Social media - the new marketing strategy - blog 5

Social Media is one of the last marketing strategies that companies are using nowadays to achieve more customers. Using social networks, blogs, online communities or any other internet systems, marketers have found a good way to gain insights and create experiences. Something to highlight is the fact that the content is not usually written by the company, users are the ones who publish and make real this strategy. This provokes marketing viral and buzzes marketing. Lately, we are being overwhelmed by some social media, such as, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. But there are more than these ones.

Focusing on why companies do to gain insights and create experience we can find some strategies. Firstly, most of companies have decided to create blogs in their pages to know their customers opinions about the products or services. For example, in some pages you can find how customers rank a certain hotel and, below the rating, you can exchange comments with others. This tool is really useful, because the best way to promote is the word-of-mouth. In this way, marketers can know why customers look for in the product, what they expect etc…they are gaining insights. Some companies, for example, they are publishing promotion videos in a freely way in Youtube, so you can leave your comments. Appreciating the number of visits etc…you can gain insights and create experiences. Furthermore, a very good way to create experience is when customers build fan pages and you can invite your friends to join. This tool is very common in Facebook. However, companies must be careful because it is a powerful marketing tool that can spoil your business. Customers can become vultures.

In order to be more specific, I have decided to choose as a social media to explain, Tuenti. I suppose it is unknown for all of you because it is a Spanish social network. It is really similar to Facebook because it has the same functions although it is less powerful because it is a national social network.

The first thing that companies use to promote in Tuenti is the page where it shows that the website is loading. Other useful things are the events. On the one hand, you are invited to events created by companies. You can decide between go, not go or maybe, and you can see how many people go and who. One useful thing is that you can comment about the event even if you will not assist. You can see all kind of comments. It is like fan pages in Facebook. But the main tool is that you can create blogs and events on your own and moreover you can invite all your friends to the event and your friends to their friends creating a large chain. In this way, marketers know in first-hand what their customers think about the value of a service and product. I would like to say that not too many Spanish companies use Tuenti as a main source of gathering information.

Now, I am going to talk about two websites that seem really useful for marketers. http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/ ; http://blogsearch.google.com/
The first one serves to find national and global finding trends and in the second one you can seek blogs about everything. In both of them you are going to find customers’ opinions, so the best way to value your products and services.

I would like to deep more in these pages showing an example to know how they work. I did not know about these websites before so I would like to know to what extent they are useful. I have decided to look for Axe information because it is the main example of my final paperwork. Trying to look for what customers think about Axe in the second website, I have only obtained news about lawsuits over deceitful publicity. Nothing was interesting. In the first page, we found some interesting things. First of all, I wanted to analyze if Axe deodorant was searcher than its competitors in all countries and more or less, it is the most famous with Nivea. The relative popularity has increased a lot. The main competitor because of the similar positioning is Playboy and it hardly has searches. I also found how many users looked for “theaxeeffect.com” and overall in United States and India. This website is really interesting because you can know the trends of your product searches.

I would like to remark that these websites are quite difficult to use because you have to find the correct words in order to find what you want. I find them interesting but they are pointless to gain insights.

The power of Wal-Mart's information - blog 4

As several companies nowadays, Wal-Mart affirms that the knowledge of the preferences of their customers make them anticipate to new changes. In this case, it is true. They start to predict what is going to happen instead of waiting sit down. Wal-Mart captures their customers’ habits gathering a lot of information about product preferences. However, although from my point of view it is a bright strategy that has been converted into a competitive advantage; I wonder if it is licit to do it without the clients’ consent.

First of all, I would like to talk about how they gather the information and why this point is now an experience converted into a competitive advantage.

Normally, according to the article “What Wal-Mart knows about customers’ habits”, they gather the data of each product at the checkout aisle, then this is recorded, mapped and later it is up-to-dated by store, by state and by region. They also gather information looking at customers how they buy in the local and using the credit and debit cards as a source of collecting data. Lately, the website has been situated in one of the main methods for them to seek information. One surprising thing for me is that Wal-Mart does not use loyalty cards as Target and barely offers promotions based on past purchases.

As I see it, it is a great competitive advantage because they launch products in the market before their competitors since they anticipate what is going to happen and that is the reason why customer always find in Walt-Mart what they need and when they need. But I do not think the method they use is awesome. They do not use all the technology available to look for the customers’ habits. I do not understand when they point out that when you are in the everyday-low-price market, you do not gather information from customers directly, for instance, using loyalty cards. I find it ridiculous. Ikea and Target do it. For example, they could provide loyalty cards addressed to those customers that spend more than certain amount of money monthly in Wal-Mart. In this way, they could have specific information about the most important clients. Apart from this, it seems to me suspicious the veracity of the information they give about how they gather information taking into account that in Wal-Mart you can find everything and the competitors could take advantage of this privileged information.

Now, I would like to deep in the question about if it is licit to have such specific information about customers.

First off, I will say that if I were a company, I would probably act in the same manner. But as a customer I do not like to share my private information. In Wal-Mart, the customers do not now that their data is being captured when they carry out their purchases. I know that as a customer I ought to be grateful to companies for doing this because otherwise I would not find my preferred products in shops, supermarkets etc. Nevertheless, they have much more information about us than the information they need. For example, the credit cards number, your mortgage, your debts etc. Do you think that Wal-Mart really needs this information for their purposes? I cannot stand having my details extended around the companies although they say that is for a customized service. If they want to give such individual service they could ask me first if I really want to have it. For example, you go to one shop, you buy something and you pay by credit card. What a surprise when one month later you find a letter with advertising of that company. I get on my nerves when I receive these letters. We should sign something first to give them the possibility to send us that information.

For example, in Spain they are thinking about forbid the companies calls to private houses searching for information or informing about new offers.

Talking about the suppliers, Wal-Mart shares the information about customers with them, but they are quite strict with them. The competitor can lie in wait for stealing information. As I see it, they make them better and more efficient because providing customers’ habits information suppliers will know the supply, so therefore, which items they should produce more for example if they are producers, and which raw materials they should buy etc… and which ones will buy Wal-Mart. In this aspect, the technology is again important. But in this case, I do not think you need a lot of complex technology, just the typical to be in contact with suppliers in an immediately way.

In conclusion, I would like to remark that Wal-Mart has all its things really well-tied. But although its performance is brilliant, you can always do better.

Finally, I will say that I am from Spain and in this country there is no Wal-Mart, so I am not really expert about this. I have been there just twice but considering all the articles I have read about it and the meeting of Lee Scott at McCombs, I know a little bit more, although I am not a real customer and we know that customers are the best tool to value Wal-Mart.