Final Project: Social Media Marketing Plan

Ethan Callahan

Social Media Marketing Tom Barnard, Instructor

May 2, 2016

Instructions:

1. Fill in the following information. 2. When asked for a page, that means a page.

The goal of this project is for you to prove to me that you understand how to effectively use

social media in the context of a business marketing plan. This project will require at least 4-5 hours to complete. Don’t rush it. Split it up and do a little at a time. The final grade on this is big enough to drop you two entire letter grades in the class.

Grading Rubric

300 points: Maximum points for project content.

50 Points for each “Part” of the assignment. Those 50 points will be 45 points for content and thoroughness and 5 points (10%) for how attractive and organized you are.

Part One: Invent your company. This will be a made up company and you can sell anything you want.

Your company name:

Dabbing Gear

Your company overview:

Dabbing Gear is a fishing sportswear brand that was brought to reality through a single vision, which was to one day combine our design talents with our passion for fishing and form an apparel company that develops fishing sportswear for anglers everywhere.

Dabbing is a fishing term that means working a lure up and down in the same spot.

Apparently dabbing is also a well-known dance move. Who knew? Well, we had to because we made a person dabbing as our logo.

Your company mission statement:

Our mission is to produce quality and dependable shirts that make your lives more

comfortable. Dependability is our policy; we use only the most advance and durable materials for our shirts to ensure customer satisfaction.

The customer wants to know what’s in it for them. They want to exert little effort for

maximum results. They want to be able to relate to a brand, and find what they are looking for in a short period of time. It is imperative that Dabbing Gear optimizes its SEO potential by using Google AdWords and specific keywords on the DG website and social media platforms. Google AdWords will not only help target ads to customers in a certain location, but it can reach the right people at the right time. Consistency in the advertising strategy and social media voice has to be achieved in order to effectively communicate to our customers. When planned and implemented effectively, we will make Dabbing Gear a household name and lifestyle brand for fishing enthusiasts across the globe.

Our goal is to increase brand awareness for Dabbing Gear by actively marketing relative content on social media, increase search engine optimization, and ultimately engaging with our target customer as part of the Dabbing Gear experience. These goals and objectives are being achieved by our perseverance as a company and the very culture that drives us to keep doing what we love.

Part Two: Competitor Analysis

Find three unique competitors for the product you are selling. If you are selling shoes, then find three competing shoe manufacturers. If you are selling cars, then three car companies.

Competitor One: Columbia

Are they on Twitter (link): Yes https://twitter.com/Columbia1938 https://twitter.com/ColumbiaCareers How often do they post:

For the most part they post daily. In the past two weeks they’ve not post or retweet anything

three days in total. I’m not certain if they took those days off or if they didn’t have information for people. Either way, they are doing an excellent job of marketing. What type of content do they post (explain AND provide samples): They are doing a lot of things right. They advertised their Instagram account on their Twitter account. (looking at my first example) This is a great post because they are encouraging people to follow their other social media accounts, while also encouraging people to use their hashtag. There is a good chance that if a person has a Twitter, they will have an Instagram too. That’s why this is such a good Tweet. (looking at my second example) Other tweets are used to market their products and new lines of clothing.

Almost every Tweet from them has a picture in it.

Are they on Facebook (link): Yes

https://www.facebook.com/ColumbiaSportswear/?fref=ts

How often do they post:

Columbia posts several times a day on Facebook, sometimes up to 4 posts a day.

What type of content do they post (explain AND provide samples): Their posts on Facebook are excellent! Some of the posts are informative about a specific product or a new line of clothing. Others are simply inspirational. They encourage you to post your adventurous pictures while wear Columbia Sportswear clothing and tag them in it through their hashtag. This is a fun way to interact and builds a positive name for yourself as a company. Columbia will share some of those posts (that include those the adventurous picture and

hashtag) to their Facebook wall. Interacting with customers on this level is ensuring positive

satisfaction from a marketing standpoint.

Are they on Instagram (link): Yes

https://www.instagram.com/columbia1938/

How often do they post:

Columbia posts twice a day on Instagram on average.

What type of content do they post (explain AND provide samples): At a first glance of all of the pictures on Columbia’s Instagram account, I couldn’t even tell that I was looking at a clothing companies account. Each of the pictures are beautiful and are high quality photos. The pictures are all of nature with sometimes one or two adventurers in it. Occasionally one of the adventurers will be close enough to flash the logo of Columbia on their clothing. I love how they don’t just throw their products in your face; their posts inspire and

challenge me personally to travel. Most of their pictures are at different locations and are all

professional quality.

Would you consider this competitor to be effective on social media? What are their

strengths?

Yes, Columbia is definitely a competitor that is effective on social media.

Columbia has several strengths, such as having different Twitter pages. Both of which are well maintained and operated. The second markets open jobs available at their company. If the accounts were not managed right, I think that having two separate Twitter pages could be a waste of time and effort. Because they could do the exact same thing on their home Twitter page instead of making a second account. On the other hand, if they keep it producing and maintained, than having that second account could be a great way to market their job openings. Their career Twitter account allows them to focus all their efforts to a specific target audience. Like people who are looking for a job instead of marketing to people who are trying

to buy their product. This second Twitter account helps them fill in empty job slots within their

company. Another strength is that Columbia has their own hashtag which is “#Tested Tough”. Having your own hashtag that is labels you, gives your followers an opportunity to get your companies name out there. You can tell that each picture for Columbia’s Instagram is carefully selected, because each of their pictures is astonishing. The captions of these breathtaking pictures are unique to Instagram. These captions are extremely clever and I love how some of the pictures and captions are completely only found on Instagram. This gives people a reason to follow each of their accounts, if Columbia were to post the same information and pictures the same way on every social media account then people would only need to follow one account to get all the

information they need.

This companies social media networks are all well maintained and professionally executed.

Competitor Two: Huk Performance Fishing

Are they on Twitter (link): Yes

https://twitter.com/HukGear

How often do they post:

Since the past couple of months, Huk has only post one time each month. They are slacking. What type of content do they post (explain AND provide samples): Most of Huk’s Tweets are Instagram posts. The others are just retweets of Huk models that they post on their own accounts.

Are they on Facebook (link): Yes

https://www.facebook.com/HukGear

How often do they post:

Huk post’s on Facebook about 3 times a day.

What type of content do they post (explain AND provide samples): The content of their Facebook posts are a lot of pictures of people holding a recently caught fish while wearing something with the brand Huk showing.

Are they on Instagram (link): Yes

https://www.instagram.com/hukgear/

How often do they post:

On average they post twice on Instagram every day.

What type of content do they post (explain AND provide samples): Huk focuses it’s advertising on making that big catch and makes it seem like if you have their gear, than you too can catch fish like that. Most every one of their posts has a beautiful fish and Huk apparel.

Would you consider this competitor to be effective on social media? What are their

strengths?

I would consider Huk to be a very effective competitor on social media, although they can defiantly improve on a lot of things. They do a great job of getting their band name out there

and show different people wearing their products. Huk’s social media accounts actually make me want to buy their products, which is what they’re going for.

I’m noticing the competitors each have similar posting techniques throughout each of the ir social network posting strategies. Competitor Three: Shark Zen Are they on Twitter (link): Yes

https://twitter.com/besharkzen

How often do they post: Shark Zen does not post nearly enough on Twitter. Their last post was February 8th of this year. What type of content do they post (explain AND provide samples): They post what anglers want to see. Trophy catches, new clothing designs, a lot of pictures, and use hashtags well. They post good content; they just don’t give enough attention to their social media marketing.

Are they on Facebook (link): Yes

https://www.facebook.com/sharkzen

How often do they post:

Shark Zen’s last post was over 45 days ago, so not often enough.

What type of content do they post (explain AND provide samples): When they do post, however they do have good information in their posts. The information in each of the posts differ, which is nice for the viewer to look at. The content of the posts include interesting articles, some are pictures of their fish and others are people modeling their shirt designs.

Are they on Instagram (link): Yes

https://www.instagram.com/shark_zen/

How often do they post:

They don’t post often AT ALL. Shark Zen’s last post was 53 weeks ago, which is 371 days.

What type of content do they post (explain AND provide samples): Of the 11 pictures that they’ve post, they have a good variety of different shirt designs, fisherman with their trophy catch, and people modeling their clothing in a fitting environment for outdoors wear.

Would you consider this competitor to be effective on social media? What are their

strengths?

I would not consider Shark Zen an effective competitor in social media. Their social media accounts need to be deleted if they are not going to actively use them, that looks bad on a

company. I got each of their social media accounts from their official website, so I know each of their accounts that I used are legitimate.

Shark Zen’s last Facebook post was over 45 days ago. And that was their MOST RECENT post from all three of their social media accounts. That is not okay. In order for a comp a successful marketing campaign must do more with their social media accounts, or cut them out completely. With all of that being said, they do have good content in their posts. They appeal and communicate well with their customers and future customers with their advertising strategies

with their content of their previous posts.

Part 3: Content Plan Answer the following questions. Blog: What type(s) of content do you intend to post and promote via your blog? How often will you post content on your blog? At Dabbing Gear we plan on monitoring our blog regularly. We won’t post blogs daily, like our social media networks. We will only post blogs when we have an exciting new release or something very interesting. Our blog is all about quality information.

Although we don’t intend on posting blogs daily, we will however regulate and replying to

questions from our blog daily.

What is the target audience for your blog content? Our target audience is really the average person. Anyone looking for comfortable and trendy clothing that’s stylish and of high quality will appreciate our shirts. Anglers especially, the women and men that brave the seas and lakes all over the world or even the ponds in their

hometown are who we really want to enjoy our products.

Who will create the content?

I will personally create the blogs myself until I make enough examples of what I want to

produce and achieve with the blogs so eventually an employee can mimic my style. It’s not like I need each of the blogs to look or sound the same, but it would definitely help to have

something for that future blogger to look back at for an example.

How will you promote the content? I will promote the content by informing our followers on each of our social media networks. As well as in store poster promotion that encourage people to follow us on our blog page. We will also encourage our employees to check out and talk about our blogs to spread the word of our informative quality blogs. Write your first blog post here. I expect at least a half page written content. It can be entirely

fictional, but needs to be about your product or how your product is the solution to a

problem. CHECK OUT OUR NEW LINE OF CLOTHING!!! “The Hot Line”, this may be our best collection of shirts yet! We have outstanding new designs and shirt types that come in all sizes within this collection. These designs are exclusive to us, and only us. We had our best designers team up with the National Sun Protection Association to produce a certified sun-guard protection shirt with the newest microfiber technology that keeps you cool, even on the hottest of days. And each of our shirts are of course backed by our money back guarantee that ensures that you will love our shirts or your money back. We are so confident in our shirts that we extended our refund time to a whole year. You don’t have to be the best fisherman or dabber, but that shouldn’t stop you from dressing like the best. We believe that you should be the best you, that you can be!

Listen, Dabbing Gear isn’t about flip-flops, sand, and Sunday afternoon fishing. It’s about

tearing through the water, pursuing your passion, and landing that Dabbing Gear. We’re raising the bar and setting the new standard at Dabbing Gear as an evolution in fishing apparel.

Wearing the Dabbing Gear brand shows the world that you don’t just fish. You dab too! Join other anglers just like you and gear up on the best fishing sportswear today!

At Dabbing Gear we want you to openly express your thoughts or concerns about our company where we actively have employees returning feedback to you the customer, and engage in

conversations constantly. Please comment; we’d love to hear from you!

Want to see pictures of our new line of clothing?! Check out “The Hot Line” collection for yourself at our website dabbinggear.com

Twitter:

What type(s) of content do you intend to post and promote via Twitter?

We intend on posting relevant information that is current and happening now. Such as new sales, new products, and upcoming products that will come out soon. We will also have some

funny Tweets that are irrelevant to our product, just to make people laugh and keep our followers entertained.

How often will you post content on Twitter? We will post daily (averaging 4 to 5 Tweets a day) and will be checking our Twitter account constantly to provide the absolute best feedback as soon as possible. What is the target audience for your Twitter content?

Our target audience for out Twitter account is the younger crowd that might dab more than

fish. We really want to appeal to the high school guys that want to keep u with the latest trends. Who will create the content? I personally will create the Tweets for our company. How will you promote the content? We will promote our Twitter account by in store promotion, through posters and our cashiers are trained to suggest each customer to check out our social media accounts as they check out. On every one of our receipts we will have our social media links attached so our customers will

always know.

Create five sample Twitter posts here for your company. Remember you have a maximum of 140 characters and text only.

1. 5% OFF EVERYTHING IN OUR STORE AND ON OUR WEBSITE FROM NOW UNTIL MONDAY!!! 2. We believe that you should be the best you, that you can be!

3. Check out “The Hot Line” collection for yourself at our website dabbinggear.com

4. Feel free to call us at (903)975-4287, Sherrie at customer service is pretty bored right about now.

5. Hit the Dabb. Wear the Dabb. Love the Dabb.

Facebook:

What type(s) of content do you intend to post and promote via Facebook?

We intend on posting relevant information that is current and happening now. Such as new sales, new products, and upcoming products that will come out soon. We will also have some

funny posts that are irrelevant to our product, just to make people laugh and keep our followers entertained.

(Same as Twitter, but to a different audience, and less funny posts) How often will you post content on Facebook? We will post daily (averaging 2 to 3 posts a day) and will be checking our post comments constantly to provide the absolute best feedback as soon as possible. What is the target audience for your Facebook content?

Our target audience for out Facebook account is the older more experienced fishermen with a few more years under their belt. The college age guys and girls are who we focus our Facebook marketing on. Who will create the content? I personally will create our Facebook posts. I am the head of marketing for our company after all. How will you promote the content? We will promote our Facebook account by in store promotion, through posters and our cashiers

are trained to suggest each customer to check out our social media accounts as they check out. On every one of our receipts we will have our social media links attached so our customers will

always know.

Create five sample Facebook posts here for your company. These should be different from your Twitter posts. Facebook is very graphic so photos and videos and things work well. Either fake your posts on Facebook and copy and paste them in here or write a description for what your five posts will be.

1. Check out our website: dabbinggear.com

2. DABBING CHALLENGE! Post and share with us a picture of you “dabbing” in your Dabbing Gear.

3. Winner of the DABBING CHALLENGE wins this set of Dabbing Gear. (Picture of different

Dabbing Gear in a nice display)

4. 10% OFF EVERYTHING IN OUR STORE AND WEBSITE STARTING TOMORROW!!

5. (Picture of a man holding a fish with Dabbing Gear on) Caption: Release your inner angler.

Instagram:

What type(s) of content do you intend to post and promote via Instagram? We intend on posting pictures of every day people wearing our brand. Also people “hitting the dabb” which is the dance move. We will post content worth posting, we want people to enjoy our Instagram account and through that, we can reach new people and build relationships. How often will you post content on Instagram?

We will post daily (averaging 1 to 2 posts a day) and will be checking our post’s comments

constantly to provide the absolute best feedback as soon as possible. What is the target audience for your Instagram content? Our target audience for our Instagram account is the common angler and the notorious dabber. (So basically everyone in high school through college) Who will create the content? I personally will create our Facebook posts. How will you promote the content?

We will promote our Instagram account by in store promotion, through posters and our

cashiers are trained to suggest each customer to check out our social media accounts as they check out. On every one of our receipts we will have our social media links attached so our

customers will always know. Create five sample Instagram posts here for your company. These should be different from your Twitter and Facebook posts. Instagram is almost entirely photos and short videos. Describe your five posts below.

1. (Picture of an angler “dabbing” in his Crocs and Dabbing Gear in a boat on a lake) Caption:

“Dabb on my friends.”

2. (Picture of a pretty woman holding a nice looking tuna) Caption: “An incredible catch by an incredible catch.”

3. (An action shot picture of a fisherman in the process of dabbing his line anticipating a great

catch) Caption: “The dabbing that will never get old.”

4. (Picture of a country boy “dabbing with a fishing pole in his hand) Caption: “Everyone should just keep on Dabbin’ and the world would be a better place.”

5. (Picture of a family fishing with their backs turned, showing off our logo on each of their

matching, but different color shirts) Caption: Fishing brings family together.

Part 4: Editorial Calendar

Create an editorial calendar for one week of posting based on the example provided below.

Part 5: Social Media and Customer Service

Write two full pages here (single spaced) on the subject of “Social Media and Customer Service.” Explain how you will utilize social media to enhance the customer service of your

company and provide specific examples.

Social media is the collection of online communications channels dedicate to community-based input, interaction, content sharing and collaboration. Essentially for our

company’s usage, social media is a new tool that I personally believe should be used by most all businesses that can effectively market on an online network. I believe this, because social media used correctly and customer satisfaction goes hand-in-hand.

Customer service is the service provided to customers before, during and after

purchasing and using goods and services. Good customer service provides an experience that meets customer expectations. It produces satisfied customers. Bad customer service can generate complaints. It can result in lost sales, because customers might take their business to

a competitor. Therefore it is vital for our company at Dabbing Gear to strive to excel our

customer’s expectations.

Companies that do not utilize the platforms of social media are missing out on a huge footstool of marketing. According to The Statistics Portal, “78% of all of the United States population have a social network profile in 2016. This is representing a five percent growth compared to the previous year.” Those numbers speak for themselves that is so many people that are marketable through social media networks.

If social media marketing is so great why doesn’t everyone use it? It sounds simple. Generally it is a pretty simple, but it is not easy. You need to know your market. You have to have your own zing. Form your own approach and go with it. Everybody’s social media accounts are so different and unique to that company or person. All companies post different content,

even companies that are very similar and in the same product market. There is not necessarily a right or wrong way to promote your business, companies experiment with many different

techniques. And some posting techniques that work for one company might not work so well for another company.

We as a company, Dabbing Gear has to understand that we have to be habitual in

posting quality posts at designated times to stay in the mix of being one of the top social networking companies in the United States. We understand that digital marketing is a channel, if you put garbage in, you’ll get garbage out. For this reason social media can terrify some

corporate leaders. One has to understand that social media marketing is always for the customers. As long as we can satisfy them and provide the quickest and most reliable feedback

for our costumers, we will remain known as a nation wide successful social media company. As long as I’m in charge of marketing for our company, I will do my absolute best to keep our

brand name know known for our social media presence.

What do we do so well that has made us known throughout the United States for our

social networking? We cultivate a voice that delights our customers, and then our customers are thrilled to spread the love about us on each of our social media networks. In other words,

we exceed our customer’s expectations and they do all the marketing for us. How we do that is by taking the time to reply or like/favorite every mention that has our brand name or brand

hashtag in it. No mater how long our team has to focus all of our efforts on replying and finding them the answers their looking for, we will do whatever it takes to satisfy them. (As long as it’s

within our ethical standards and is legal) Customers come first. Marketing is about people and only people digital marketing is no different. Once we accomplish this on a day-to-day basis, the people who interact with us are usually more than willing to share with their friends about their experience with our company.

At Dabbing Gear, we proudly advertise our 99% Customer satisfaction rating. We have

excellent costumers satisfaction numbers. These numbers don’t come easy or just in one day. To achieve such a prestigious customer satisfaction rating, took stress and an outrageous

amount of time. It’s hard being one of the best, but it pays off, knowing that our hard work

actually achieved something great. We had to define our strategy by knowing our business, know the competition, know our customers know what you wanted to achieve, and know how we’re currently doing. We took all these factors into consideration when creating our marketing plan and editorial calendar for our social media posts.

Out of that 99% we know the 1% that went wrong and we adjusted, even though it was

just 1% we strive for 100% satisfaction. And that 1% is due to Meredith at customer service’s cranky mood swings. We love Meredith and she’s an excellent employee, she just sometimes has her days when she’ll get sassy back. It’s a funny story now how that phone call played out, but she was honest to us when explaining herself and we’re a forgiving company. After Meredith’s sassy episode, we talked with her and reviewed our employee values that each of us holds strongly to. And we fixed her attitude and moved on. We have excellent management

within Dabbing Gear and deal with problems, before they grow to get worse. That is another reason why we’re so successful in all departments of our business; we have the same vision and

core values.

Without a plan you will fail, you need a marketing plan. Without one you will miss opportunities and lose business. That is why we have a detailed marketing plan that highlight our marketing advertisement methods that we’ll implement and how to approach each specific method.

Our digital marketing is not limited to our main social media networks such as: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. We also market through E-mail, because E-mail is the number one

digital marketing tool. We have subscriptions that we encourage our customers to subscribe to. Although most everyone in the United States has their own social media account, not everyone

does. But practically everyone in the United States that is old enough to buy our products, has an E-mail account.

Part 6: Social Media Metrics

Write one full page here (single spaced) on the subject of “How we will measure success of our campaign.” Explain what tools you will utilize to measure success and please include KPI’s

(Key Performance Indicators) in your writing. You may need to Google some of the tools out there, but your book includes many examples.

Dabbing Gear as a company, we will measure the success of our campaign by our

customer satisfaction. If we can’t keep our customers happy then we won’t have a job for too long. Customers will always remain our number one priority and we’ll ethically do whatever we can to exceed their expectations for us.

Why do we have to exceed expectations? Honestly, we don’t have to exceed their

expectations when we can just meet their expectations. But that’s not who we are at Dabbing Gear, we choose to exceed customer expectations. We set goals and strive to be the very best. In order to be the very best, we understand that we can’t do what everyone else is doing, we

have to do more.

A Key Performance Indicator is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a

company is achieving key business objectives. Organizations use KIPs at multiple levels to evaluate their success at reaching targets. We use KIPs to do indicate negative and positive changes within our company. Our KIPs are: Customer Satisfaction Rating, Strength, Sentiment, Passion, Reach, Site Traffic, Product Page Visits, Exit Pages, Conversion Rate, Net Profit, and Average Order Value. We definitely have a lot of KIPs but each are every important and we see them all as vital indicators to our business’s success. We want to know what’s going on within our website and social network platforms all the time so we can constantly improve everything we do.

Some of the online tools our social media marketing team uses are Google AdWords and

another is www.socialmention.com. Google AdWords is an advertising service by Google for businesses wanting to display ads on Google and its advertising network. The AdWords

program enables businesses to set a budget for advertising and only pay when people click on our ads. The ad service is largely focused on keywords. Socialmetion.com is one of the most

important tools for our campaign. This website allows us to get all the information we need to know about each individual post so that we can take note of how our posts are doing. Our marketing team takes the time to review each post and the content of the post to see what we need to do more or less of when marketing on social media.

Another tool that we use which is unique to us, is a company photographer. Not many companies have their own personal company photographer in our market, but we do.

Photography is such a necessary part of social media. We are testing something new with this strategy, taking a risk you might say. Our photographer takes professional/high quality

photographs that we will use for all of our network marketing accounts. He takes pictures every other day for us, of our employees and products. We post and save his pictures so we’ll always

have some sort of content to post on our social media platforms. Greg (our personal

photographer) also gives insightful ideas on captions for his pictures that are appreciated by our

marketing team. As of now, we still see Greg as an asset to Dabbing Gear. Each of our employees are important to us and they help make up who we are at Dabbing Gear. They do

their part and keep our campaign moving forward.