Customer Management and Retention Concepts using Social Media

Customer Management and Retention Concepts using Social Media

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nExecutive Summary

nNike Company is a world leader in the sports brands such as apparels and shoes. It utilizes social media platforms including Pinterest, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter aiming to attract more customers as well as retaining its present customer base. Through the social media, Nike is able to relate and follow customers. These networks help the company to establish customers loyalty because it helps to create passionate association between his product and the company. The use of such platforms should offer customers a chance to tell their narratives. This is very important as it help to build kinship, which facilitates development of loyalty. In addition, they are designed to deal with concerns of customers that are raised publicly. Various critical factors determine the success of social media in customers retention. Some of these include date and time, post type, call to action, and personality. For instance, the firm must use a personality that resonates well with target customers on social media.

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nIntroduction

nNike Inc. is a MNE that deals in the manufacturing, improvement, design, transactions and marketing of accessories, kits, apparel and footwear across the globe. Reports have indicated that Nike is one of the prominent Sports brands in the globe. It is the biggest producer and suppliers of sports equipment, apparel and athletic shoes. The firm was initiated in 1964 by Knight Phil and Bowerman Bill and was registered as Blue Ribbon Sports. However, in 1971, it was updated to Nike, Inc. and embraced the swoosh logo. By 1980, the company had acquired more than half to the shoe market in the United States (Walker 2014). Nike Inc. has grown to become a world leader in terms of convincing and innovative marketing. In addition, the company has recorded increase in sales reaching $21 billion in more than 160 nations. Furthermore, it have approximately 36, 000 workers in different regions of the globe. As a sport brand, Nike utilizes social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and Instagram aiming to attract more customers as well as retaining its present customer base (Moth 2013).

nThe Market Opportunity, which customers are Nike Inc. targeting via Social Media

nNike Company is increasingly utilizing digital marketing and social media to link with their target customers. Social media provide an important opportunity in the market, which helps to maintain the existing customers (Mayar and Ramsey 2011). Happy and engaged customers are crucial assets for companies since they increase the loyalty, which contribute to repeat purchasing. Furthermore, it assists in diffusing the good reputation about the company, which is precisely vital given the increased linkage of the social period (Moth 2013). Through the social media, Nike is able to interact and follow with former and present customers. The connectivity enables the company to reach out to customers as well as customers reaching out the firm. More importantly, social media helps the company to establish customers loyalty because it helps to create passionate link between his product and the organization (Walker 2014). These networks provide platforms for communication, which makes them feel valued, appreciated and connected. Similarly, the company is able to adjust different items after identifying various issues raised by customers. Consequently, the company is able to approach its relations with understanding and compassion (Moth 2013). Social media is a platform, which maintains and builds easier interactions easier.

nNike Inc. uses social media to target its customers. In this respect, it applies social media to attract the youth. For instance, the firm has launched a social campaign that encourages young audiences to share their personal sports narrative. The social promotion duped “What do you play for?” is intended to make the youth happy about their own engagement with sports and giving their stories (Walker 2014). The main objective is to promote partnership between athletics products and a social media company known as Brickfish and a social link for teenagers. The social media campaign is important for Nike Inc. in its attempt to develop an online society in the young generation (Venkatesan 2017). It also offer a stage where the young people and tell their private narratives concerning sports and to encourage them to be innovative about sharing their narrative visually. Moreover, it presents various levels of participation among the young people hence they can participate in social change initiatives (Moth 2013). Similarly, these opportunities help them to become photojournalist and disseminate their stories concerning sports for change.

nSuch social media campaign intended to target different customers uses Google +, Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook. For instance, Nike company different Facebook pages which targets specific customer bases such as footballers, golfers, athletes, and snowboarders. There are two Facebook pages for football target customers (Walker 2014). The first is designed for the American sport version while the other is for the rest of the world. The second Facebook page has more than 17.2 million fans while the first has 2.4 million. The majority of the devoted sport pages are regularly updated with images and videos. Nike Company has a reputation for launching huge branding campaigns hence its Facebook pages do not involve sales promotions and smaller challenges that normally feature in the consumer brands (Walker 2014). However, it utilizes its social media challenge to cross-advertise major marketing crusades. For instance, during major tournament, it has initiated a campaign such as #MyTimeIsNow that aims at encouraging the teams and sportsmen to perform their training utilizing its Nike+ products (Moth 2013).

nIn Twitter, Nike attempts to reach outs various customers base such as fans and players in FuelBand, basketball and golf. It has separate feeds for its supplementary brands just like in Facebook. In most cases, the feeds concentrate on reacting to @mentions instead of concentrating on marketing messages (Walker 2014). For instance, Nike.com feed replies to nearly 100 tweets daily related to product details, stock information and queries. Similarly, together with ASOS, the feeds provide an opportunity for the company to offer customer services hence it is able to resolve issues dealing with technical needs and product questions. In addition, Nike Football feed is very important as it offers encouragements, product information and training advice to its target customers (Moth 2013). Additionally, Nike Running answers users having questions and they deliver motivational advice, and explain training schedule. Therefore, the feed provide a wide range of answers to customers questions daily (Walker 2014). Through these customer service feeds, the company has a better chance of retaining customers.

nApproaches to Retention, Conversion and Management via Social Media

nVarious scholars have argued that in the current market it is easier for organizations to retain a customer rather than gain a new one. Reports noted that approximately 80 per cent of the revenues acquired by companies in the future would be gained from only 20 per cent of its current customers (Bowen and Ozuem 2015). Moreover, Turban et al (2015) argued that an increase in retention of customers by only 5 per cent could raise the profitability of the company by more than 75 per cent. With the advancement of social media, sport companies such as Nike have a chance to establish relationship with customers at any time throughout the day who affect the rates of referrals and maintain its industries thriving (Turban et al 2015). Social media campaigns use a wide range of approaches aiming to raise customer retention.

nThe first approach to customers retention include acceptance of fans as the brand advocates. The use of these networks such as Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter should offer customers a chance to tell their narratives and voices. This is very important as it help to build kinship, which facilitates development of loyalty (Kerpen 2011). Sharing video and other stories on social media helps the company to understand customers core values. In addition, the organization also celebrates the supporters of its brand and calls for participation. Through social media promotions such as “what do you play for?” the company celebrates the followers experience and commends itself to consumers in the course (Gensler, et al 2013).

nSecondly, the customer retention approach via the social media attempts to offer excellent customer service. Supporters of a particular Nike brand who rely on Facebook for responses can easily become loyal to the brand particular if the company answers to them instantly and with precise information (Tuten and Solomon 2014). Nike has perfected in this area as it uses Nike.com feed, Nike Running and Nike Football to quickly respond to concerns raised by more than two million customers within a very small period of a post or comment to the page (Walker 2014). Nike Inc. believes that conversation between the customer and company on the social media provide an opportunity to build an enduring relationship with different persons. It has empowered its members of the team to engage in activities that can enhance the customer experience and restore possibly broken associations (Kerpen 2011). Through such actions, Nike delivers the tools and motivates its teams to participate in activities that can increase the experience of customers in-store and online.

nThirdly, the retention approach of customers is designed to demonstrate extra application of different products. In this regard, the company can describe extra uses of a certain product to the customers (Gensler, et al 2013). For instance, Nike Company uploads various videos, which openly resonate with current customers. In addition, the current customers also serve as their target audience (Moth 2013). Via these videos, Nike informs their customers the utilization of different products. Consequently, customer continues to purchase their products.

nFourthly, customer retention approaches are designed to deal with concerns of customers that are raised publicly. Business marketers and owners wish to establish strategies with care and evade mistakes (Mayar and Ramsey 2011). Nonetheless, brands are susceptible to mismanaged incidents, crisis on social media, and mishandled campaigns. When a company makes a mistake related to the brand, the social media offers an opportunity to apologize and determine a way to progress (Turban et al 2015). Research indicates that apologetic marketing approaches in cases of mistakes in the social media are effective to win the support of their customers. Organizations retain customers when they admit a mistake and quickly rectify it (Venkatesan 2017).

nNonetheless, Hamilton, Kaltcheva and Rohm (2016) argued that companies such as Nike must take care in their customer retention effort through social media. In this regard, the social media can present various drawbacks, which can affect the firm. For instance, social media can facilitate disgruntled customers to give negative feedbacks about the brand (Hamilton, Kaltcheva and Rohm 2016). In some instances, discontented workers have used social media to deliver concerns related to their bosses or work environment, which affect the companys image. In addition, these platforms offer users easy and electrifying ability to share issues and reactions on different posts (Gensler, et al 2013). Therefore, a firm may get embarrassed when fans notice mistakes in its posts that are easily shared all over social media within a short period.

nMoreover, companies such as Nike must be aware of the huge amount of resources needed to successfully run a successful social media campaign. For instance, social media requires 24/7 monitoring hence it needs more time in order to sustain an interactive presence ion social media (Kumar, et al 2016). Therefore, companies with limited capital and small team have many challenges in maintaining its presence on social media. The company need to post crucial updates, give feedback and monitor its systems (Turban et al 2015). Therefore, this needs intensive investment, which can be considered as challenges in building long-term relationships with customers.

nSocial Media Implementation Options

nCritical success factors to deliver the social media retention

nVarious critical factors determine the success of social media in customers retention. Some of these include date and time, post type, call to action, and personality. Although social media is open throughout the day, there are times where most customers respond to posts from companies such as Nike (Macy and Thompson 2011). Therefore, during the day, time affect the manner in which people reacts to certain messages. For instance, it is advice to update posts on breakfast products in the morning hours as opposed to doing so at night. Additionally there are different patterns of traffic for social media platforms (Hamilton, Kaltcheva and Rohm 2016). In this case, traffic for majority of networks such as Google +, Twitter and Facebook is high from 9 a.m. but starts to diminish at 4 p.m. on the other hand, LinkedIn, which deals with expert networking has minimum traffic during working hours because most users are in their jobs. Therefore, social media campaigns on retention of customers tend to succeed when the traffic is high during the day since the majority of its users are online (Walker 2014). Furthermore, during weekends there are few users of social media as compared to weekdays.

nSecondly, the content of social media must have a stable voice and tone. The success of these platforms depends on the capacity to develop an association with customers. Therefore, establishment of such association means that the platforms require a personality that users can interact with and desire to relate to others (Kerpen 2011). The personality and tone should match the firm. For instance, social media would be able to retain many young customers when the personality is witty and light-hearted. On the contrary, it can succeed in retaining older fans if the personally remain fact-based and professionals (Turban et al 2015). Therefore, personality would determine the success of social media retention.

nThirdly, companies must be aware of the need for a call to action on most of its posts. In case a firm has a post, which does not encourage audiences to engage, most of them would decide not to (Kumar et al 2016). However, when a post demands engagement from audiences, they would be able to understand that the firm wants their participation. However, moderation on call for action is important (Gensler, et al 2013). People should be given a chance to share, re-tweet and like some post, which enhances retention of customers through social media. Finally, form of posts is an important factor in social media retention. Social media networks permits different post types whereby some updates motivates more participation than others do. Research indicates that videos and photos are most effective kinds of posts (Hamilton, Kaltcheva and Rohm 2016). Moreover, updates on text states are also effective in encouraging participation while links are poor in customers engagement. Nonetheless, links should be used in cases where the company intends to provide comprehensive information (Mayar and Ramsey 2011). Therefore, the success of social media retention is dependent on the form of post that a company uses.

nMoving from Retention to Conversion

nThe main aim of social media campaign for companies such as Nike Inc. should seek to entice potential customers, convert them to real customers and ensure that they maintain their purchase from the company (Macy and Thompson 2011). The key to this achievement to ensure that there is linkage between social media and content marketing. The first step involves enticing potential consumers. New consumers normally ask the kind of solutions that are accessible from the product (Ansarin and Ozuem 2014). Therefore, aim of the firm is to create awareness about the product on social media and ensure that the product provide the required solutions to the purchases when complete the process of making decision.

nNew customers consult a wide range of sources prior to making final decision on a particular product. In this regard, the social media platforms should facilitate effective communication between the organization and the consumers by guiding them to the sources the person require before making informed choice (Kerpen 2011). In this regard, it should encourage fans to share informative material about the product. There should be a short description or headline on the information on the social media combined with a link to access details on the website of Nike Inc. Potential customers should also have a chance to access informational content from the social networks (Constantinides 2014). The company can also use seminars and webinars to create awareness about a particular brand which a persons need to make decisions (Tuten and Solomon 2014). Finally, social media provide required conversation between prospects and company.

nThe second step involves the conversion of prospects to actual purchasers. Before buying items, customers normally consider their right solutions. Organizations that magnificently convert new probable consumers from social networks build and disseminate information that offers evidence to the sale (Hamilton, Kaltcheva and Rohm 2016). Content that helps in achieving this goal demonstrates that the companys solution delivers value as compared to other available resolutions that he/she has come across (Mayar and Ramsey 2011). At this stage, the company should use productive source of content such as explainer or demo video. Most importantly, social networks have special tools such as Little Bird, which enable the use to access the demo video that have information about the benefit. It is also important to strengthen the trust of customers by highlighting successful case studies. The final step is maintaining the converted customers. At this level, customer desire to be happy with the choices they made (Ansarin and Ozuem 2014). Therefore, social media should attempt to promote referrals and retention. In addition, companies such as Nike must ensure that clients remain satisfied.

nHow to Measure, Evaluate and Manage Difficulties or Success of Social Media Retention

nResearch has indicated that the awareness of the brand is a measure of the success of the product in reaching the target users on social media. The evaluation of this process involves alignment of social networks metrics with those of the firm (Hamilton, Kaltcheva and Rohm 2016). Three approaches can be used in the process of measurement, evaluation and management of success or difficulties in social media campaigns. These include social network engagement, influence and exposure. With regard to exposure to social media, the company must determine the number of users or people who had accessed the message (Mayar and Ramsey 2011). The measurement outlines the number of users that a company has enticed to the product via social media. This process has many drawbacks due to duplications of audiences because social measurement is unreliable in separating special audiences. Therefore, the company need to track the rate of growth as proportion of the comprehensive totals. For instance, in twitter, it should search for the number of users as well as audiences who re-tweeted to assess the approximate reach per month. Digital measurement such as TweetReach Facebook Insight can be used to determine the growth rate in twitter and Facebook respectively (Turban et al 2015).

nSecondly, the company must focus on measuring, evaluating and managing engagement. Importantly, this approach seeks to determine the number of audiences who really did something with companys social media message (Metz 2011). It is a crucial measurement since it demonstrates the number of persons who were concerned or interested in the message. Advancement of technology has enabled emergence of tools, which can manage, evaluate and measure engagement of users on these platforms. They include TweetEffect, Biz360 and Radian 6 (Kumar, et al 2016). They also outline the individuals that a company intends to maintain on these channels

nThe company should also assess the influence of social media message. The organization has to determine whether the social media campaign lead to negative, neutral or positive effects (Metz 2011). Some of the tools that can be used for this process include ScoutLabs, Radian 6, Social Mention and Twitalyzer. However, these have various limitations because they cannot provide valid results especially sentiments. Therefore, it should be validated via manual checks (Ansarin and Ozuem 2014). Lastly, in order to manage the data collected from the social media, the company should use the Lead Generation where it can use to confirm the presence or absence of an impact.

nEnd of Report Summary

nNike Inc. is one of the prominent producers of renowned brands in sports. It deals with manufacture, marketing and sales of apparels and shoes in the sports industry. Social media has played a great role in transformation of the company as it has used it in attracting and maintaining its customer base. It uses Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest in social media marketing. This has helped it to increase sales and enhance its revenue over the past decades. Social media campaign targets a specific group of audiences who are given a chance to share and interact with the company. It also helps company to respond to queries from the customers.

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nReferences

nAnsarin, M. and Ozuem, W., 2014. Social Media and Online Brand Communities. Computer-Mediated Marketing Strategies: Social Media and Online Brand Communities: Social Media and Online Brand Communities, p.1.

nBowen, G. and Ozuem, W., 2015. Computer-Mediated Marketing Strategies: Social Media and Online Brand.

nConstantinides, E., 2014. Foundations of social media marketing. Procedia-Social and behavioral sciences, 148, pp.40-57.

nGensler, S., Völckner, F., Liu-Thompkins, Y. and Wiertz, C., 2013. Managing brands in the social media environment. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(4), pp.242-256.

nHamilton, M., Kaltcheva, V.D. and Rohm, A.J., 2016. Social Media and Value Creation: The Role of Interaction Satisfaction and Interaction Immersion. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 36, pp.121-133.

nKerpen, D., 2011. Likeable social media: how to delight your customers, create an irresistible brand, and be generally amazing on facebook (& other social networks). McGraw Hill Professional.

nKumar, A., Bezawada, R., Rishika, R., Janakiraman, R. and Kannan, P.K., 2016. From social to sale: The effects of firm-generated content in social media on customer behavior. Journal of Marketing, 80(1), pp.7-25.

nMacy, B. and Thompson, T., 2011. The power of real-time social media marketing: How to attract and retain customers and grow the bottom line in the globally connected world. McGraw Hill Professional.

nMayar, V. and Ramsey, G., 2011. Digital impact: the two secrets to online marketing success. John Wiley & Sons.

nMetz, A., 2011. The social customer: How brands can use social CRM to acquire, monetize, and retain fans, friends, and followers. McGraw-Hill Professional.

nMoth, D., 2013. How Nike uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. [online] Econsultancy. Available from: https://econsultancy.com/blog/62412-how-nike-uses-facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2017].

nTurban, E., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2015. Electronic commerce: A managerial and social networks perspective. Springer.

nTuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2014. Social media marketing. Sage.

nVenkatesan, R., 2017. Executing on a customer engagement strategy.

nWalker, A., 2014. Brand Focus: How Nike Excels on Social Media. [online] Nuke Suite. Available from: https://www.nukesuite.com/fr/brand-focus-nike-excels-on-social-media/ [Accessed 22 Feb. 2017].