas for improvement of our overall campaigns. Here, the brand will not just market to customers. It will market with customers, sharing a dialogue that will help increase brand awareness on the consumer end, and on the brand side, allow my company to listen to, and take heed in addressing, what our potential customers actually want.
I would focus on using a variety of social media, including Facebook and Twitter, but would use Pinterest as my main area of focus in order to build a comprehensive paid, owned, and earned media ecosystem. Pinterest itself is free (owned), but allows for opportunities for paid media (promoted pins and paid pins from pinterest influencers), and earned media (pins that are organically repinned and favorited by others). Pinterest is ideal because it is all image based, and individuals can search for items they are interested in. As a company, I can create boards that fit themes; rooms; color palettes; and more. I could do in-kind advertising by creating partnerships with other adjacent companies, pinning their items in my board in exchange for them pinning my items on their boards.
Twitter would be a place for more conversational connections, and Facebook would be the foundation of the social media platform (Pinterest can be accessed as an Add-On from Facebook, although it is not required to have a Facebook account to access Pinterest).
I would also create interactive content, like online quizzes (i.e., What’s Your Design Style?) and keep track of trends from the results to target future design offerings. I would also watch the real time sharing of individual pins to understand demand of current products to better target production and operations.
Pinterest is extremely popular for the target audience of 25-34 year old women, which supports the decision to use it as a main platform for media.
With social media as the foundation of advertising, we can truly make things people want, rather than making people want things, which is the direction of marketing in the 21st century.
I was just thinking about this discussion again regarding creating e-commerce furniture brand similar to wayfair.com and how I would approach purchasing furniture. Personally, if I were deciding to buy furniture, I would probably buy from a company that has a physical location or showcase warehouse where I see the items before making the purchase or look up items I am interested online to see the reviews and deals that are available. This reminds me of the readings we did earlier in the semester about ZMOT and how the experiences others have can have a major influence in our decision making process. How can we start generating buzz about our e-commerce brand over those established brands such as Crate and Barrel or Ikea that not only cater to the same target audience but also has actual physical store presence? These brands have stores that are decorated to appeal to our target audience and it is easier forge a personal connection with furniture where you are seeing and experiencing it firsthand.
For an e-commerce furniture brand, this firsthand experience is difficult to establish. I would be reluctant to buy anything that is exclusively online without any reviews about the product. This is why e-commerce brands must forge partnerships with established social media personalities or websites that cater to our target audience, to generate interest and a connection to the items that are being sold. We follow social media personalities or blogs because they have a certain lifestyle we are interested in or want to emulate. This personal connection that these social media personalities have with their target audience is what essentially promotes the products and motivates them to purchase.
A brand that is based solely on e-commerce would be highly reliant on its social media team to continue to generate buzz for the company. Within the POEM model, I find that maintaining your paid and earned media to be the most difficult in this case. You need to follow the trends within your target audience and be vigilant on your paid media personalities to maintain good PR. This is what is going drive your audience to your owned media. Once you are able to drive this audience to your owned media, it is important to engage the customers with your own social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook so that you can have a direct channel of communication between your target audience and your company, and not just through paid media such as bloggers or design websites. This is key when nurturing customer growth and engagement with the brand.
If I were launching an e-commerce furniture brand, I’d definitely use the expected forms of owned social media (with a heavy focus on Instagram – using it to show sample rooms/layouts/products in an ideal setting.) I’d also use promoted Instagram to appeal to my target audience, which is paid, but still presents itself as organic, more than traditional paid media. I’d be sure to not only use social media, but additionally to team up with influencers (mainly bloggers) to introduce my brand in a more organic seeming manner. For example, I would pursue blogs that focused on lifestyle/home design/style that aligned with my brand, and send them items in exchange for postings. This would help present the items in a way that would seem more natural, and appeal to those already interested in the blog, but might not know my brand.
I think these product placements/sponsored posts are a really great method of introducing a product to a desired target audience. This seems to be a huge trend right now, and is definitely interrupting traditional display advertising. If my product line were similar to that of wayfair – I would be pursuing W25-54 who are interested in home design. The products are modern and stylish, so for a launch, I would not yet be pursuing those with utilitarian furniture needs. Teaming up with other brands who align with my target seems like a great method.
I have almost trained my eyes to dismiss an ad that is foreign to me, and focus on the content – so it is best to put the product in that space when possible.
Finally, I don’t think id focus on mobile, more than simply being on people’s Instagram feed/social network feeds. Right now, mobile advertising has not figured out a way to come off as disruptive. With paid advertising in Instagram, I’d still be happy with being seen on mobile, and not producing a negative experience for my target audience.
Questions:
How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem? What would you do first and why? What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
Answers:
My plan, in short, would be to listen, spend to build, dialogue and create: in that order.
Firstly, I would do extensive research. The research stage would have a long lead time before any product launches, in this case. By research, however, I am not referring to product research: rather I am referring to researching the individual social media outlets. I would take the time to feel out different communities within the outlets, listen to what people are saying about furniture and furniture brands, open dialogue and discover who our social champions are. I would go to the pages and profiles of people who seem to have an interest in furniture. I would listen to what they were saying. Not just what they are saying but how they saying it. How they communicate. I would go to the pages of competitors and find out what real people were saying about those brands. Find out how people were communicating (or trying to communicate) with the brand. All of this will help to both identify targets and to learn how to talk to them.
Secondly, I would use this information to target paid ads and to boost posts from my brand page. The main purpose in doing so would be to build a core “following” and make initial contact other users.
From there, I would begin to dialogue. If I were thinking about launching a specific product, I would post things with the express intent of receiving feedback. Perhaps post three or four different versions of the product to get feedback on all of them. I would ask follow up questions to those that posted on the topics. Create a real discussion about our products and/or potential products. This will help find out what people really want from us. How they view the brand. How we can use that information to tweak how we position the brand.
Additionally, it will help us find out who are champions are. The people who have taken an interest in what we are doing. Once we know who they are and have researched what and how they communicate, we can begin to let them know about things going on within the company. Product launches. Sales. Events. Having already established a relationship and an ongoing dialogue with these people, it will come off far less like advertising and far more like a part of an ongoing conversation.
I think that it’s important not to determine a target market before spending the time to get the lay of the social land as it relates to our brand and similar brands.
In the case of social media, we don’t have to go to our marketing lab to concoct a theoretical target audience for our product. We can take steps to let our target market develop naturally and find out who these people really are in practice.
Equally as important, through social media, we can go beyond simply knowing their stats, demographic info, likes, dislikes, etc. on paper. We can delve further by discussing the aforementioned with them. Having a conversation with them provides us the luxury of being able to follow up on the base level, qualitative data!
In short, instead of targeting an audience, we will be giving them the opportunity to target us. I believe that this will give us a more real and vital picture of who our consumer is. Additionally, it will give us the opportunity to start an open, transparent and ongoing conversation. Within that dialogue, we can sell subtle and avoid the sterile, uninspired, hard sell that is currently employed by most brands in the social sphere. In my opinion, the latter method seems to end up with a given brand having a conversation with themselves.
Suppose you were responsible for launching an e-commerce furniture brand similar to wayfair.com. How would you make social media the primary communication channel while building a comprehensive paid, owned, earned media ecosystem? What would you do first and why? What kinds of target audiences would you pursue?
I agree with so much that’s already been commented except for the target audiences. Yes, it should be broken down by age but if we are specifically launching an e-commerce furniture brand similar to wayfair.com, we have to think about average income of our target audience. If you go to wayfair.com, their furniture is chic and trendy, and also expensive! Even Ikea has quality chic and trendy furniture at a cheaper price. If you target too young like 18, you may not get many sales because what 18 year old can afford a $1,000 bed? If it’s our goal to reach out to only those who can afford these luxuries and make it something upscale and available to few, then it would be good to research based on where women with high income or in families with high income shop online so that paid ads may be placed there.
I would suggest Women in their 20s and 30s who are either newly married or newly moving as it is in many women the drive to design their new home to make it their own and what better place to start than online with this new brand.
Pinterest would be a wonderful place to light the fire for this launch! I know women who spend hours on there clicking and pinning things they like, some of whom could definitely afford and would like the styles of a furniture brand similar to wayfair.com.
Instagram would also be an awesome way to get the brand out there. There could be a hashtag created specifically for the brand and encouage users who have the product to use the hashtag to spread awarenesss.
It would also be possible to have the brand create its own social media within the brand’s website, where users can share photos and reviews of the product. This would have to be monitored heavily, so perhaps it is a good idea once the brand becomes more recognized in the online community.
Research is key and would be the first step. Get together who, how, why you want to target and find simple and effective ways to do so. Data is so important these days and more easily available to the public. This will weed out wasted time and money on getting the brand out there.