Social Media Marketing (Essay Sample)

Social Media Marketing
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Social Media Marketing
1 Executive Summary
Social media marketing refers to process where a product strives to gain popularity, traffic and attention through the use of social media (Gould, 2013). The effort centres on the effort to create contents that attract readers and as well encourage them to share within their networks. In essence, it is usually easier to win the masses through third party messages about a product rather than first-hand information about a product. Social media platform have gained huge penetrations to virtually any person who has access to the internet. They allow interactions and help to share and receive feedbacks making the employees gain a sense of ownership and thus gaining the trust in the products (Mashable, 2013).
Our product is a Smartphone from Panasonic group. We decided to target this product because comparing to the other competing Smartphone in the market. One would easily notice that the product is not among the most popular in the social media. Competition from Apple’s I phone Samsung, Black belly, and others. There is a need to boost the awareness and hopefully raise the profile of the product amongst the completion. Social media has been agreed to be a leading driver in the marketing of Smartphone. Thousands of articles have been written, previews and reviews, tech opinions issued amongst other online battles in the effort to create superior brands. A recent tussle is the one between Samsung and I phone. Thousands of articles and social network sharing were employed and in the end, the two leading brands in the Smartphone were created. Our aim is to use similar tactics to promote the Panasonic brand of smart phones.
2 Overview
Panasonic online presence is not much. Facebook being one of the most widely used social media, we expect that a global company of Panasonic status to command a large following. However, the company's online presence is not that impressive. For instance, its Facebook official page has less than 400k likes. A quick check at twitter that is the second most used social platform reveals that the organization has only just over 41k followers. These are significantly small numbers compared to the global market in which they operate.
Our strategy is first to increase the brand popularity in the smart phone market. This is a slight uphill task considering there are many players in this market some of which are already established and have been running for some time. The first step is to re-establish the position of the brand name in the technology leaders. Panasonic has been on and around for sometimes and thus even though not very popular; it's well known. Using a series of combined traditional media and social media marketing campaigns, we shall strive to first re-establish the brand position amongst the leading competitors.
From there, we shall need to define the target audiences. The target audience will enable us to be able to decide on the right channels and the nature of the adverts. The Smartphone market is for the young adults and as well the youthful populations. Coincidentally, the above population is the one that is mostly involved in the social media. Thus, the use of social media is the ideal strategy to market the Smartphone.
Upon increasing the brand popularity, the next step will be to channel the efforts in increasing the number of shares among the social media users. This will lead to a dominance in the popularity and hopefully lead to a rise in the sales.
The second approach is to study the competitors’ strategies in the social media. In this effort, we will be able to learn the best practices and pick on the trends without much hassle. One of the trends that was employed in the successful launch and increase the popularity of the leading brands in the smartphone industry is the social media share. The competition has successfully used this strategy and has reaped big in it. The use of bloggers especially the tech sites is also widely used to promote these products. A combination of all the above procedures will yield to an improvement in the popularity and market share of our product.
3 Analysis of the Competition
A report from the International Data Corporation in the year 2014 indicated that the market share of the smartphones grew to take 27.5% of the total mobile phone market. This was a whopping 335 million units in only the second quarter of the year. The number is expected to grow in the coming years as the smartphone market share continues to rise in the coming years. The leading phones run on Android OS.
Below is a table detailing the major players in the smartphone industry and the percentage market shares as at the third quarter of the year 2014.
Table 1
Samsung
It continued to dominate the market, but it was the only company that depicted negative year to year growth. From competition from all corners, coupled with the slowing demand of its products, the company in an effort to avert the situation launched Galaxy alpha and revamped the galaxy note 4.
Apple
Apple continued to produce positive growth. There was an enormous anticipation of the release of iPhone 6 and six plus. The majority of the demand was driven by the iPhone 5C and 5S models that had high demand in the market by then.
Xiaomi
This was a new entrant in the top ranked. The company is based in China and serves China and as well adjacent market regions. The company has seen immense growth resulting in triple digits in the past few year
Lenovo
The smartphone has seen a steady growth in the past few years. The emerging market regions include Middle East, Asia, and Pacific and as well Africa drove the demand for these gadgets.
LG
It's increased the dominance in the market through release of lower end market. This boosted its sales volume. The company also launched G3 to continue holding on its share of the high-end market (International Data Corporation, 2014).
Looking at each of the smart phones marketing strategies; Samsung thrived on great contents, social share and the diversification of their phones to fit different peoples’ needs. iPhone strategy has been to build upon the demand before the launch of the products. They can get the customers in anticipation of the expected releases and as well get pre-orders. Xiaomi capitalized on the market segments and was able to build a strong brand where the two leading were not able to fully penetrate. It offered high-end phones but at a slightly lower cost. Lenovo and LG at the fourth place have as well been able to keep their brand amongst the top notch mobiles in the market.
Panasonic market share is not even mentioned amongst the top 5 in the market currently. However, going by the example of the current market leaders, the Samsung mobile, wide marketing campaigns saw it reach the highest position and topping even the fiercest competitors. iPhones Great online contents, marketing strategies that fitted the consumer needs, sharing and acting on the feedbacks show the company grow to reach the highest level. Panasonic lack similar strategies that the market leaders used to achieve their highest levels.
4 Traditional Advert
Panasonic launched a new smartphone on July 2014 by the brand name Panasonic Eruga U. This was supposed to be a high-end product that was scheduled to compete with the leading brands currently in the market. The brand and the specification are all right, it has gotten some positive reviews from tech blogs and as well the users. However, the brand did not propel the company to the position that it was expected to. It has been branded as a fail by some of the marketing analysts. There are speculations on its withdrawal from the market barely six months after its launch that is evidence of the unsuccessful launch and marketing. We reviewed a traditional TV advert that was supposed to be the main advert of the new smartphone. It was designed as a revolutionary phone with a group of young adults whom upon acquiring gained reasonably stylish transformation. The advert is eye catching and very relevant; however there was the need to couple that with a series of online debates to build up in the anticipation and drive up the demand (Panasonic, 2014).
5 The Body of the Plan
1 Marketing Objectives
Our company from the above reports and deductions is suffering from various issues. Below is a of that we aim to achieve by the end of the marketing process.
* Increase brand awareness
One of the major setbacks in the growth and development of our organization in terms of the sales of the Smartphone is the lower popularity as compared to the competition. After the launch, the brand failed to kick off as expected. This follows since, in spite of the fact that the product was perfect with good features as compared to the other smartphones; its brand name was not popular in the smartphone market. In order to gain superiority in the market, there is need to introduce an innovation that will catch the eyes of even the bigger players. A classic example the series the smart watch or the introduction intelligent motions including automatic when takes the phone to their ears mart and smart screen lightings and so .These innovations, when they were introduced in the market, were phenomenon. They captured the attention of everyone and for that reason created superiority in the market and this translated to sales.
Another way of stirring growth in the brand position is asserting on the strong products. Panasonic is among the leaders in the desk phones and office communication solutions. In their adverts, the company should mention how they have harnessed from such experience to create a masterpiece. Then highlight some key features of the product that will differentiate it from the rest of the phones in the...