Social media has become an integral part of our life, with an estimate of 2.3 billion active users. Rather than connecting to friends, family, news, and colleagues, people are using social media to connect to marketers, companies, and brands. Unlike the past, where marketers advertised and hoped for the best, social media gives an opportunity to engage the clients in real-time. Before investing in social media marketing, brands need to understand the social media objectives, useful sites, develop a banner ad, strategies to use, and the metrics to measure the success of the social media campaign.
Choosing the right social media channel is ideal for the success of social media marketing. The choice should be influenced by the target audience and the most likely platform they use. Instagram has a wide range of users, i.e., all classes of income earners. It is ideal for Colonized Coffee as long as the buyers are willing and able to pay. Since Facebook is a mobile app, it will be easy to offer real-time feedback to clients. Analyzing approaches used by competitors is significant before developing the content to use.
Most companies struggle to define clear objectives for their social media activities. Creating awareness for Colonized Coffee will reduce the sales process and increase market share. It is necessary to analyze the brand positioning strategies and understand the impact of social media marketing on the brand. For the brand uniqueness, create original content, personalize promotion, aim for the target audience, and profile prospectively. Uniqueness is significant in attracting the attention of the audience.
Increasing the social media community and accurately targeting a potential audience is a significant objective of social media marketing. To reduce annoyance ads in social media, marketers should target prospective customers. In the case of Colonized Coffee, selecting probable clients and popping up the ad in their profiles would be ideal rather than allowing the pop-ups in every social media user. Brand image and popularity improve as the number of followers increases.
Strengthening engagement strategies increases customer loyalty. Marketers’ primary objective is to create a pool of clients and maintain a long-lasting connection with the customers. Engaging influential social media followers will increase the Colonized Coffee awareness to many people. Brand Ambassadors with a high level of engagement is an effective social media strategy that can be used.
Metrics are put in place to learn what is successful, what needs to be amended, and how to improve it. Determine the social media goals before reacting to comments and tweets posted on the brand. Social media is used for several purposes, from broadcasting news to engaging customers in creating brand images (Soedarsono et al., 2020). Identifying what to be achieved is significant in determining if the efforts put into social media marketing are worth it. At the start of the campaign, create metrics to measure marketing goals. In the case of Colonized Coffee, tracking the number of customers increasing over a period is a vital metric to understand the impact of social media marketing.
Social media platforms have provided an advanced marketing strategy with less effort required. Social media networks have changed from being communication channels only to marketing places. With a good understanding of the targeted audience and marketing goals, social media offers a real-time platform to improve the image of a brand (Soedarsono et al., 2020). Depending on the target audience and the most likely platform they use frequently, marketers can track the improvement of a brand and offer real-time feedback to clients. Since the Colonized Coffee products are affordable to many, using social media and, more specifically, Instagram for marketing purposes will be ideal.
The Valentine’s Day Instagram marketing campaign for Colonized Coffee will include the promotion of the post that acknowledges and engages customers to buy a cup of coffee and receive another cup for free later. Coffee is a type of drink that suits casual, business, or romantic dates (Kurniawan & Rewindinar, 2021). Since Valentine’s Day is a day that celebrates couples or people that are in love with each other, having a cup of coffee together and paying less is an attractive option for many couples. Therefore, the campaign will target both male and female audiences aged from 18 to 30. The psychographic information will include marital status as mainly, the campaign targets unmarried couples or single people who frequent coffee shops, restaurants, or other food joints.
The post for the Instagram campaign of Colonized Coffee will look like this. The engagement strategies for such a post will include likes and comments, where users can tag their friends, partners, or loved ones which whom they would like to share the cup of coffee.
The progress of the campaign will be measured with metrics such as followers’ growth rate, comments per post, engagement per follower, and reach. Followers’ growth rate is one of the least significant ones because seeing the promo post does not have a goal of encouraging users to subscribe to the account (Robertson, 2018). However, growth in followers can be one of the consequences of a successful campaign. Secondly, comments per post also can act as indicators of people’s reactions. Although there is not much to comments, some users might use the comment section as a way to express their reaction or as a way to invite somebody for a cup of coffee by tagging them. Engagement per follower is an important metric as many posts on Instagram remain unseen due to the constant development and changes in the platform’s algorithms (Robertson, 2018). For businesses who want to promote their product, this metric is essential as it represents the number of followers who have seen the post. Finally, there is a reach metric that represents the number of people who had seen the post in general. This is also important as it may be a representation of how well the post was incorporated into the algorithm so that the post got recommended to users who do not know or follow the account.
Using an Instagram campaign as an active marketing strategy is beneficial to businesses such as Colonized Coffee. The coffee industry is a challenging market because of the stiff competition and wide variety of small and large companies that basically offer the same product. Therefore, applying active marketing and creative social media campaigns is an effective way to gain a competitive advantage (Dharmayanti & Darma, 2020). The difference between active and passive marketing is that inactive marketing campaigns are mainly in the time span that they are aimed at. Active marketing implies a short-term campaign, such as a special Valentine’s Day offer, while passive campaigns are aimed at long-term advertisements. There are instances where passive marketing strategy would work for the Colonized Coffee company as well. For example, placing a native advertisement that would attract customers that may share businesses’ values or interests of the company’s audience.
References
Dharmayanti, P. D., & Darma, G. S. (2020). The use of Instagram in coffee shop. International Research Journal of Management, IT and Social Sciences, 7(4), 48-56.
Kurniawan, M. S., & Rewindinar, R. (2021). Point Coffee’s Digital Communication Strategies through Post Feeds Instagram. International Journal of Social Science and Business, 5(4).
Robertson, M. (2018). Instagram Marketing: How to Grow Your Instagram Page And Gain Millions of Followers Quickly With Step-by-Step Social Media Marketing Strategies.
Soedarsono, D. K., Mohamad, B., Adamu, A. A., & Pradita, K. A. (2020). Managing Digital Marketing Communication of Coffee Shop Using Instagram. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies, 14(5).
ABC Company specializes on various electronic products. In this instagram campaign, the product chosen is its new model of Smartphone that was recently introduced into the market. The main reason of choosing this product is that it was recently introduced into the market, but clients are not aware of its existence. It has some unique features that put it ahead of its competitors in the market. However, the sales rate is still relatively low because it is not properly known by the customers.
This campaign will benefit a lot from this campaign because it will promote awareness of this product. Customers will be aware of its existence hence its sales will be expected to increase. The campaign will also promote the brand of this company. According to Creadick (2014), when a product is promoted under its parent brand, then all other products using the same brand get to be impacted positively. As such, all other products of this firm using the same brand name will benefit. This new product targets the youth who are the main users of Instagram. As such, the choice of the product suits this campaign because the right target audience will be reached by this promotion.
The Main Purpose of the Instagram Campaign
The main purpose of this Instagram campaign is to promote social media marketing for ABC Company, specifically targeting its newly introduced Smartphone. This company has been using mass media campaign to reach out to its target audience. However, this campaign will be the beginning of a new journey where this firm will be using social media marketing actively as a way of reaching out to its target audience.
The main target market information for this campaign will be based on the target audience. As such, the information will be design to appeal to the youth, especially those in their late teens and the young adults who have the capacity to make a decision about the kind of phone that should be bought for them by their parents (Cocq, 2015). Some of the young adults have the capacity to purchase this product from their own earnings hence do not need any parental support.
The Instagram message will be designed in a way that convinces this target group based on the current market trends and other forces that are currently influencing their purchasing decisions. According to Evans, Mabey, and Mandiberg (2015), when developing a message that targets the youth, it is often important to understand the emerging tastes and preferences. The youths value fashion a lot.
The Main Contest of the Instagram Campaign
Main purpose of the contest
This contest aims at identifying the right approach that this firm can use in its Instagram campaign. The company is planning to initiate a massive social media campaign, and Instagram campaign will be the first step in this ambitious project. The purpose of this project is to allow the marketing department of this firm to identify some of the best strategies that is can use to in social media campaign.
The key rules of engagement for success
The key engagement rule for the success in this contest is originality. The participants will be required to embrace creativity when coming up with their campaign and to avoid reproducing campaigns that already exist. The participants will be expected to work individually and only involve the project manager in case there is some form of help that they need. The contestants will be required to present their work within the timeframe set.
The main incentives for the winners
The winner of this contest shall be given a cash price of $ 60,000. The first runners up will be given $ 30,000, while the second runners up will be given $ 10,000. These top three contestants will be given opportunity to work on the new social media campaign strategies at mid-managerial level within the marketing department.
An example entry picture
The participants are encouraged to be creative in their work. The pictures that they use must be of the product being promoted. Examples of recommended pictures are shown below.
Figure 1: Example of recommended pictures.
The Metrics to Be Used to Monitor Progress of the Campaign
It will be important to have a clear metrics of monitoring the progress of this campaign. The project manager will be responsible for monitoring the progress and success of the campaign. One of the metrics that will be used is originality of the idea. The work of the participants will be assessed based on their originality. Another metric will be the level of creativity. Their work will be assessed in terms of how it brings out the value that the product offers based on the needs of target audience. A successful campaign will be that which skillfully intertwines the needs of the customers with product features. As such, the target audience will be convinced that the product offers the best value compared to other brands in the market.
Overall Benefits for the Company Using an Instagram Campaign
This Instagram campaign will be very beneficial for this company. During this promotional period, the message about the competition will spread within the country. This in itself will be a promotional strategy that will strengthen the brand of this firm. During the period of the promotion, many people, including those who are not taking part in the campaign, will want to know what the campaign is all about.
As such, they will get to know about the product in more details. This is one of the most appropriate ways of promoting a given brand and products. People will go to the internet to know more about these products and the parent brand. As Lamdan (2015) notes, customers are likely to remember a promotional campaign message if they actively participated in searching for the message on their own other than in cases where they are forced to listen to the advertisements in various media platforms. The campaign will have a lasting positive impact on this company.
Active Marketing and Passive Marketing
Passive marketing is a strategy where a firm makes it possible for the customers to do the searching of a firm’s products and brand. It involves use of websites where clients can get all the information they need. On the other hand, active marketing involves making deliberate attempts to attract attention of the customers by presenting to them a promotional message about a product or brand (Webb & Laing, 2015). Passive marketing can bring benefit to this company if it creates a stable website where clients can get the information they need. Through such websites, the firm can pass messages that will convince the customers about the superiority of the products offered by this firm.
References
Cocq, C. (2015). Indigenous Voices on the Web: Folksonomies and Endangered Languages. The Journal of American Folklore, 128(509), 273–285.
Creadick, A. (2014). Everybody’s Doing It: Teaching Popular Culture. Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, 24(1-2), 15–24.
Evans, S., Mabey, J., & Mandiberg, M. (2015). Editing for Equality: The Outcomes of the Art Feminism. Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 34(2), 194–203.
Katona, Z., & Sarvary, M. (2014). B2B Social Media-t’s Communication, Not Marketing. California Management Review, 56(3), 142–156.
Lamdan, S. (2015). Social Media Privacy: A Rallying Cry to Librarians. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 85(3), 261–277.
Webb, H., & Laing, K. (2015). Engaging with Social Media: The Emily Carr University of Art and Design Library Experience. Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 34(1), 137–151.
The arrival of the Internet has revolutionized the marketing space by changing the way businesses reach their potential clients. Specifically, the emergence of social media in 2003-2004 entrenched the concept of e-marketing, which continues to evolve and shape the marketing space. Today, almost all businesses around the world, regardless of the size or location, have digital footprints through the different available social media platforms.
The common and popular platforms include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram with several others competing for a space in a market dominated by the big four. Social media plays a central role in marketing given that over three billion users use the platforms every month.
As a marketing tool, social media helps companies to create brand awareness by reaching out to millions of potential customers with their tailored messages. This aspect allows organizations to increase their customer base, build a reputation, create demand for their products, and ultimately increase revenues. Without social media, businesses would not remain relevant in the highly competitive fast-paced globalized market. In addition, social media is cost-effective because it is cheaper as compared to the traditional way of advertisement and marketing mainly through print media, radio, and television. This paper discusses Instagram as a useful e-marketing tool using the concepts of the marketing mix and PESTLE analysis.
The Concept of Marketing Mix
The marketing mix is a concept used by a business for strategic positioning to satisfy the target market’s needs and achieve its goals and objectives, especially to increase revenues and remain competitive. There are four critical elements, commonly known as the 4Ps – product, place, promotion, and price (Khan, 2014). Marketers focus on each element during designing a marketing strategy to manipulate it and create a mix that will ultimately attract customers and increase revenue. In essence, the success of any business depends largely on the effectiveness of the marketing mix created to create brand awareness.
The first ‘P’ (Product) is the goods and services that companies offer to consumers. The common features associated with products include packaging, brand name, quality, warranties, and other attributes (Al Badi, 2015). The second ‘P’ (Price) is the amount of money that customers have to pay to get a product or service. The pricing approach depends on different factors depending on the nature of the product or service and the target market. This section focuses on place and promotion as key elements of the marketing mix.
Place
In marketing, “place” is termed as the various distribution channels that businesses use to get their products to their customers (Wu & Li, 2018). Therefore, the nature of the product or service determines the appropriate channel of distribution that should be used. “Place” is an important element of a marketing mix because without it, goods and services will not reach the targeted customers, and thus the business will not take place (Išoraitė, 2016).
The term distribution channel is a broad concept that involves other smaller aspects such as warehousing, transportation, and inventory control. In other words, place, as a distribution channel, could be termed as the mechanism through which goods and services move from the producer or manufacturer to the consumers. Therefore, place could be a physical location or virtual stores where goods and services can be availed to customers. The involved players in this channel include retailers, wholesalers, direct sales, and the Internet. All these players have specific roles to play in the physical movement of products and services to consumers.
Promotion
Promotion is the process through which potential customers are made aware of the existence of a business’ goods and services. It involves advertisement and selling of products and services. This element plays an important role in the success of any form of marketing because without it, customers may not know if a certain product or service exists (Nuseir & Madanat, 2015). Promotion activities are geared toward informing and persuading clients to buy products and services. Therefore, it involves creating appealing and convincing messages and using the right channels for the information to reach the target market in its intended form and content.
Advertisements can be done through radio, television, print media, and over the Internet, which has become an indispensable channel of promoting products. Companies can also use other strategies including offering free samples, discounts, peer-to-peer (word of mouth) advertising, leaflets, posters, free gifts and user trial among other similar alternatives. In addition, endorsements by famous people and celebrities are important in promotion because consumers have role models, which could be used to influence consumption and sales. Therefore, both place and promotion are central elements of any form of marketing mix. However, the Internet and the emergence of social media have changed the way companies use these elements as discussed later in this paper.
PESTEL Analysis
PESTEL analysis is a marketing concept and tool that businesses use to assess the macro or external environmental factors that can affect both short-term and long-term operations. The term PESTEL is an acronym standing for physical, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors that should be analyzed to understand the environment under which a business operates (Sridhar, 2016). Political factors cover how governments might influence businesses and to what extent including policies, political stability, foreign trade policy, taxation, and restrictions among other related aspects. Economic factors determine how organizations conduct business and projected levels of growth and profitability (Shtal et al., 2018).
Some of the economic factors include interest rates, consumer’s purchasing power, inflation, exchange rates, and a country’s economic growth status and prospects among other elements. Environmental factors are issues associated with the environment, such as sustainability, pollution, carbon credits, and the availability of raw materials. Legal factors deal with laws and regulations of doing business, patents, advertising standards, and product safety among other related aspects. However, the focus of this paper is technological and social factors as elements of PESTEL.
Technological Factors
In marketing, technological factors are elements pertaining to innovations in technology to promote or hinder advertising and marketing of goods and services. These factors affect marketing in different ways including how goods and services are produced and distributed together with new avenues and strategies for communicating with the target market (Roman, 2015). Understanding technological factors is important because it allows marketers to know how emerging changes in the space might affect marketing either favorably or unfavorably. For instance, in contemporary times where technological evolution is fast-paced with new ways of advertising emerging consistently, it is important to assess how such changes are likely to affect business operations.
Some factors to be considered include incentives, automation, research and development, ease of accessing new technology, innovation levels, technological awareness, the Internet and communication infrastructure, and the life cycle of new technologies. Businesses can use this information to make informed decisions on how to deploy new technology strategically to achieve both long-term and short-term marketing goals (Ho, 2014). For instance, Instagram is becoming a formidable channel of marketing, and thus companies that will not adapt to the changing environment might be locked out of potential markets or lose existing customer base through competition.
Social Factors
These are factors that marketers use to assess the social environment of a market for strategic positioning to ensure that businesses maximize returns from their target markets (Pan, Chen, & Zhan, 2019). Social determinants, such as population demographics, cultural trends, and wealth distribution should be considered when designing a marketing strategy. These factors are important in marketing because they allow marketers to design messages targeting certain characteristics in a given set-up. Generally, social factors focus on human demographics, cultures, and attitudes.
Population size, age distribution, birth and death rates, life expectancy, and marriage and divorce rates could be used to assess how a product will perform the target market. For example, marketing messages targeting aged populations cannot be used in younger populations because the information has to be delivered differently and the two cohorts are likely to prefer varying goods and services. Per capita income, social classes, wealth distribution, and education levels are some other social factors that should be considered in marketing. Companies could use this information to tailor relevant messages that resonate with their target customers.
Instagram as an E-Marketing Tool
Instagram is a revolutionary social media platform that allows users to tell their stories visually through pictures and images. It entered the social media space in 2010 and since then it has grown exponentially to become the second most popular platform after Facebook. Instagram has also become a preferred channel of marketing for businesses owing to its popularity and ease of use (Khan, 2018). The popularity of this platform among users can be attributed to several aspects, such as using visual content to communicate and it is less cluttered as compared to other social media platforms. It is also easy to operate and once a user creates a profile, it serves as the homepage within the platform. For businesses, the profile should be complete with full brand names and appealing pictures to the target audience (Buinac & Lundberg, 2016).
A short bio can be included to let users know more about the brand and a link to the company’s website if it exists. Therefore, Instagram works like any other social media platform in marketing by creating awareness and reaching potential customers.
Instagram and Marketing Mix
Instagram is a robust marketing tool given its large number of users and it can be incorporated in the marketing mix, specifically under place and promotion. As a distribution channel (place), Instagram creates a platform through which customers can access goods and services (Berg & Sterner, 2015).
For instance, through this platform, marketers can create a “call-to-action” button, such as “buy now” “purchase” “message” “call” among others. Through this button, customers can place their orders or interact with the brand in question for more information. Therefore, in essence, Instagram is a distribution channel involved in the movement of goods and services to consumers. In promotion, Instagram plays a central role in creating brand awareness through advertisement. The platform allows businesses to showcase their products and services, build communities, increase brand loyalty, create brand awareness, advertise to potential clients, highlight company values and culture, and share news and updates (Alkhowaiter, 2016).
In other words, given that Instagram can be accessed through smartphones, it means that companies have an opportunity to interact with their target market on the go. Additionally, being a virtual platform it is not limited to space and time, which creates a dynamic environment to keep customers engaged.
Instagram and PESTEL analysis
As discussed earlier, PESTEL analysis helps companies to understand the environment within which they operate. In this case, Instagram is a useful tool when assessing technological and social factors to design a robust marketing strategy. Using sophisticated algorithms, Instagram provides extensive consumer data that companies can leverage to increase sales. For example, through paid adverts, users are in a position to target specific groups of consumers based on certain demographics such as income level, location, age, sex, and tastes and preferences (Virtanen, Björk, & Sjöström, 2017).
Therefore, marketers use this information related to social factors of the targeted users to make informed marketing decisions. This data is also important in understanding the environment within which a company operates. Marketers can leverage such information design marketing content that resonates well with the target market. In addition, as a technological factor of PESTEL, Instagram creates a good communication channel that allows companies to keep their target audience engaged.
The two business concepts – marketing mix and PESTEL analysis are related as they both offer useful insights to markers on how to create and launch successful marketing campaigns. The concepts overlap in their functions in marketing. For instance, marketers using Instagram integrate both of them by using social factors of PESTEL to understand consumer behaviors and other demographics to design relevant promotion (a component of marketing mix) campaigns targeting given consumer groups. Ultimately, PESTEL analysis and marketing mix work in concert to ensure that companies reach the target market, increase revenues, build brand loyalty, and increase profitability among other objectives.
Conclusion
The Internet continues to shape the way companies engage their consumers and Instagram has become part of the most important social media platforms that businesses can use to market their products and services. Marketers use marketing mix to understand how the elements of place, price, promotion, and product can be manipulated to create awareness and ensure that goods and services reach customers for consumption. PESTEL analysis is another concept used to understand the external environment within which companies operate based on political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors. These two business concepts converge at Instagram as an important e-marketing tool for companies to tailor marketing messages for improved revenues.
Specifically, Instagram has redefined the concepts of place and promotion and marketers can now leverage this technology as a distribution channel and an advertising strategy. In PESTEL, Instagram capitalizes on the sociological and technological elements to provide marketers with rich data that can be used to make informed marketing decisions with maximum returns. The business concepts of marketing mix and PESTEL analysis are interlinked and the different underlying elements overlap with one another in the process of creating functional marketing strategies to ensure that businesses remain relevant in the highly competitive markets.
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