Social Media Marketing Strategy Essay For Country Road.

Discuss About The Content In Social Media On Customer Behaviour.

Current Condition of Social Media Marketing

Organisations create social media marketing objectives to reach large numbers of customers and social media marketing is cost-effective. As stated by Tuten and Solomon (2017), social media marketing should not be taken as flipping a switching; however, social media planning should be looked at like the cooking the favourite dish. In this

Country Road is clothing retailer and it is located in Australia, New Zealand. Woolworth Holding is the parent organisation of Country Road and headquarters it at Melbourne. Country Road sells the products like clothing footwear, homewares, accessories and furniture. Revenue of the organisation touched at $238 million and numbers of employees at Country Road at present are 10,000 (Countryroad.com 2018). Country Road does the customer loyalty programme and it enables the customers to have special offers. The competitive advantage of Country Road is the product line and they do not compete with a large number of upscale designers.

Table 1: Current Condition of Social Media Marketing

(Source: Self-developed)

Country Road uses the social media marketing and it has its official pages on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest. On Facebook, it has more than 387,326 likes and on Twitter, it has more than 22k followers.

SWOT analysis

Table 2: SWOT analysis of Country Road

(Source: Self-developed)

S-O strategy: Outsource some design to growing market to keep with new trends and expand online business in key markets

W-O Strategy: Open in new stores in emerging economy and open new distribution centres in emerging economy

S-T Strategy: Outsource logistics to have more control over the production process and deliver the product line at retail stores  

W-T Strategy: Pursue strong marketing campaign on Facebook and Twitter

The purpose of investing the social media campaign is to reach the large customer base and increase the traffic on website so that the customers can purchase the products through online. The aim of the social media campaign is to drive the sale of the organisation through the retail and online platform. The goal is also associated with the organisation's enhancement of the brand image.

Social media provides the opportunities to attend the content and social media page engages the interaction with content. Influence metric means the ability to change opinion or behaviour (Ashley and Tuten 2015). The social media interaction can effect on target audience of the social media campaign. Advocacy is the suggest action to another user. Country Road needs mainly engagement of the users where the customers can interact with content.

• To build the brand image of the organisation
• To increase the customer satisfaction
• To get the idea to produce new product ideas
• To generate leads through social media pages

SWOT analysis of Country Road

In order to attend the goals of Country Road, the organisation needs to take the following strategies.

Listening: Country Road organisation uses mainly Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. These social media pages can be used as the listening media where the customers can ask the questions and queries and the PR team needs to solve the queries of the customers. Listening to the issues of the customers will eventually engage the customers more with the brand.

Interacting: Customers can use social media platform to interact with the organisation. The customers can share their feedback and concern about the brand. Country Road shares the images of the clothes and accessories; this process helps to strengthen the brand awareness, recognition and perception of the brand. Country Road can contact with LinkedIn to improve the suppliers' information.  

Engaging: The PR team can engage the customers to talk about the brand (Scott 2015). Additionally, engaged customers drive word-of-mouth publicity that would help the brand to get more customers.

Influencing: The PR team of the organisation helps the brand to market the product through content. Content marketing through Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest can influence the customers to get new products. Social media now makes the platform as social e-commerce where Country Road can make community this community will automatically promote the products of the brand.  

Connecting: Country Road can start with new social media location as they can start with a new group on social media where the brand can connect similar minded people.  

 Target audience of Country Road will be based on demographics and behaviours. Demographic market segment is based on the age, gender, occupation and socio-economic group. The target market for Country Road is the upper social class as this target market can afford the products sold by Country Road. Behavioural segmentation can also be the target of the organisation as this is based on rate of usage, benefits sought, loyalty status and readiness to purchase (Godey et al. 2016). Country Road has set of steady customers who are young and rate of usage of the products are more for them.

Table 3: Forrester Research’s Social Techno graphics Profile

(Source: Self-developed)

Facebook:

Facebook is the widest use social networking site in the world and almost more than a billion users become active on Facebook (Hudson et al. 2015). Facebook helps to reach wider customers across the globe and Facebook helps to use multiple marketing platforms, such as Groups, Pages and Ads. Facebook will help Country Road to increase the customer base and it assists to target the specific market. In addition, Facebook gives the chance to have budget-friendly advertisement. Through Facebook, Country Road will target mainly to the young generation. In Forrester Research's Social Technology Profile, young generation falls into the category of Critics.

Target Audience

Twitter:

 Twitter marketing will provide an increase in customer satisfaction with better customer service. Twitter can break the distance between distanced corporate images and here the organisation can communicate more effectively. Twitter will help Country Road to generate more traffic on the website and it will increase the customer base of the organisation. Twitter helps to follow the trends in the industry and watch the competitors closely. Country Road can generate more leads through Twitter. Twitter marketing will target mainly aged women and celebrities as they are conversationalists.  

Instagram:

In Instagram, mainly images and content drive more engaged traffic and it is more attractive than other visual social content from Pinterest and YouTube. Instagram helps to engage the customers and it helps the organisation to get the repeat purchases. Instagram marketing will attract the female customers as they are characterised as collectors. Country Road will use Instagram as the visual medium and the brand is strong on Instagram. Their fashion clothes look good on Instagram.

These three social media will help the organisation to share the content as content management system and social graph will be used. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will be used as creating a presence and manage the reality, immediacy and intimacy of the context. In addition, relationship can be maintained through social media with the customers through managing structural and flow properties in network relationship. Social media use as reputation by the organisation to monitor the passion, strength and sentiment.

Segmentation:

 Country Road will segment the market into two big market groups; the first one is demographic segment and the second one is behavioural segment. Demographic segment is about age, gender and social income group of the customers whereas, behavioural segmentation is about the customers’ benefit sought usage rate and preferences.

Target:

 Between these two groups, Country Road will target demographic segment; in this segment, Country Road will target the young generation who belong to upper middle class. Upper middle-class people will be able to purchase the products.  

The secondary target of the organisation is the middle-aged women who intend to make purchase from Country Road. The middle-aged women should be educated and belong from rich class.

Positioning:

Positioning statement of Country Road is the authentic branded products. It offers clothes for the men, women and children. The passion of the brand is created everything that is needed for the modern life. It has been on the market for 40 years and the people believe this brand.  

Strategies of Country Road

Campaign’s theme:

 The theme of social media campaign for Country Road can be ‘giveway'. Social media giveaways help the organisation to increase engagement and it helps to get more followers and likes. Giveaway means given as free; therefore, the engaged customers will get free merchandise from Country Road, this strategy will engage the customers to gather potential lead.  

Facebook Giveways

Country Road will announce the contest 2 weeks before the contest will start on Facebook. Each day, a post will be shared about the contest. Each Saturday, an easy puzzle will be posted at 4 pm on Facebook post. The users need to answer on comment section on Facebook and they have to tag two of their friends on this post. This way, entries can provide a buzz on Facebook and maximum people get to know about social media pages of Country Road. Some of the puzzles will be related to Country Road’s products. Some of the lucky persons will get the giveways.

Instagram Giveaways  

On Instagram, Country Road can start the campaign to wear Country Road brand dress and share the image giving #countryroad. This campaign will help the organisation to create much sensation on Instagram. The people need to share the image on Instagram page of Country Road. Highest likes image on each week will get cool giveways.

Twitter Giveways

 Twitter is a great venue to run a social media campaign. Here, Country Road will ask the question about Country Road history. People need to retweet this along with the need to post the right answer. In this way, users will always check the latest entries from Country Road twitter handle. They can use hashtag campaign like #countryroadhistory.   

The customers talk about the brand on social media pages and the PR team can answer in the comments and they can answer back if some users inbox on social media pages. It helps the customers to shape the opinion and the customers get influenced from the other customers to purchase the products. Customers are the contributor and they are not the promoter of the products or services (Kumar et al. 2016). Country Road can get up close and personal content with content marketing. Country Road knows the target audiences are mainly youth; therefore, they can start with colourful and youth-specific content. Country Road can sponsor some movies so that they can use the movie title as content. In addition, Country Road can start the blog and they can post the link to the blog on the Facebook or Twitter pages. The content of the blogs will be related to the fashion.

• Purpose-driven content marketing
• More consumer-value driven marketing
• Engaging content
• Micro- content
• Create at the moment
• Use the blurring content in a smart way
• No religious and biased content

On Facebook, contents must be unique, small and engaging. It can increase quality sales and it adds more value to the organisation. On Twitter, Country Road needs to share the content on 140 characters and it can better the pulse on the industry. Instagram needs quality images and videos; these contents can accelerate the growth of the business.

Figure: Facebook Content example

Figure 2: Instagram content example

Country Road has the communication and advertising using Radio, television and transit. This organisation has marketing campaign using online advertisements like PPC and SEO. It has been using place media like ads in shopping malls, universities also. This new planning will show only social media marketing.

Table 4: Integrated social media marketing strategy

(Source: Self-developed)

Reference List

Ashley, C. and Tuten, T., 2015. Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), pp.15-27.

Country Road. 2018. Country Road Fashion. Available at: https://www.countryroad.com/ [Accessed on 27^th Apr 2018]

Godey, B., Manthiou, A., Pederzoli, D., Rokka, J., Aiello, G., Donvito, R. and Singh, R., 2016. Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity and consumer behaviour. Journal of business research, 69(12), pp.5833-5841.

Hudson, S., Roth, M.S., Madden, T.J. and Hudson, R., 2015. The effects of social media on emotions, brand relationship quality, and word of mouth: An empirical study of music festival attendees. Tourism Management, 47, pp.68-76.

Kumar, 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 behaviour. Journal of Marketing, 80(1), pp.7-25.

Scott, D.M., 2015. The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. John Wiley & Sons.

Stelzner, M., 2014. 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Social media examiner, pp.1-52.

Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. London: Sage.