Drought Tolerant Plants & Services /Social / Online Media Marketing Plan
CIS 70 / SMC – Khaled Essa
This theoretical Social Media / Online media marketing plan is intended to address the typical needs of a fictitious local retail location selling drought tolerant plants and plant accessories. The business also provides landscape design and maintenance services to homeowners, multi-unit dwellings, and commercial properties in the Los Angeles area. The retail component of the business is a newly opened “brick and morter” shop on busy street in a upscale residential area. The store does specialize in drought tolerant plants and plant accessories . The business is eager to make its presence known in the community, using a variety of means, including the internet and social media . We will focus on the online / social media strategy.
The Primary marketing objective is to make the business easy to find. The online campaign will optimize search engine results and provide a means of gathering customer feedback by participating in the most active online consumer search engine communities and social media platforms.
The main idea is to be sure that the business is easy to find, for a typical person looking for plants, cactus, and landscaping services online. The top local search engines include Google, Yelp, YellowPages.com , Bing, Yahoo, and others. These search solutions are an excellent place to direct the initial social media marketing efforts. They are geared to directing customers with existing needs to appropriate providers, and they provide ranking services based on consumer feedback intended to guide consumer activity. SEO (search engine Optimization) on these platforms will result in increased foot traffic to the local business (the shop), making the shop easy to find and building a history of positive customer feedback online.
The second marketing objective will be to Increase overall brand awareness and attract the attention of new customers that are not necessarily looking for the product or services. This objective will require the business to create an environmentally conscious , creative and fun business persona on social media sites, such as Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. The persona will be created incrementally on one platform at a time , with an emphasis on authenticity and positive, environmentally friendly content. Social Media objectives will include aligning the persona with other online organizations with similar objectives.
The third important objective is to build a basis for future eCommerce opportunities by creating a path to a wider internet audience, a wider social media following, and greater regional brand awareness. The underlying opportunities will be predicated by the success of the local social marketing campaign to attract and local * customers through brand management on the internet, promote water conservation and grow sales.
Local* reefers to the Los Angeles / Westside area
Products* refers to drought tolerant plants and cactus & landscaping and landscape design.
STEP 1
Step 1 will optimize search engine results, make the business is easy to find and provide the business with a place to gather customer feedback. . The services include Google, Yelp, YellowPages.com , Bing, Yahoo, and others.
Step 1 - Objectives
Make it easy to find the business
Gather customer feedback to improve business.
Generate shopper traffic in the store Increase awareness among “ready buyers”
Online Platforms:
· Google Plus.
Driving Directions & More - Will help shoppers physically find the “Shop ” by marking the shops location on a google map, providing driving directions. When we build a google plus presence we will simultaneously be increasing our “findability” on the worlds most popular search engine. The information we present in our google plus profile will be searchable on Google.
Customer Feedback - Customers can comment and rate the business on google, allowing the business to build an attractive reputation over time. These customer ratings really matter to customers who are looking for impartial input from the community. .
Build a Following - In addition to providing customers with driving directions, phone number and links to our website, the google plus profile allows customers to follow your business and keep in touch with your communications. If managed properly your marketing communications can be sent on a reasonable schedule and include thoughtful , interesting, relevant and appropriate messages. But, the opposite is also true , a mismanaged communication campaign can have a net negative effect on a business popularity in the community.
· Yelp.
Customer Feedback – Yelp maybe the king of customer reviews of local business. Customers can offer great praise and lengthy testimonials on yelp and they do. It is important to monitor customer feedback closely and deal with negative feedback quickly, especially in the Yelp community.
Driving Directions & More – Yelp wiill also help shoppers physically find the “Shop ” , link to customer website, provide phone numbers etc.
Paid Advertising– Yelp also provides paid advertising programs that can reach shoppers in related area of the site and increase visibility. For instance shoppers are searching for Lawn Furniture, and if this business does not sell furniture, we may still want to be visible in a banner ad calling attention to our product offerings. Paid advertising can do allow for that.
· YellowPages.com
YellowPages.com is like many of the other local shopper search engines / consumer communities. It can help a shopper find your business with driving directions and it will list other business selling the same products and services as you. Yellowpages.com also provides for increased exposure through paid packages .
STEP 2
Step is all about Branding and is intended Increase overall brand awareness and attract the attention of new customers, and keep in contact with previous customers. This objective will require the business to create an environmentally conscious, creative and fun business persona on Social media sites, such as Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter.
Objectives
Build Foundation for E-commerce Engage with target audience
Online Platforms:
· FACEBOOK.
These days it is no longer a question of “if” we should use Facebook to promote local business? It is much more a question of how we should use Facebook in relation to our specific needs. Facebook offers tremendous reach and targeting tools and if properly managed can be a very effective branding tool and now, with the addition of the Facebook marketplace, that allows sellers to sell their products, the potential of Facebook as a retail channel is just beginning to be captured by innovative business. For now we should keep our strategic options open, in terms of using Facebook as an online retail channel while, diligently creating a meaningful and appropriate brand image on Facebook .
· TUMBLER & TWITTER
What to Post - Tumbler and Twitter can be combined into unified “Micro Blog” marketing strategy. Although Tumbler is not a “microblog” for our particular purposes we can use it as such. We can use it to post on matters tangential to our core business. Like interesting developments, in horticulture, world records being set in the size of a cactus, interesting and brief, but not necessarily promotional, just tasteful, and obscurely related to the business of plants , water conservation, landscaping tips and tricks , stuff that is interesting and appropriate enough..
When to Post - Also the frequency of content posting will need to be set. For example we shall post no less than twice a month and no more than 8 times in amonth.
STEP 3
The third important objective is to build a basis for future eCommerce opportunities by creating a path to a wider internet audience, a wider social media following, and greater regional brand awareness. The success of the local social marketing campaign will predicate the underlying opportunities to attract and retain the local consumer attention and retain online interest in the brand.
The specifics on how to achieve this objective will need to be conceived from the lessons learned in the coming months. The personas developed and relationships established in online communities such as Facebook and Tumbler can be adjusted from a local focus to a regional focus. But it may be necessary to plan for this transition gradually as the strengths and challenges become more apparent, during the local social media marketing efforts. So for now the objective of regional social media influence should be a matter of observation and lesson learning, and will not require specific online activity in the early stages to be performed. It should be noted that theoretical analysis of options and opportunities is no substitute for an open mind to recognize new and undocumented opportunities,
