8

AUDIT FRAMEWORKS

LEARNING OUTCOMES
When you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
Understand how to adapt frameworks
Apply online brand consistency
Analyse online competitors
Evaluate corporate culture
Create an online digital marketing audit

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
When you have worked through this chapter, you should be able to:

• Create a micro-analysis
• Undertake a commercial competitor analysis
• Construct a digital marketing audit
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8.1 INTRODUCTION
A digital marketing audit provides a solid foundation on which to build your digital
strategy. It ensures you have a full understanding of the critical internal and exter-
nal factors covering all aspects of the organisation before building a strategy and
developing a plan.
This chapter shares the critical elements for a comprehensive audit that can
be applied both online and offline. You will learn how to discover threats and
opportunities before they emerge, with useful frameworks to structure your
analysis.

8.2 WHY BOTHER WITH DIGITAL

MARKETING AUDITS?
There is a temptation to press the button and start advertising on social media, build
a website or develop an email campaign.
Please pause!
The social media campaign might miss the right audience, the website may not speak
to your real target customers and the email campaign may render negative results.
This often means campaigns need to be re-worked, more approvals are required and
customers become irritated with too many of the wrong communications, plus the
marketing budget is wasted.
A digital marketing audit provides a clear picture of the landscape in which you are
operating, whether it’s a bar or a software business. It highlights competitors, key
issues in the sector and makes the team think about the worst case scenario – what
could happen if?
At the same time, there are marketers who believe an audit is a waste of time and
think that as change happens so quickly, it’s better to learn to adapt instead. I have
to hold my hand up here and say that I don’t agree with that perspective. I feel that
when carried out well, advance planning can predict potential changes and enable
organisations to prepare. Plus there are other key benefits for you personally in con-
ducting a digital marketing audit, which include:

• You build professional research skills

• You develop an audit process
• You gain greater commercial awareness
• You gain evidence of where the organisation is now
• You can better understand analysis and apply critical thinking
• You understand that digital marketing audit is the first step in an effective digital
marketing plan

As Figure 8.1 shows, as step 1, the audit takes place before the strategy is created and
long before the plan or tactical campaigns are launched.
 Audit Frameworks 207

Step 1 – Audit

Step 2 – Strategy

Step 3 – Plan

Figure 8.1 Digital marketing audit in context

The advantages for organisations of a digital marketing audit include:

• Saving time by ensuring the right tactics are used, based on evidence
• Providing a framework for the strategy
• Focusing the plan on what matters
• Saving money by only spending what’s essential to achieve the goals

It may be that the audit doesn’t discover everything, such as the stealth competitor
that emerges out of the blue. But that’s rare and if it does happen the audit presents
you with options and a faster method of analysis.
An essential aspect of a digital marketing audit is the use of models and frameworks
that provide a structured approach to gathering data, reviewing, analysing and com-
paring information, to arrive at effective recommendations.
It is useful to consider the place of the audit within an overarching framework and a
useful model is MAOSTIC. Largely attributed to the Chartered Institute of Marketing,
MAOSTIC was positioned as an introductory concept for marketing students. It looks
at strategy and objectives within a wider context and stands for:

• M = business Mission
• A = marketing Audit
• M = marketing Objectives
• S = core Strategy
• T = marketing Tactics
• I = Implementation
• C = Control

MAOSTIC considers ‘where are we now?’ and to answer this question, it recommends
starting with the business mission. This should be centred around the organisation’s
purpose and is placed at the start to focus the marketing audit.
208 DIGITAL MARKETING

With a clear picture of the current context, the model moves into exploring ‘where
do we want to be?’ and after the audit the model recommends development of the
marketing objectives, followed by the strategy, as do other models. Having worked
as a practitioner for many years with hundreds of organisations, I think it’s easier to
create the strategy first and then the objectives. The theory is useful, but in practice,
what’s the point of creating objectives if the strategy hasn’t been decided? You might
have very clear objectives, but if that doesn’t fit with the strategy, they won’t work.
Chapter 9 looks in depth at strategy and objectives, and once the core strategy has
been decided, the model moves into marketing tactics, or the details that explain
what has to be done, along with implementation, which addresses how this is done.
This stage explains ‘how do we get there?’ and in Chapter 10, Building the Digital
Marketing Plan, and Chapter 12 Managing Resources, we will explore these areas.
The last stage is control or ‘how do we ensure arrival?’, and is critical to gaining sup-
port from the senior management team if you are working in a marketing role. We
will look at control in Chapter 13, Digital Marketing Metrics, Analytics and Reporting,
as this has changed dramatically with digital marketing.
This chapter explores the contents of the digital marketing audit as well as key models
and frameworks.

8.3 DIGITAL MARKETING

AUDIT CONTENTS
Let’s jump straight in and explore the typical contents of a digital marketing audit.

8.3.1 ORGANISATION REVIEW/MICRO-ANALYSIS

The organisation review is also referred to as a micro-analysis and looks at your
organisation in depth. Its purpose is to investigate the situation inside the business,
as if you were an independent third party reviewing its health and welfare.
Whilst this is an internal review, there are two levels of information available: (a)
internal data and (b) external data. Internal data may be available from the sales,
accounts and marketing teams, which may include:

• Sales data: top customers and key competitors

• Accounts data: best-selling products or top performing services, lapsed custom-
ers, average order values and sales volumes
• Marketing data: number of daily, weekly, monthly web visits, top website landing
and exit pages

Based on this data, an analysis can be constructed using a framework, model or

construct. The advantages of using a structured approach include:

• A clear comparative analysis is possible between the organisation and its

competitors.
 Audit Frameworks 209

• A benchmark is created which can be reviewed in six or twelve months’ time.

• The review is easier to read and understand, especially if shared with other team
members.
• Frameworks ensure all key factors are addressed.

And don’t get tied up about which model to use! You could use any framework that
works for you, as long as you are consistent and use the same tool for comparative
analysis. Plus you can adapt models to suit your needs. In the next example, I use
an adapted version of the 10Cs as the full version doesn’t work for me and I will
explain why.

CORPORATE
CULTURE
CONTROL

CONVENIENCE

COORDINATION

CUSTOMER COMPETITION

CUSTOMISATION

COMMUNICATIONS

CREATIVE
CONTENT
CONSISTENCY

Figure 8.2 Ten Cs of marketing for the modern economy

Source: Gay, Charlesworth and Esen, 2007

8.3.2 THE 10CS OF MARKETING

In 2007 Richard Gay, Rita Esen and Alan Charlesworth created the ‘Ten Cs of market-
ing for the modern economy’. Intended as a ‘useful framework for marketers assessing
210 DIGITAL MARKETING

for the modern digital marketscape from both an internal and external perspective’
(Gay et al., 2007, p. 12), it is abbreviated as the 10Cs and can be used as an audit model.
The customer is at the heart of this model, as shown in in Figure 8.2, and there are
nine further elements which are subsequently considered.
Whether you use the 10Cs as an audit model to consider your organisation on its own,
or with specific competitors, it reflects some elements which may not be easy to find
out. Let’s study each element, along with specific questions to consider.

1. Corporate culture
Corporate culture is about the organisation’s personality, what’s acceptable and what’s
not, its core values inside and outside the business.
Corporate culture is especially visible online, where announcements of CEOs resigning
as a result of an email or other online error are swiftly shared across social media; as
researcher Shirley Leitch remarked, ‘the internet has massively enabled information
sharing’ (Leitch, 2017, p. 1507).
Authenticity and transparency have become the digital indicators of corporate culture
where brands can be exposed if bad news is being hidden (McCorkindale and DiStaso,
2014). Researcher Brad Rawlins suggested that the key traits within transparency were
integrity, openness and respect (Rawlins, 2008, p. 95), which sounds reasonable until you
consider the behaviour of various companies who have demonstrated a lack of integrity
(the car emissions scandal from Volkswagen and others), lack of openness (leaks about
client details being hacked via Talk Talk telecoms), lack of respect for women (using
overtly sexualised and offensive images with an Elf in the discount retailer Poundland’s
Christmas campaign) and abuse of power (Oxfam staff engaging sex workers in Haiti).

Smartphone Sixty Seconds® –

Searching for Trust
Since 2001 Edelman, a public relations firm, has conducted an annual survey of trust which is known
as the Edelman Trust Barometer, sharing insights into feelings about trust in business, government
and media. The findings are shared on its website.

• On your mobile phone go online and search for the Edelman Trust Barometer.
• What’s the state of trust within business, government, NGOs and media?
• How has this changed in the last two years?
• Why do you feel this has changed?

2. Convenience
The element of convenience is straightforward to understand and is often used to
describe the ease with which a customer can make a purchase.
 Audit Frameworks 211

Applied in a digital sense, one organisation that focused its business on customer
convenience is Amazon, with the development of the one-click purchase. This has
since extended into instant voice purchasing via Alexa along with the Amazon Dash
button for simplified ordering (Farah and Ramadan, 2017).
Convenience can also relate to other conversion actions, such as how easy it is to
download a document, register for a webinar or fill in the contact form.

3. Competition
The next ‘C’ considers your competitors, and Gay and his colleagues suggested that
competition was on six levels:

1. Traditional competitors moving online.

2. New online-only entrants in domestic markets.
3. New online entrants from overseas.
4. Competitors from newly formed online alliances and partnerships.
5. Competitors introducing or eliminating channels of distribution.
6. Revitalised traditional businesses.

This is a broader consideration set than a simple competitor study and ensures mar-
keters can identify both existing and emerging competitors. Whilst this is a useful
checklist, as a way to better analyse the competition I have adapted the key features
for the Template to undertake online competitor analysis that is available online.

See Template online: Online competitor analysis.

One challenge most businesses face is disruptive marketing (see Key Term and
Discover More on Disruptive Marketing), where competitors who were previously
unknown, suddenly appear, as if from nowhere. In a globalised market, competitors
are more widely located and therefore an extensive search should be undertaken to
identify emerging competitors.

KEY TERM DISRUPTIVE MARKETING

In 1996 Jean-Marie Dru published Disruption: Overturning Conventions and Shaking Up the
Marketplace in which he defined the concept of disruption:
Disruption is about finding the strategic idea that breaks and overturns a convention in
the marketplace, and then makes it possible to reach a new vision or to give substance
to an existing vision. (Dru, 1996, p. 54)

In terms of how disruption is achieved, researchers Theresa Kirchner, John Ford and Sandra
Mottner suggested there were eight contributing factors to disruptive marketing: financial
resources, entrepreneurial leadership, creativity, agility, proactiveness, risk tolerance, internal
cooperation and external cooperation (Kirchner et al., 2012).
212 DIGITAL MARKETING

DISCOVER MORE ON DISRUPTIVE

MARKETING

There are not many academic journal articles that cover this area, but these two offer a useful
place to start:

•• ‘Disruptive marketing strategy’, by Tomas Hult and David Ketchen (2017), published in the
AMS Review; and
•• ‘Disruptive marketing and unintended consequences in the nonprofit arts sector’, by
Theresa Kirchner, John Ford and Sandra Mottner (2012), published in Arts Marketing: An
International Journal.

4. Communications
Social media has changed brand communications from the typical monologue and
dialogue to trialogue, where customers jump into conversations with other customers
(Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014).
The audit factor is understanding what’s being said and where, especially with so
many voices involved in the communication. Being aware of the conversations allows
organisations to decide whether or not to participate and potentially manage any
issues before they spin out of control.

Digital Tool Google Alerts

At a basic level, Google provides notification of when your organisation’s name is added to a webpage
or mentioned in an online article. These are called Google Alerts and are free of charge.
Visit www.google.com/alerts and add in the phrases you want to follow; add your email and you
will be updated when new mentions occur.

5. Consistency
A key feature in branding, consistency is ensuring that the same service, the same
message, the same tone of voice and the same use of imagery, is demonstrated across
all online and offline platforms. In a digital environment this can be a challenge in
two areas:

1. Where the online staff are aware of an offer that wasn’t shared with the offline
teams; and
2. Organisations with multiple sites (e.g. supermarkets, cafes, cinemas, hairdressers)
where entrepreneurial local managers may decide to create their own content.
 Audit Frameworks 213

It is therefore critical to ensure all teams, online and offline, in all locations, have
access to consistent messages and material.

Activity 8.1 Examination of

Brand Consistency Online
Select an organisation of your choice or somewhere you are working.
1. Provide evidence of how the organisation manages brand consistency. Is there a policy or
guidelines?
2. Is it clear whether all content is checked by one team or person?
3. Compare and contrast the online and offline content by analysing text and imagery from
three different pieces of content online (e.g. web page, Instagram page, Twitter page).
4. How is the consistency evident?

6. Creative content
Thinking back to when the 10Cs model was created in 2007, this was a time when
websites were expensive to create and therefore remained unchanged, often for sev-
eral years. This is now rare, as it is easier to make incremental changes with website
content management systems. The other major change since this model was cre-
ated is the growth of social media platforms, meaning that organisations may have
a ‘corporate face’ on their website, supplemented by an array of other, less formal
information sources, as well as user-generated content.
To a certain extent this element duplicates the previous element, communications, so
you may choose, as I do, to merge these elements when using this model.

7. Customisation
As websites contain many hundreds of pages it can be difficult to find exactly what’s
needed. This means that web visitors arrive at the website, have a quick look and
leave, seeking the item elsewhere. This is the rationale behind web personalisation
and customisation, to immediately show potential visitors what they might be seeking.
Writing in Internet Research, researchers Mamata Jenamani, Pratap Mohapatra and
Sujoy Ghose described ‘a scheme for providing personalized navigation structure
(link-structure) to each user’ (Jenamani et al., 2006, p. 253), which is based on these
factors :

• User behaviour: length of web visit, entry and exit pages

• User’s interest: navigational history of the past and current users.
214 DIGITAL MARKETING

These factors are available from Google or other analytics packages. Typically web ana-
lytics software will reveal the user behaviour and which pages they arrived at (entry
pages), where they visited, how long they spent on the website and the exit page.
Data on the user’s interest, such as how they navigated the site and when, is available
via cookies (see Key Term – cookie, p. 42). Google Analytics and other packages
provide a real-time view, which means that marketers can see who is on the website
right now and where they are visiting.
Having this knowledge enables decisions to be made on improving the pages and
personalising the experience. The personalisation manifests itself in ‘recommenda-
tions just for you’, based on your purchase and browsing history.
It has long been recognised that providing buyers with suggestions and recommenda-
tions on a website is effective in gaining attention (Ho and Tam, 2005). Other research
explored greater online personalisation and a study by Professor Benlian (2015,
p. 253) demonstrated that ‘content and design personalization cues can increase users’
attachment to a website’. If you consider websites you frequently visit, they may
remember your purchase history and your preferences, including delivery locations.
Customising your experience makes it a simplified shopping experience.
Personalisation and customisation are utilised by larger companies such as Amazon,
Netflix and, in the UK, NotOnTheHighStreet. Table 8.1 shows the customisation
techniques used by these companies.

Table 8.1 Customisation techniques

Customisation technique Description

Analysis of past transactions What did you buy? Because we don’t want to show this to you again,
unless there is an upgraded version.
Sample suggestions Would you like to look at this?
Content filtering What do you look at and what do you ignore?
Clickstream analysis What is your journey or path through the website, what makes you click?

If you are working in a marketing department, the key questions to explore are:

• How is our internal data captured and utilised within our marketing planning?
• Does the organisation personalise its online offer? If not do we have the technol-
ogy, skills and budget to deliver customisation?
• How do competitors use customisation on their websites?

8. Coordination
Coordination considers how well organised the purchase process is from start to fin-
ish and is now considered as part of integration as it concerns incorporating every
aspect of the customer journey, from the initial enquiry through to the final product
or service review. To a certain extent, coordination is superseded by the concept of
the customer journey (see Chapter 2, The Digital Consumer).
 Audit Frameworks 215

In this context, coordination is like consistency. The lack of integration occurs when
teams within the business are not connected, do not have the ability to speak with
each other or perhaps in organisations where silos exist and each department does
its own thing!

9. Control
The last element in the 10Cs considers control. In this model Gay and his colleagues
commented that as the internet provided opportunities to test and measure it offered
a form of control. We might call this ‘fail fast’ where an organisation experiments
with advert #1 which doesn’t work and moves onto advert #2 which is successful.
Control therefore represents measuring and monitoring, for greater visibility over what
does and does not work (see Chapter 13, Digital Marketing Metrics, Analytics and
Reporting), although it is difficult to analyse the control element within competitors.
Don’t worry – we haven’t forgotten the tenth C, the customer (see Figure 8.2).

8.3.3 THE DIGITAL 7CS FOR

COMPETITOR EVALUATION
Having considered the 10Cs model and ruled out (a) creative content, which duplicates
communications, (b) control, as it’s difficult to assess competitors, and (c) replaced
coordination with customer journey, we have a revised 7Cs model which I call the
digital 7Cs for competitor evaluation. This comprises: corporate culture, convenience,
competition, communications, consistency, customisation and customer journey.

Activity 8.2 Construction of The

Digital 7CS for Competitor Evaluation
Based on an organisation of your choice, use the digital 7Cs for competitor evaluation and evaluate
competitors to your chosen organisation. If any aspect of this model doesn’t work for you, adapt it!

See Template online: The digital 7Cs for competitor evaluation

8.4 CUSTOMER INSIGHTS

Having understood factors within the organisation, it’s time to delve into how the
customer feels.
Understanding the customer is the essence of a successful organisation, although not
all organisations bother to find out! When a customer initiates contact, the question
216 DIGITAL MARKETING

is, what are they seeking? Table 8.2 highlights the main reasons why customers make
contact with organisations, along with examples and how to respond.

Table 8.2 Reasons why customers make contact with organisations

Reason for contact Examples How to respond

Seek information To find out how something • Include list of FAQs on the website
works, obtain dimensions or • Create ‘how to’ videos for popular requests
details about delivery • Offer Live Chat for quick responses
Request advice More often on business • Create ‘how to guides’ for selecting
websites, but can be a detailed different options
information request • Comparison tables
• White papers with more detail
Register or subscribe Registering for a newsletter or • Keep it simple and request only what’s
subscribing to product updates essential
Place order/make Complete a sale • Make it easy!
purchase • Store the basket for a future shop
• Provide many payment options
• Allow customers to store their details if needed

It’s straightforward to capture the information for the ‘how to’ videos and other
guides. These are the questions most frequently emailed to the customer service or
sales teams!
Your internal sales data, questions to customer services and website analytics software
may provide your team with some information. The gap in this is ‘why’ the behaviour
has taken place and this may encourage further conversations with customers, which
can take place in many ways, including:

• In a focus group
• Face-to-face, meeting individual customers
• Via online survey sent by email
• Online survey as a website pop-up request
• Ask Me Anything #SMS sessions via social media (see Key Term – Ask Me
Anything #AMA).

KEY TERM ASK ME ANYTHING #AMA

The #AMA concept is said to have started in the social media platform Reddit and swiftly moved
to Facebook where organisations hold #AMA sessions where customers, stakeholders and
anyone at all can ask a question that will be answered online.
Reddit’s original concept was that #AMA was an interview, intended for use by actors and
celebrities, as they described on the web page:
Basically, /r/IAmA is a place to interview people, but in a new way. ‘IAmA’ is the traditional
way of beginning the description of who you are; ‘AMA’ is the traditional way of ending
 Audit Frameworks 217

the description; the acronym means ‘Ask me anything.’ The interviewee begins the pro-
cess by starting a post, describing who they are and what they do. Then, commenters
leave questions and can vote on other questions according to which they would like to
see answered. The interviewee then goes through and responds to any questions that
he/she would like, and in any way that he/she prefers. (Reddit Editors, 2015)

Since starting, the #AMA has become a way of allowing organisations to share news with
stakeholders. Typically an #AMA session lasts for a specified time, often one hour, although it is
not uncommon for the threads and conversations to continue long after the session has ended.

Online surveys are popular as they are fast and inexpensive (Hooley et al., 2012).
Plus, there are free tools such as polldaddy.com and surveymonkey.com that can be
usefully employed to capture the data.
They often appear as a website pop-up request as visitors arrive at, or leave, a web
page. The downside is that many customers suffer survey fatigue and this has seen
the growth of single question surveys like the Net Promoter Score® (Wedel and
Kannan, 2016), which emails customers after a transaction has been completed (see
Digital Tool: Net Promoter Score®).

Digital Tool Net Promoter Score®

The Net Promoter Score® (NPS), asks the customer only one question: ‘How likely are you to recom-
mend (name of company)?’ and answers are scored from 1 to 10.
The number of detractors (those scoring 0 to 6) is subtracted from the promoters (those scoring
9 to 10) which provides a number out of 100, which is the Net Promoter Score®.

•• See netpromoter.com

Evaluating customer insights can be undertaken as part of the organisation review and
the critical factor is to ensure that an analysis or evaluation of customer insights could
be easily assessed in 12 months’ time, to understand what’s changed and whether
any improvements have generated results and achieved the organisation’s objectives.

8.5 COMPETITOR REVIEW

All organisations have competitors! If you work in the third sector, within a charity
or campaigning group, it may appear that there are no competitors as your organisa-
tion may have a very specific focus. However, all those organisations competing for a
share of the wallet are competitors. If you operate in the same space, these are direct
competitors; if a possible donor is considering your organisation or another that is
completely different, this is an indirect competitor.
218 DIGITAL MARKETING

Even those working in the public sector, in government to consumer roles, have competi-
tors. Typically, governments allocate budgets based on a range of political and economic
factors. This means that if your government department or public sector body has expe-
rienced budget cuts it’s because others have taken your share of the available funds.
A competitor review provides a benchmark of how others are performing. This stage
of the audit involves a series of questions:

• What are the key digital strengths and weaknesses of the key competitors?
• How do competitors use digital marketing to acquire customers?
• How do competitors use digital marketing to convert customers?

Again, I recommend using a framework to compare like with like, to provide more
objectivity and highlight potential gaps. Useful frameworks to conduct audits include:

• The 10Cs of marketing

• Forrester’s 5Is.

The 10Cs of marketing (Gay et al., 2007) were considered in the last section, so I will
demonstrate how to apply Forrester’s 5Is in this section.

8.5.1 THE EVOLUTION OF FORRESTER’S 5IS

It is useful to understand the context as Forrester’s 5Is was developed in 2007 and
first appeared in a blog article by Brian Haven, part of the Forrester’s research team
(Haven, 2007). The concept was founded on the notion that organisations need to
focus more heavily on customer engagement.
In marketing there have been debates for years about goods-dominant and service-
dominant logic. The earliest models, like the 4Ps, were created at a time when
manufacturing dominated marketing and the focus was on goods (McCarthy, 1964).
By 2004 two researchers, Stephen Vargo and Robert Lusch, had created a firestorm
by suggesting that the 4Ps were passé (Vargo and Lusch, 2004). They quoted earlier
work from Day and Montgomery who diminished the 4Ps to a ‘handy framework’
(2004, p. 1). Whilst Booms and Bitner added three further Ps to the marketing mix,
it was (and is) still a goods-oriented model (Booms and Bitner, 1980).
To develop a services model Vargo and Lush reviewed much of the existing marketing
literature and proposed a services-driven approach, which stepped away from traditional
marketing frameworks. The new concept was called Service Dominant Logic (see Key
Term), which was the precursor to customer engagement and frameworks like the 5Is.

KEY TERM SERVICE DOMINANT LOGIC

Vargo and Lush (2004) defined Service Dominant Logic (SDL or SD-logic) as a ‘reoriented
philosophy that is applicable to all marketing offerings, including those that involve tangible
 Audit Frameworks 219

output (goods) in the process of service provision’ (p. 2). In SDL there is a fundamental change
regarding the concept of resources:

• Operand resources – those on which an operation is performed to produce an effect, the

‘goods’.
• Operant resources – those that produce effects and include ‘core competences and
organisational processes’ which are often invisible and intangible (p. 3) and are also
referred to as ‘skills and knowledge’ (p. 2).

The ‘service-centred’ view was described as having these attributes (p. 5), which included
recurring themes in the evolution of marketing, and these are highlighted in bold typeface:

1. Identify or develop core competences, the fundamental knowledge and skills of an

economic entity that represent potential competitive advantage.
2. Identify other entities (potential customers) that could benefit from these
competences.
3. Cultivate relationships that involve the customers in developing customised,
competitively compelling value propositions to meet specific needs.
4. Gauge marketplace feedback by analysing financial performance from exchange
to learn how to improve the firm’s of fering to customers and improve firm
performance.

DISCOVER MORE ON SERVICE

DOMINANT LOGIC
Useful articles include:

•• The original article proposing service dominant logic: ‘Evolving to a new dominant logic
for marketing’ published in the Journal of Marketing (Vargo and Lusch, 2004).
•• A review of the original proposal: ‘The evolving brand logic: A service-dominant logic
perspective’ (Merz et al., 2009).
•• A follow-up article: ‘Service, value networks and learning’, published in the Journal of the
Academy of Marketing Science (Lusch et al., 2010).
•• A useful third-party review article: ‘The evolution of service-dominant logic and its impact
on marketing theory and practice: A review’, published in the Academy of Marketing
Studies Journal (Zinser and Brunswick, 2016).

Having considered the concept of service dominant logic, the natural extension
was to further involve the customer, one of the early themes noted by Vargo and
Lush. This is echoed in the 10Cs framework, where the individual is placed at the
220 DIGITAL MARKETING

core and in the 5Is, the customer, or individual, was the first ‘I’, around whom the
model is centred. As shown in Figure 8.3, the remaining four ‘I’s focus on the level
of involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence that an individual has with a
brand over time.

Involvement

Influence Individual Interaction

Intimacy

Figure 8.3 Forrester’s 5Is

Source: Adapted from Haven, 2007

The 5Is was created in a digital environment and I have adapted the model to analyse
social media:

• Involvement – this considers the number of fans, strength of the audience

size.
• Interaction – this considers the number of mentions, or comments or shares.
• Intimacy – as this is about the nature of the relationship between the firm and its
audience, I have suggested this focuses on sentiment and whether it is positive
or negative.
• Influence – this considers the online word of mouth, such as reviews, recom-
mendations and write-ups.

8.5.2 APPLICATION OF FORRESTER’S 5IS

Having adapted the framework, let’s work through Case Example 8.1 of British
Airways’ use of Twitter, where Table 8.3 shows an evaluation of their strengths and
weaknesses.
 Audit Frameworks 221

Case Example 8.1 British Airways’

Use of Twitter
Table 8.3 Evaluation of British Airways’ current digital marketing methods

5Is Strengths Weaknesses

Involvement (number of Over 1 million fans on main Twitter There are three Twitter pages, which
fans) page is confusing
The Twitter page does not explain
who manages the account and it lacks
authenticity
Interaction (number of Staff manage social media in a formal Responses are formal and do not
mentions, comments) way (Canhoto and Clark, 2013) always provide a resolution (Öztamur
and Sarper Karakadılar, 2014)
Intimacy (positive, Staff add their names after tweets, Unhappy customers badmouth the
negative sentiment) trying to provide greater intimacy, company publicly via Twitter (Gregoire
although this does not always resolve et al., 2015)
the issue (Baird and Parasnis, 2011)
Influence (word of mouth Happy customers post good news via Customers are passed on to another
including reviews) Facebook (Gregoire et al., 2015) and part of the business, resulting in
co-create brand stories (Gensler et al., potentially negative reviews, e.g. Hi,
2013) we’re sorry you’re having difficulty
doing this. Please try this link to report
it, http://ba.uk/wsaSCA.

The evaluation demonstrates that there are gaps in the management of their current digital mar-
keting methods and practices. Having three Twitter accounts indicates a lack of control or perhaps
awareness? The lack of resolution of customers’ issues highlights that there is no evidence British
Airways have developed a strategy for managing positive word of mouth (Williams and Buttle, 2014).

Case Questions
• Can you extend and amplify this evaluation starting with the academic references provided,
which could be developed and investigated further?
• Can you explore British Airways’ online presence and develop the commentary?
• Does it matter that British Airways has three Twitter accounts? If yes, how could this be
resolved?

Activity 8.3 Evaluation of the 5IS

Using an organisation of your choice, explore the organisation’s online presence and evaluate their
strengths and weaknesses using the 5Is.
222 DIGITAL MARKETING

8.6 MACRO-ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS

A macro-environment analysis considers issues outside the organisation, which in
theory are beyond the organisation’s control and are located within the wider market
situation.
The best-known frameworks in this context are probably PEST or PESTLE, which
are mnemonics which stand for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and
Environmental. If the 4Ps are dead, perhaps so too is the PESTLE model! In 2006
George Burt and his colleagues reviewed PESTLE (also called PEST, STEEP – it all
depends on your tutor) and suggested there were limitations to using the model,
not least of which was trying to define what the environment was. Effectively their
revised model starts with a PEST and explored elements in more detail and planned
what could happen (Burt et al., 2006). Whilst it’s a useful notion, it still starts with a
PEST, which we will look at here.
PESTLE is often used to inform a TOWS matrix (see the TOWS Matrix in Chapter
9, Strategy and Objectives) and provides an essential contribution towards a digital
marketing audit. I think George Burt missed the TOWS element of PEST and how that
could better inform organisations as to strategic future options. Rather than listing
the PESTLE factors, Case Example 8.2 shows the digital PESTLE for an online fashion
brand, ASOS. It takes each element and considers the digital threats and turns these
into digital opportunities.

Case Example 8.2 ASOS Digital Pestle

Using the online fashion brand ASOS as an example, let’s explore in Table 8.4 how PESTLE can be
used as an evaluation tool to review digital opportunities and threats.

Table 8.4 Digital PESTLE used as an evaluation of opportunities and threats

PESTLE factor Digital threats Digital opportunities

Political Skilled digital workers may need to Establish remote working facilities in key locations
leave the UK as it leaves the EU to retain the skills
Economic Higher taxes may be imposed Create micro-sites to address larger customer
to sell online goods in different bases in Europe
countries; the full impact of the
UK’s decision to leave the EU is still
unknown (Mintel, 2016)
Social Consumers may start renting Trial a rental option for certain clothes and
clothes instead of purchasing accessories
outright as relationships to
possessions change (Bardhiet
et al., 2012)
 Audit Frameworks 223

PESTLE factor Digital threats Digital opportunities

Technological Competitors may partner with voice Research the Internet of Things to better
recognition systems and the novelty understand opportunities (Hoffman and Novak,
may lead to customer attrition 2016). For example, how to partner with voice
recognition systems such as Amazon Echo (Alexa)
and Google Home, so that shoppers can be
advised when new stock is added to the website
Legal EU legislation such as the General Ensure customer data acquisition and usage
Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comply with the GDPR
(Regulation (EU) 2016/679) may
impact how online newsletters are
issued
Environmental Taxes may be imposed for delivery Reduce carbon footprint by embracing open
costs direct to the doorstep market delivery stations, such as Amazon lockers,
for mobile customers (Shankar et al., 2016)

Case Questions
• Considering the digital opportunities for ASOS, which should be prioritised? Identify two of the
top priorities to address now.
• What is missing from this evaluation? Can you add further threats and turn them into opportu-
nities for ASOS?

Whilst Table 8.4 provides an outline of how to use PESTLE as a digital evaluation of
opportunities and threats, for a rigorous digital marketing audit you would:

• Add more commentary about specific issues raised

• Connect back to customer feedback received
• Provide more evidence to support the claims
• Prioritise the opportunities to consider first.

FURTHER EXERCISES
1. Using a framework, conduct an organisation review and micro-analysis which
identifies gaps in the organisation’s internal and external research.
2. Select an organisation of your choice and conduct a digital macro-environment
analysis using PESTLE, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the findings.
224 DIGITAL MARKETING

SUMMARY
This chapter has explored:

• The rationale and benefits of a digital marketing audit.

• The range of models and frameworks that can be used for conducting a digital
marketing audit, such as the 10Cs and Forrester’s 5Is.
• Methods of collecting third-party data for analysis.
• Online methods of gaining customer insights.
• How to adapt traditional marketing models such as the environment scanning
PESTLE to consider digital ecosystems, exploring the online environment in more
depth.
 9
STRATEGY AND
OBJECTIVES

LEARNING OUTCOMES
When you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
Understand the difference between strategy, objectives and tactics
Apply the TOWS matrix
Analyse the organisation’s acquisition, conversion, retention strategy
Evaluate objectives using the REAN framework
Create a strategy

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
When you have worked through this chapter, you should be able to:

• Create a strategy for an organisation

• Develop digital marketing objectives for an organisation
226 DIGITAL MARKETING

9.1 INTRODUCTION
Digital marketing strategy can seem complex and very much focused on tactics. Often
interpreted as a Facebook campaign or blog creation, digital strategy is so much more.
A successful strategy is based on evidence and in Chapter 8 you will have conducted
a digital marketing audit, identifying what works and what doesn’t, gaining a better
understanding of the overall context.
In this chapter we will explore different concepts, including digital strategy models
plus details on the hierarchy of objectives. At the end of the chapter you will better
understand what’s needed to create an effective digital strategy.

9.2 STRATEGY AND TACTICS

Strategy and tactics are often confused. You will hear someone saying their strategy
is ‘Facebook advertising’. That’s absolutely not a strategy! It’s a single tactic!
Digital marketing strategy is about more than tactics and lists of actions. Strategies
require a clear and strong vision. They set the direction for the organisation and are
often designed to be in place for several years. A strategy that’s changed every six
months causes confusion, wastes money and sends out the wrong messages to the
target audience.

• Strategy is a plan or programme, to achieve your aim or vision.

• Objectives are detailed SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and
timed) goals.
• Tactics are actions to achieve the objectives.

It is not uncommon for organisations to confuse strategy, objectives and tactics (see
Key Term – strategy).

KEY TERM STRATEGY

There are several definitions of strategy, which are similar and focus on an overarching plan.
A marketing leader from the past, Wendell R. Smith, described strategy as ‘a program
designed to bring about the convergence of individual market demands for a variety of products
upon a single or limited offering to the market’ (Smith, 1956, p. 5).
Philip Kotler offered a complex and scientific description: ‘the marketing strategy is the
set of decision rules, or program that adjusts (product price, advertising budget, distribution
budget) from period T to period T + 1, for all T’ (Kotler, 1965, p. 104).
Michael Porter suggested that ‘A formal corporate strategy provides a coherent model for all
business units and ensures that all those involved in strategic planning and its implementation
are following common goals’ (Porter, 1997, p. 12).
Henry Mintzberg adopted a more straightforward approach and said ‘strategy is a plan’
(Mintzberg, 1987, p. 11).
 Strategy And Objectives 227

9.3 THE ORIGINS OF STRATEGY

Strategy, along with many marketing concepts, is founded on military theory. Armies
and their generals needed clear and decisive strategies to go into war; if not, with
hundreds of soldiers walking around with weapons, there would be total chaos.
The Art of War, written around 2,500 years ago by Master Sun (Sun Tzu), described key
tenets of strategy. Several expressions from the book are commonplace and demon-
strate the values of leadership, propaganda and a good competitor audit, for example:

• Leadership – A leader leads by example, not by force.

• Propaganda – The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
• Competition – Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Historically, strategy focused on leadership or share within markets, competition and

product offers. It wasn’t about the customer, it was about beating the competition
and gaining maximum market share.
Marketing’s original focus was very much on making and selling products on the basis
that if you made it, you could sell it. Researchers V.K. Kumar and Roger Kerin explored
the evolution of themes in marketing, as shown in Table 9.1 (Kerin, 1996; Kumar,
2015). Kerin started the table, which was developed by Kumar to add in the post-1996
content. Unsurprisingly, at its inception the issue was about defining the nature of
marketing and developing key principles and ideas. This progressed into positioning
marketing as a management discipline which morphed into marketing as a science.
Marketing as a science elevated its importance. But beware, this is a hot potato!
Opinion is divided: some see marketing as an art, others see it as a science (see
Discover More on Marketing as Art or Science). I see marketing as an art and digital
marketing as a science, and that’s not popular with everyone.

Table 9.1 Themes and metaphors in marketing

Timeline Prominent theme(s) Predominant metaphor

1936–1945 Illuminating marketing principles and concepts Marketing as applied economics
1946–1955 Improving marketing functions and system Marketing as a managerial activity
productivity
1956–1965 Assessing market mix impact Marketing as a quantitative science
1966–1975 Uncovering buyer and organisational Marketing as a behavioural science
processes
1976–1985 Crafting market/marketing strategy Marketing as a decision science
1986–1995 Identifying market/marketing contingencies Marketing as an integrative science
1996–2004 Customer profitability studies and resource Marketing as a scarce resource
allocation efforts
2005–2012b Marketing accountability and customer Marketing as an investment
centricity
Emerging Marketing at the core and new media Marketing as an integral part of the
(2013–present) influence organisation

Source: Kumar, 2015, p. 2 Journal of Marketing

228 DIGITAL MARKETING

DISCOVER MORE ON MARKETING AS ART

OR SCIENCE

An irreverent writer on the topic of marketing as art or science is Professor Stephen Brown
from Ulster University. His writing is entertaining and often linked to pop hits of the 1980s and
1990s as well as Star Wars. He also has an ongoing battle with the American marketing great
Professor Philip Kotler, whom he likens to Darth Vader. Brown positioned himself as Luke
Skywalker, saving the world from marketing science.
There is a bit of history here too. In 1997 Stephen Brown was a guest editor of the European
Journal of Marketing. Presumably for a bit of sport he decided to write an article called ‘Kotler
is dead’ when Philip Kotler (known as the god of marketing in the United States) was very much
alive and well. Brown went one stage further and did not add his own name to the paper and
instead created a pseudonym, let’s call it a persona, named Alan Smithee of Alloa Metropolitan
University, Alloa, UK. Where? Exactly! The opening line is ‘Bastards!’ and this sets the tone for
a dialogical rant about marketing as a science. It also established a long and entertaining
relationship between Stephen and the professor he calls ‘Phil baby’.
I hear, from a very reliable source, that Phil baby sends Brown an annual email, reminding
him that he’s still alive and kicking, recounting how many hundreds of thousands of market-
ing books he’s sold that year, and asking Stephen for a response about how few he’s sold.
For entertainment and to learn about the history of marketing, see for example:

• ‘Art or science? Fifty years of marketing debate’ in the Journal of Marketing Management
(Brown, 1996)
• ‘Kotler is dead!’ in the European Journal of Marketing (Smithee, 1997)
• Postmodern Marketing Two: Telling Tales (Brown, 1998)
• And I would also recommend a newer book on brands, Brands and Branding (Brown,
2016), as this explains the background, components and place of branding in marketing.

9.4 TRADITIONAL STRATEGY MODELS

Table 9.2 lists well-known strategy models, the author, when the model was created
and an overview. If you want to find out more on these, many are covered in tradi-
tional marketing textbooks, although I will explore the TOWS matrix in more detail
as this is a useful tool to identify strategic options.

Table 9.2 Strategy models

Model Author Date created Overview

Product differentiation Wendell R. Smith 1956 Smith viewed product differentiation and
and market market segmentation as being based on
segmentation strategy supply and demand
Growth strategies for Igor Ansoff 1957 Useful framework, often considered to be
business too simplistic
 Strategy And Objectives 229

Model Author Date created Overview

Diversification strategy George Steiner 1964 Main focus was company acquisition as a
diversification strategy rather than product
or market acquisition
Forces driving industry Michael E. Porter 1980 Focus moved from the introspective
competition individual business unit to its wider
environment and five external forces
Application of generic Michael E. Porter 1980 From the forces driving industry
strategies competition Porter identified three generic
strategic options: (a) cost leadership; (b)
differentiation; and (c) focus
The TOWS matrix Heinz Weihrich 1982 Extracted the strategic options from a SWOT
analysis
Five Ps for strategy Henry Mintzberg 1987 A management rather than marketing focus:
Plan, Ploy, Pattern, Position and Perspective
MAOSTIC Chartered 2004 Part of the traditional marketing process:
Institute of business Mission, marketing Audit,
Marketing marketing Objectives, core Strategy,
marketing Tactics, Implementation, Control

Smartphone Sixty Seconds® –

Searching for Strategy
Companies listed on stock exchanges such as the New York (NYSE) or the London Stock Exchange,
have to produce annual reports for shareholders. These contain their future strategies.

• On your mobile phone go online and search for ‘NYSE top companies’ or ‘FTSE top companies’
(The Financial Times lists the top 100 companies).
• Then select and search for one of these companies and find the annual report and identify
their strategy.
• Is the strategy clear?
• What model or framework are they using?

9.4.1 IDENTIFYING STRATEGIC OPTIONS

WITH THE TOWS MATRIX
When creating a strategy it is useful to understand the options available. This should
be evidence-based and come from the audit (see Chapter 8, Audit Frameworks). Once
the audit has identified the current situation, it is easier to consider the future direc-
tion of the organisation.
Professor Heinz Weihrich created a model known as the TOWS matrix. You might
have noticed that TOWS is ‘SWOT’ spelled back to front. The idea of the TOWS is that
it takes the material captured in your audit, plots this into the matrix and extracts
your strategic marketing options. Weihrich noted that whilst this may not be new,
230 DIGITAL MARKETING

the difference with this ‘conceptual framework’ was that it provided ‘a systematic
analysis that facilitates matching the external threats and opportunities with the
internal weaknesses and strengths of the organization’ (Weihrich, 1982, p. 59) and
this is illustrated in Figure 9.1.

Internal Strengths (S) Internal Weaknesses (W)

External Opportunities (O) SO ‘Maxi-Maxi’ Strategy WO ‘Mini-Maxi’ Strategy
Use strengths to maximise Minimise weaknesses by taking
opportunities advantage of opportunities
External Threats (T) ST ‘Maxi-Mini’ Strategy WT ‘Mini-Mini’ Strategy
Use strengths to minimise threats Minimise weaknesses and avoid threats

Figure 9.1 The TOWS matrix

Source: Weihrich, 1982

Let’s explore each of these strategies in more detail.

SO ‘Maxi-Maxi’ strategy
This is a good position to be in and it’s about using the organisation’s strengths to
maximise opportunities. It has also been described as the aggressive strategy and
often involves expansion and diversification. There is an example of how this is
applied in Case Example 9.1.

Case Example 9.1 Airbnb

Maxi-Maxi Strategy
In 2008 Airbnb was officially launched as an alternative to hotel rooms. The company encouraged
people with spare rooms to rent their space to individual travellers when busy events were taking
place and where hotel rooms had sold out. There were some challenges along the way, with many
negative stories online, and as a result new policies and greater guidance have since developed,
building a strong and recognised brand.
As the business model was successful Airbnb adopted the SO ‘Maxi-Maxi’ strategy, focusing on
their brand’s strengths and identifying opportunities to move into new markets.
They realised business users were adopting Airbnb for business travel. There was an opportunity
to adapt the individual leisure traveller product to the business market. Executing the Maxi-Maxi
strategy required investment and changes to address the needs of the new market:

• Third-party booking tools, because the person making the booking is not always the person
travelling
• Self check-ins for late arrivals
 Strategy And Objectives 231

• Business-friendly receipts noting all tax details

• One-click expenses so that charges are immediately billed to the company, not the employee
• Focusing on business requirements, including Wi-Fi, laptop-friendly workspaces
• Group trips, so teams could easily identify suitable accommodation
• Promotion on the website

Airbnb’s website claimed that over 250,000 companies have now used this facility.

Case Questions
• Can you think of an example where an organisation has expanded to harness its strengths?
• Did this work or were changes needed at a later stage?

WO ‘Mini-Maxi’ strategy
Where weaknesses have been identified they should be minimised by taking advan-
tage of opportunities. For example, it may be that an organisation has strong presence
in a specific market and could expand its product offer but lacks the technology to
address this. The WO strategy seeks to resolve this, which may be by acquiring the
skills or by company acquisition.
This could be described as a competitive strategy. Weihrich commented that failing to take
advantage of opportunities in this area could result in competitors moving into the market.

ST ‘Maxi-Mini’ strategy
This strategy utilises the organisation’s strengths to minimise threats. This is often
seen as a conservative strategy.

WT ‘Mini-Mini’ strategy
The WT strategy aims to minimise weaknesses and avoid threats and has been called
a defensive strategy. If this is the only strategy available to the organisation, it is not a
great place to be and it may be that a complete review is required to see if it is still viable.

Activity 9.1 Application of the

Tows Matrix

1. Using the TOWS matrix look back at a digital marketing audit you have conducted for an organ-
isation of your choice.

(Continued)
232 DIGITAL MARKETING

(Continued)
2. From this, extract the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and place into the outer
boxes.
3. Make sure all elements are numbered.
4. If you have too many in one area, such as strengths or weaknesses, identify whether there is
some duplication and group some items together. This should be a focused list.
5. When the outer boxes have been completed, look first at the SO ‘Maxi–Maxi’ strategy box and
identify which strengths can maximise opportunities. Turn this into a short sentence, number-
ing the relevant strength and opportunity, so if presented to the organisation, they can see your
thought process.
6. Repeat for the remaining three strategy options.
7. If possible, reorganise each box and prioritise which strategic options will be addressed first.

See Template online: Application of the TOWS matrix

9.5 DIGITAL STRATEGY MODELS

Digital strategy models are being led by organisations rather than researchers at
present. This section explains three digital strategy frameworks that are shown in
Table 9.3

Table 9.3 Digital marketing strategy models

The social media The acquisition, conversion, McKinsey’s consumer

Stage framework retention framework decision journey
Pre-purchase Awareness/Consideration Acquisition Consideration/Evaluation
Purchase Conversion Conversion Purchase
Post-purchase Evangelism Retention Post-purchase

These digital marketing strategy models all follow a similar three-step route from
pre-purchase, to purchase and post-purchase, recognising that this may all happen
simultaneously. For example, you may see an app, download it and review it within
an hour of purchase.
We also need to more closely consider the notion of purchase because consumers
are moving away from owning possessions to renting and borrowing, whether it’s
movies, cars, music or clothing, and in terms of growth strategies, it is a newer dis-
ruptive area that has flourished, such as Spotify, with over 50 million subscribers,
30 million songs and available in 60 markets – incredible performance from a com-
pany that never actually delivers goods to your doorstep.
 Strategy And Objectives 233

If you think about it, many students arrive at their halls of residence with no television
and no music collection. Instead, TV is watched on YouTube, using whatever device
is available, and music is often streamed via Spotify, iTunes or other apps.
Researchers Fleura Bardhi, Giana Eckhardt and Eric Arnould have termed this move
from owning products to renting as ‘a liquid relationship to possessions’ (Bardhi
et al., 2012, p. 511). This means they have greater mobility, and whilst it is a form of
market development – why own when you can rent? – it still scares many traditionalists.

DISCOVER MORE ON LIQUID

CONSUMPTION
Read the aptly titled article ‘Liquid consumption’ in the Journal of Consumer Research by Fleura
Bardhi and Giana Eckhardt (2017).

KEY TERM COLLABORATIVE

CONSUMPTION

Some definitions of collaborative consumption include:

• Rachel Botsman, co-author of ‘What’s mine is yours: The rise of collaborative consumption’,
has defined the sharing economy as ‘an economic system based on sharing underused
assets or services, for free or for a fee, directly from individuals’ (Botsman, 2015).
• Russel Belk, who has written prolifically on the concept of collaborative consumption, sug-
gested ‘Collaborative consumption is people coordinating the acquisition and distribution
of a resource for a fee or other compensation’ (Belk, 2014, p. 1597).

DISCOVER MORE ON COLLABORATIVE

CONSUMPTION

In an article in the Journal of Marketing entitled ‘When is ours better than mine? A framework
for understanding and sharing systems’, Cait Poynor Lamberton and Randall L. Rose (2012)
provided a useful typology of sharing systems.
Myriam Ertz and colleagues explored motives for sharing in their article ‘Dual roles of con-
sumers: Towards an insight into collaborative consumption motives’ (Ertz et al., 2017).
234 DIGITAL MARKETING

Plus we also share items. We share cars, sofas, playlists, film accounts, clothes and
books! The notion of a sharing economy is not new. We have always borrowed or
loaned goods between friends and neighbours.
Today’s sharing economy is more sophisticated. Instead of sharing with neighbours,
you are sharing with strangers and it is also known as collaborative consumption
(see Key Term).
Having considered the overall frameworks, this section describes these models in
more detail, with examples from organisations.

9.5.1 THE SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY FRAMEWORK

When advertising on Twitter or Facebook, both organisations in the advertising-side
platform ask organisations to identify their overall focus or strategy based on awareness,
consideration and conversion. As this is found in social media, I have called it the social
media strategy framework and I have adapted it to include evangelism, where fans are
raving about the product or service on social media. Figure 9.2 shows how this works.

Awareness
• Brand awareness
• Reach

Evangelism Consideration
• Positive reviews and • Traffic
feedback • Engagement
• User-generated content • Downloads or installs
• Video views
• Lead generation
• Messages

Conversion
• Conversions
• Online sales
• Store visits

Figure 9.2 The social media strategy framework

 Strategy And Objectives 235

Whilst this is valid in theory, it is more likely to occur in a messy fashion with links
to and from the different elements.

Awareness
The social media framework includes brand awareness and reach at the start, recognis-
ing that in a digital environment, awareness can take place faster than in the offline
environment. Using social media advertising, a new service can be targeted at specific
customer groups, personas or other demographics, to gain awareness within minutes.

Consideration
Consideration is the stage where visitors are thinking about your brand and this may
result in web traffic, talking about the brand online or other engagement, those with
apps or software may gain downloads or installations, videos may be watched, leads
generated or messages sent to your organisation.
It might also involve finding more information to think about things, before taking
a big decision. For example, considering a change of behaviour, such as a move to
online registration for government services, or finding out about giving up smoking
on health websites.

Conversion
In a digital environment conversion can take place immediately after awareness. You
watch an influencer on YouTube talking about a specific product, search and buy in
minutes. This is one of the major differences in digital marketing.
It is also possible that once a product or service has been considered (whether that’s
in minutes or months), you move to conversion, which can mean different concepts
for different organisations. For example:

• For an online store, conversion focuses around goods being added to the shop-
ping basket and a checkout being performed.
• Conversion for online registration for government services means an individual,
family or business decides to complete the registration documents, or download
a pack to help stop smoking or lose weight.
• Downloaded or installed software or apps are used frequently rather than just
once.
• This can also mean a visit to a physical store following an online discovery.

Evangelism
Once conversion has occurred, the next stage, which doesn’t always happen, is
evangelism. The aim is that the customer shares the good news, via positive online
reviews or feedback, or better still, other forms of user-generated content, such as
unboxing the product, providing a case study or explaining why they chose your
organisation.
236 DIGITAL MARKETING

The challenge is that not everyone shares what they have purchased because:

• It’s a secret – a present for a friend and I can’t tell anyone until their birthday.
• It’s a company secret – I don’t want my competitors to find out.
• It’s boring – I’ve signed up for tax updates from a government website.
• It’s personal – I’ve signed up for a slimming programme but I don’t want people
to know right now.

Digital Tool Google Trends

If you are generating awareness of a new product or service, before the product or service is launched,
you might explore the online website Google Trends. This will show the volume of searches for this
subject and whether it is popular or not, and may influence your strategy.

•• See trends.google.com

9.5.2 THE ACQUISITION, CONVERSION,

RETENTION FRAMEWORK
The acquisition, conversion, retention (ACR) framework is displayed as a circular
rather than a linear model. Whilst this framework has existed for some time, it is
largely credited to the consultancy firm Econsultancy (2009). As with the awareness,
consideration, conversion framework, this is another purely digital model considering
online customer acquisition, conversion and retention, shown in Figure 9.3.

Acquisition Conversion

Retention

Figure 9.3 The acquisition, conversion, retention framework

Source: Adapted from Econsultancy, 2009
 Strategy And Objectives 237

The notion of customers taking an online journey from acquisition to conversion

and retention does include a hierarchy of steps. As with the social media framework,
acquisition and conversion may take place within minutes. It’s a self-explanatory and
simplistic model which may be why Econsultancy no longer includes the content on
its website. However, as an online-first model, it works well when considering how
organisations can better harness digital marketing.

Activity 9.2 Analysis of the Organisation’s

Acquisition, Conversion, Retention Strategy
Using Template 9.1, analyse the strategy within an organisation of your choice.
Remember, you are not creating objectives, but exploring their overarching plans and it may be
that not each element of the framework is employed.
Template 9.1 Analysis of the organisation’s acquisition, conversion, retention strategy

Phase Example of strategy within the organisation

Acquire
Convert
Retain

Ethical Insights Blame the Agency

Coca-Cola launched a Christmas campaign to say thank you to fans in Russia as part of its retention
strategy. It created a map of Russia in its brand’s red and white colours that was posted on its social
media channels.
Maps in Russia are very complicated and perhaps not an obvious Christmas theme. Worse still,
this map didn’t include Crimea and many social media fans in Russia went online and complained,
saying it was incomplete and asking if Coca-Cola was making a political statement.
A second map was subsequently created and re-shared. This one included Crimea along with
the long-disputed and little-known Kuril Islands. This time those in Crimea complained and this map
was also deleted.
In the meantime, a political firestorm had started. Russians and Ukrainians were calling for boy-
cotts. A series of negative images about the brand appeared online and Coca-Cola headquarters
in Atlanta, Georgia, were forced to issue a statement saying sorry. Their response was that their
marketing agency made changes to the map without their knowledge or approval. It wasn’t us, but
the agency!
Online the images still exist; just search for ‘coca cola Christmas advert Russia’!
238 DIGITAL MARKETING

9.5.3 MCKINSEY’S CONSUMER

DECISION JOURNEY
Another digital strategy model was created by one of the largest consulting firms in the
United States, McKinsey & Company. They conducted interviews with 20,000 consum-
ers within five different sectors and across different geographical areas, including the
United States, Germany and Japan, to address how strategy models were changing.
The McKinsey team also proposed another loop model instead of the traditional linear
approach, justified by their extensive study: ‘consumers are changing the way they
research and buy products’ (Court et al., 2009, p. 2).
They explained that this newer model, outside the traditional marketing funnel, was
why Amazon offered recommendations to customers who were exploring products
online and ready to buy. The model, shown in Figure 9.4, was more sophisticated
and more complicated than traditional strategy models. That is probably why some
marketers prefer to stick to the older, simpler and easier funnel.

Consumers add or subtract brands

as they evaluate what they want

The consumer considers an The consumer selects

initial set of brands, based on a brand at the moment
perceptions and exposure to ACTIVE EVALUATION of purchase
recent touch points

LOYALTY LOOP

INITIAL MOMENT
CONSIDERATION OF
SET PURCHASE

TRIGGER

POST-PURCHASE EXPERIENCE

Post-purchase the consumer builds expectations

to inform the next decision journey

Figure 9.4 The McKinsey consumer decision journey

Source: Exhibit reprinted with permission of McKinsey
 Strategy And Objectives 239

Whilst this is technically a map of a consumer journey (see also Chapter 2, The Digital
Consumer for more on consumer journeys), it is a digital strategy model because it
considers the plan an organisation should make. It is also clearly worked as a strategy
model for Amazon, which is recognised as one of the world’s leading brands.
The McKinsey consumer decision journey comprises four phases: (a) initial con-
sideration set; (b) active evaluation; (c) moment of purchase; and (d) post-purchase
experience. Table 9.4 shows how the consumer decision journey applies to strategy.

Table 9.4 Application of the McKinsey consumer decision journey to strategy

How this applies to the

Phase What this means strategy
Consideration If thinking about buying a car or a new beauty product, Gaining stronger brand
consumers may have a brand in mind at the start recognition
Evaluation Searching for reviews about the brand, consumers start to Building positive online
actively evaluate the original or initial considered item against sentiment
other similar or different products and other brands. Consumers
might also message friends and family in this phase
Purchase This is when the sale takes place and the critical factor is that this Improving the offer and
is no longer the last stage in the sales funnel experience for customers
Post-purchase After the sale, consumers check to see what others have said Encouraging customer
about the product and they may leave reviews evangelism

Part of the McKinsey consumer decision journey can be seen in company strategies,
such as Just Eat, shown in Case Example 9.2.

Case Example 9.2 Just Eat

You may already be familiar with Just Eat, which is an app that allows you to find and choose from
a whole range of food outlets near your location. What you may not know is that this was created in
Denmark and is now available in many countries.
The company described itself as a ‘global marketplace for online food delivery, providing customers
with an easy and secure way to order and pay for food from our Restaurant Partners’ (Just Eat, 2018)
and its strategy is based on three aims: (a) improving the consumer experience; (b) bringing greater
choice; and (c) driving channel shift.
Just Eat seems to be using an adapted version of the McKinsey consumer decision journey:

• Improving the consumer experience – moment of purchase – making it easy to order with one
click, embracing technology to order from Amazon Alexa.
• Bringing greater choice – active evaluation – so many outlets in the scheme all display the logo,
plus an online price promise makes evaluation easier.
• Driving channel shift – initial consideration set – ongoing brand investment to ensure the name
gains strong recognition online when people are thinking about a take away and use the app
not the phone.
(Continued)
240 DIGITAL MARKETING

(Continued)

Case Questions
• Have you used Just Eat or a similar online food ordering system?
• How did you make the purchase; via phone, app or Alexa?
• After the purchase did the company capture the post-purchase experience via reviews and
ratings?
• Was this a one-off purchase or are you a retained customer?

These three digital strategy models more accurately reflect the online purchasing
system. Whilst you can use traditional strategy models, do ensure they are adapted
and properly reflect the organisation’s situation.
Added to this there is the concept of deliberate and emergent strategy (see Key
Term). You may have a strategy in place, that is the intended or deliberate plan, but
something happens and a new strategy emerges that actually works!
As an example, Twitter’s original strategy was to provide an SMS service for small
groups. Their original marketing material (long disappeared) talked about an online
office watercooler, the idea being that when you were getting a glass of water, or
making a coffee in the office, you caught up with colleagues and found out what was
happening. Twitter as it then was, would facilitate this in an online capacity. However
the intended or deliberate strategy was never realised as it soon became a breaking
news channel and adopted the emerging strategy instead.
Whilst strategy is an intended plan, it can change due to disruptions in the marketplace
that were not predicted or were ignored (see Chapter 1, section 1.4, Digital disruption).
It is essential for marketing professionals to be able to adapt the models and frame-
works. One of the challenges is that students often stick rigidly to every single aspect
of a model, even when not appropriate. If it’s not relevant, remove or adapt the ele-
ment and explain why!
And if the market changes, don’t stick to the same strategy: review and adapt too!

KEY TERM DELIBERATE AND EMERGENT

STRATEGY
Deliberate and emergent strategies were originally described by Henry Mintzberg and James
Waters (Mintzberg and Waters, 1985, p. 257):

• Deliberate strategies are those ‘realized as intended’ – it all went to plan.

• Emergent strategies are ‘patterns or consistencies realized despite, or in the absence of,
intentions’.
 Strategy And Objectives 241

The key is to have a strategy – a clear vision for the future which is shared with staff.
The strategy may not contain all the detail as it is the overarching focus and more
information may be included in the final plan. The key components in a strategy are
that it is:

• A short statement
• Based on a strategy model of your choice
• Not timed
• An overview rather than detail
• Usually brave!

9.6 OBJECTIVES
When the strategy has been agreed, the next stage in the digital marketing process
is to create objectives, which we will explore in this section.

9.6.1 HIERARCHY OF OBJECTIVES

As we saw in Chapter 8, the digital marketing audit explores ‘where we are now’
and the strategy describes ‘where we are going’. Traditionally strategy was centred
around growth in terms of sales or market share, because most commercial organisa-
tions were aiming to increase return on investment. Today it tends to be focused on
awareness, consideration, conversion, evangelism or retention.
Organisations often have a hierarchy of plans and objectives which are categorised
in a pecking order, which can be confusing. A friend working in a new job recently
messaged me via LinkedIn with this question: ‘I’m currently in the middle of writ-
ing a digital marketing plan. However, I can’t decide whether I should be writing
individual objectives for each department or whether the objectives should be for
the entire company?’
To answer this question, we can look at earlier research, and Charles Granger writing
in Management Review (1970) explained that strategic business objectives concerned
three key areas: (a) financial; (b) product–market mix; and (c) functional (technical,
marketing, operations, personnel), as shown in Figure 9.5. You need to be aware of
this, especially when working, as organisations may require marketing objectives
that fit with overall policies.
Strategic business objectives are often framed around growth, regardless of organi-
sation type. People often think that government departments and charities don’t or
shouldn’t have conversion goals. However, different organisation types can have dif-
ferent goals, whether this is sales, customer awareness or retention.
In Table 9.5, I have illustrated different organisation types and their possible goals.
Business goals are the basis for marketing objectives and these revolve around the
concepts of awareness, consideration and conversion.
242 DIGITAL MARKETING

Strategic
business
objectives

Digital marketing
objectives

Digital marketing mix objectives

Figure 9.5 Hierarchy of objectives

Table 9.5 Business goals based on organisation type

Organisation type Examples Growth goals

Commercial organisations Business to consumer, business to Increased awareness
business companies
Commercial organisations Business to consumer, business to Growth in consideration of a
business companies product offer
Commercial organisations Business to consumer, business to Increased website conversion
business companies
Commercial organisations Business to consumer, business to Increased customer retention
business companies
Public service organisations, Government departments, charities, Growth in awareness of an
commercial organisations business to consumer, business to organisation or its product offer
business companies
Public service organisations, Government departments, charities, Growth in conversion for a product
commercial organisations business to consumer, business to or service
business companies

Whilst these are examples of goals, they are not objectives as we all know that objec-
tives need to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed.
Let’s explore digital marketing objectives in more detail in the next section.

9.6.2 DIGITAL MARKETING OBJECTIVES

IN CONTEXT
A key element of digital marketing is the development of sustainable objectives.
Typically, in organisations the objectives often focus on numbers: totals of sales
achieved; value of sales; numbers of customers; or volume of products sold.
 Strategy And Objectives 243

The challenge for marketing is that focusing on numbers alone limits the focus to
quantities and does not create a healthy business as they can fail to provide a sus-
tainable customer offer.
For example, some years ago the cheapest supermarket on the UK high street was called
Kwik Save. It focused on very low prices. It was super cheap. But even as a student on a
limited budget I wouldn’t shop there. It was a terrible in-store experience, more like a bat-
tle between customer, packed aisles and unhappy staff. No one wanted to be seen holding
their carrier bags! The firm ceased trading and the stores closed. Focused on the lowest
possible numbers it failed to attract sufficient customers in a competitive environment.
Smaller organisations also struggle to compete on price. Imagine selling software
and then major software corporations decide to give most of it away free. Similarly
individual hotels can no longer compete with large formula chains that can drop
prices, give big discounts and provide regular offers. The way to compete is based
on more than numbers.
This section shows you how to create objectives using tools such as REAN and the
5Ss. Once the objectives have been created, you can build your digital marketing
plan, which we will explore in Chapter 11.

9.6.3 CREATING DIGITAL MARKETING OBJECTIVES

Digital marketing objectives focus on customer acquisition, engagement and retention.
They should be based on the overall business goals and they should be SMART. If an
objective is not SMART it’s often a wish – a description of something that someone
would like to do, without any real substance.
Based on the goals shown in Table 9.5, we can transform these into SMART digital
marketing objectives, as shown in Figure 9.6.

Generate Grow Increase website

awareness consideration conversion

To generate 10% To increase To increase sales from

more visitors to the engagement on social the website from 5%
website by 31 media by 10% in the of visitors to 10%
December next 6 months before 31 May

To encourage 20% of To encourage 15% of

To drive 15% more
customers to leave a web visitors to share
traffic to our website
review before 30 their email address
by the end of Q1
September within 12 months

Figure 9.6 Business goals adapted into digital marketing objectives

244 DIGITAL MARKETING

The examples of digital marketing objectives in Figure 9.6 are part of the strategy
to grow the business using the acquisition, conversion and retention (ACR) model.
This section now looks at specific frameworks for creating digital marketing objectives.

Reach, Engage, Activate, Nurture (REAN)

In 2006 two consultants working in Finland at Satama (now Trainers House), Xavier
Blanc and Leevi Kokko, developed a model to use with clients which they named
Reach, Engage, Activate, Nurture, shortened to REAN (Jackson, 2009).
They had considered older models of marketing communication, such as AIDA
(Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action), but there were challenges. Firstly, what is
‘interest’? Does it mean a web visitor, someone who has downloaded a document or
something else? It was vague and lacked clarity. Then there was desire and how this
is measured online. How do you know when desire has been reached?
In a digital world they needed a digital model and so Blanc and Kokko created REAN
on the basis that all businesses need to reach potential customers; engagement starts
a conversation; activation organises the sale; and finally, nurturing looks after the
customer, encouraging them to return. Examples of REAN objectives include:

• Reach: To reach 5,000 new customers before December

• Engage: To engage with 30% of all web visitors in quarter 2
• Activate: To activate sales from 10% of all web visitors over the next 6 months
• Nurture: To nurture 80% of all customers by July

Activity 9.3 Evaluate Objectives Using

the REAN Framework
For an organisation of your choice, create and then evaluate your objectives using the REAN framework.
Evaluate objectives using the REAN framework

Area Your objectives Strengths/weaknesses of the objective

Reach
Engage
Activate
Nurture

Sell, Serve, Speak, Save, Sizzle – 5Ss

Another tool to create objectives is the alliterative 5Ss model, originally created by
Dave Chaffey and P.R. (Paul) Smith in their book eMarketing Excellence (Chaffey
and Smith, 2008).
 Strategy And Objectives 245

Smartphone Sixty Seconds® –

Identifying the Objectives
• On your mobile phone go online and find a brand you have visited before.
• Based on their web content, judge what are their top three objectives.
• Share with classmates.

This model was originally intended to be a rubric to assess website effectiveness; it

wasn’t designed as a tool for developing objectives. As an early adopter of websites,
I found this a useful tool, but soon realised this would work well as a structure for
developing objectives in organisations and started to use it when creating digital
plans and the idea developed.
You may find that when creating objectives it is difficult to find one for each of the
elements of the 5Ss, so you may create two objectives in some places.

5S – Sell
This is about the numbers – the volume of sales or ‘conversion activities’ such as
newsletter registrations, downloads and other relevant activities. Sales objectives may
also be created within strategic business objectives.

5S – Serve
Customer service objectives ensure organisations strive to improve and develop the
service. It is the one area where smaller businesses can win against large businesses,
where it can be difficult to consistently deliver fabulous service if you employ thou-
sands of staff.

5S – Speak
Speak is staying in contact with customers and planning communication. Some
organisations send you daily emails, some weekly and some every now and then.
Speak is also evolving with Live Chat where people can instantly speak to company
representatives online.

5S – Save
Organisations are under constant pressure to improve processes and this is where
saving time and hassle, for the organisation or the customer, has become an important
factor in business management.
The best-known example of saving time is probably Amazon’s 1-click ordering system.
In September 1997 the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued
246 DIGITAL MARKETING

Amazon.com with patent reference US 5960411 for the 1-click order system. The
objective was to save customers’ time when placing an order and remove the hassle
of re-entering their name, address, delivery location and payment information.
Amazon.com created a simple ordering process. It generated increased sales for the
company, saved customers time, had not been used elsewhere and was easy to use –
a classic win–win situation.
Amazon’s one click to order was both save and sizzle, which introduces another chal-
lenge: some objectives can achieve two elements in one. What you have to remember
is to focus on the primary objective.

5S – Sizzle
The toughest objective to develop! A famous marketing slogan from the last century,
attributed to Elmer Wheeler, head of the Tested Selling Institute, was ‘Don’t sell
the steak – sell the sizzle’ (Wheeler, 1937). This was re-phrased in the UK as ‘Sell
the sizzle not the sausage’.
Sizzle is the magic, the factor that makes a difference to a product or service, and adding
something so different to the product, promotion or other part of the digital marketing
mix, that it stands out and customers and competitors alike say ‘wow, that’s amazing’.
Sizzle needs a bit of thought. It’s often not seen within the organisation and can be
developed with help from customers. The key is to ask customers, ‘if we could wave
a magic wand and change one thing, what would it be?’.
Examples of digital marketing objectives using the 5Ss include:

• Sell: To increase sales via our Facebook page to 10% in the next quarter
• Serve: To add messaging functionality to Twitter to automatically respond to
FAQs, by June
• Speak: To add Live Video Chat to the website within 12 months
• Save: To analyse frequently asked questions and add to Live Chat by December
• Sizzle: Create a how-to video channel to explain our FAQs by the year end

9.7 MARKETING MIX OBJECTIVES

The marketing mix objectives address elements of the 7Ps identified by Booms and
Bitner (1980), and known as ‘the extended marketing mix’.
The ‘traditional marketing mix’ is known as the 4Ps and comprised Product, Price,
Place and Promotion. I always felt that ‘place’ was shoe-horned into the model due
to the alliteration as it really meant the location or delivery point. Today we think of
place as online, in-store or mobile.
The 4Ps marketing mix was designed at a time when businesses sold products
rather than services and this concept of the 4Ps is credited to E. Jerome McCarthy
who created the alliterative terms (McCarthy, 1964). In 1980 two researchers in tour-
ism, Bernard H. Booms and Mary J. Bitner, claimed that the 4Ps were insufficient
 Strategy And Objectives 247

for service businesses (Booms and Bitner, 1980). They stated that the ‘customer is
directly involved in and contributes to the assembly process’ (p. 344). Their research
investigated the differences between products and services, concluding that the 4Ps
model did not fully work in services. They identified three missing variables, which
they named Participants, Physical evidence and Processes. Participants later became
People and these are the 7Ps of the extended marketing mix.

9.7.1 HOW HAVE THE 7PS CHANGED

WITH DIGITAL MARKETING?
Product or service is still the same, although the issue is that services could take longer
to become digital as the customer needs to be present – think about hairdressers! In
the future we could opt for the augmented reality haircut!
However, we have also seen growth in pure digital products: downloadable books,
music and videos. I can create personalised birthday cards online to be signed and
delivered direct to the recipient and get an annual reminder which also tells me which
cards I’ve sent before. I love the organisational abilities of these digital stores and
how they #MakeMylifeEasy by intelligently using data.
Pricing is changing in a transparent digital world. How many times have you searched
for an item online and opened multiple windows conducting three or four searches
at the same time, to see which one comes back cheaper? This is why companies in
the future will build delivery costs into all transactions.
Place is the fast-changing variable. I can get my order delivered to work, to home, to
a parcel collection point, to click and collect, to a locker. I get a text message telling
me when my delivery is arriving – sometimes with the name of the driver and their
vehicle registration number. Plus I can buy online, via mobile app and a few items
on my smartwatch. I can ask Alexa to order books for my Kindle and to add grocer-
ies to my shopping list.
Promotion is adapting to new channels such as personalised social media advertising.
Although I have many email addresses and receive many emails a day, I still check
some shopping emails (see Chapter 3 and Figure 3.3 Why email works model).
People’s roles are changing, as we are witnessing the growth of digital jobs. A quick
search online shows hundreds of jobs with titles like: Head of Digital Marketing,
Digital Marketing Manager, Digital Specialist, Digital Analyst, Senior Digital Strategist,
Digital Marketing Specialist, Digital Marketing Executive, Digital Marketing Assistant
and Digital Marketing Intern. More staff have digital responsibilities and are aware
of online customer contact.
Physical evidence concerns the online experience, the user experience (UX) or, as it’s
now being called, the customer experience (CX). How many clicks do you need to
make to fulfil a task, such as download a document, place an order or book a ticket?
Processes are slower to catch up, and thinking that it’s nearly 20 years since Amazon
patented its 1-click shopping, many other stores are still behind. This is one of the
reasons that Amazon dominates the online shopping environment as it has made the
process remarkably easy.
248 DIGITAL MARKETING

Having discussed the application of the 7Ps extended marketing mix to digital objec-
tives, we can say examples of digital marketing mix objectives might be:

• Product (or service): To transform the offline training product into an online
version by the end of Q4
• Price: To increase online pricing by 5% by year end
• Place: To create a store inside Facebook within 12 months
• Promotion: To launch online social media advertising campaigns over the next
12 months
• People: To empower staff to respond faster on social media by June
• Physical evidence: To remove two steps from the user journey by September
• Processes: To offer live chat on the website by December

The stronger and clearer the objectives, the easier it is to build a digital marketing
plan. It’s worth spending time to ensure the digital marketing objectives are easy to
understand so that more people will agree to them, especially if you’re on a placement!
Finally, don’t have too many objectives. If you create a list of 30 or more, the plan
will be never-ending and nothing will be achieved.

FURTHER EXERCISES
1. Identify an organisation that is in the news and not performing well. Create
an alternative digital marketing strategy for the organisation and justify your
response.
2. Create a customer retention strategy for an organisation of your choice.
3. Review the website of an organisation of your choice and assess its digital mar-
keting objectives.

SUMMARY
This chapter has explored:

• How traditional models are applied to digital strategy.

• The usefulness of the TOWS matrix to develop strategic options.
• Newer digital strategy models, including the social media framework and the
ACR framework, which are designed for online organisations.
• How the hierarchy of objectives fits into the overall context for digital marketing
objectives.
 10
BUILDING THE DIGITAL
MARKETING PLAN

LEARNING OUTCOMES
When you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
Understand digital marketing planning issues
Apply digital planning models
Analyse the impact and effort required
Evaluate the resources for your plan
Create your outline digital marketing plan

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
When you have worked through this chapter, you should be able to:

• Create a digital marketing plan

• Prepare a social media campaign
250 DIGITAL MARKETING

10.1 INTRODUCTION
Understanding strategy and the process of creating objectives is the start of creating
a plan. This chapter explains how you bring together different elements to build a
workable digital marketing plan.
You will discover how to use the one-page digital marketing plan and comprehend
the requirements for resources as well as the different budgeting options.
The second part of this chapter looks at social media campaign planning and the
details needed to create an online campaign, whilst managing the workload.

10.2 WHY BOTHER WITH PLANNING?

A plan provides a focus, an agreed way ahead and enables organisations to save
resources. A lack of planning may impact the organisation in many ways, including:

• Confusion as no one is sure what’s happening.

• Working in silos as no information is shared and there’s a lack of integration
(Roberts, 2011).
• Lack of skills as no one may be available internally to carry out the work and the
organisation may need to spend more on consultants or agency staff.
• Difficult to measure effectiveness as if no plans are in place, no one will be clear
if the goals have been achieved.
• In a complex and changing external environment the wrong decisions may be
taken based on lack of information.
• Short-term decisions are taken based on immediate rather than long-term require-
ments and could be wrong.
• Greater investment is often required as carrying out actions at the last minute
may require larger budgets as goods and services may be more expensive.

Having identified issues with a lack of a plan, this still happens. Making a plan pre-
pares organisations and people for things that might happen, rather than ignoring
the situation and assuming it will all be OK.
This happens in digital marketing too; YouTube, for example, ignored calls to remove
terrorist videos until major advertisers stopped using the channel for adverts. They are
not alone, and all the tech giants had to create a collective plan to identify offensive
material and remove it before it is shared publicly.
Having a plan ensures you are prepared for what might happen as well as agreeing
the organisation’s future direction. Let’s explore how to build a plan.

10.3 BUILDING THE PLAN

With an understanding about the challenges due to a lack of planning, it’s time to
identify tactics to achieve the strategy and objectives.
 Building The Digital Marketing Plan 251

Within the sequence of the digital marketing process, after the audit, strategy and
creation of objectives, the next step is building the digital marketing plan.
The plan should be based on (a) your strategy, (b) your objectives and (c) the perso-
nas. Effectively the plan details the steps required to achieve the objectives, so if you
haven’t finished your objectives, you can’t create the plan!
There are different ways to create a digital marketing plan, which largely depend
on the organisation or the brief you have been given. In this section we will look at
two approaches:

• Digital application of the 7Ps

• One-page digital marketing plan

You may wonder which approach to use. It’s fine to use either (unless there is a
specific request). You may find that the digital application of the 7Ps is often more
useful where an organisation has not fully embraced digital marketing, whereas the
one-page digital marketing plan outline is useful where an organisation has already
adopted digital tactics and is keen to improve.
A digital marketing plan, regardless of which approach is adopted, follows these steps:

• Step 1: Create a strategy and objectives

• Step 2: Build personas
• Step 3: Place objectives into a table, add outline tactics for each
• Step 4: Extract all tactical actions and add detail
• Step 5: Add resources and budget

And as you will notice, the plan won’t work unless you have already developed the
strategy, objectives and personas.
This is an iterative approach that starts by adding earlier work (strategy, objec-
tives, personas) and then considers potential tactics. Once agreed, detailed tactics
are added and skills required identified. You can then evaluate the resources and
the budget.

10.3.1 DIGITAL APPLICATION OF THE 7PS

The 7Ps, also known as the extended marketing mix (Booms and Bitner, 1980), has
been used as a planning model as its focus can be tactical as well as strategic.
Let’s apply the model to the digital environment and explore examples of where
digital tactics can be applied:

• Product: Adapt or enhance existing products to a digital offer. For example, an

online bookshop’s website offers downloadable or preview material.
• Price: Pricing online is transparent so you should incorporate delivery, rather
than adding as an extra cost.
252 DIGITAL MARKETING

• Place: Enable buying via website, social media and mobile. More retail stores
offer all forms of purchase (online, in-store, mobile).
• Promotion: Social media advertising brings new promotion methods, as do har-
nessing social media networks to share product news. For example, GAP clothing
moved to mainly online ads to better target the right audience.
• Processes: Online this refers to the user experience; how many clicks to complete
the purchase? Many websites have reviewed the customer journey to ensure a
speedy process and enable login via Facebook or Twitter.
• Physical evidence: Does the user trust the website, does it look authentic? Google
is seeking greater authentication from websites with a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
to protect your data; without this, when browsing you may see the message ‘this
website may not be secure’.
• People: How does customer service work online? Is live chat available? Many
online retailers now offer live chat and messaging.

Many organisations have adapted to a digital version of the 7Ps, as Case Example 10.1
shows, with two fashion retailers. What is interesting is that their tactics are
remarkably similar.

Case Example 10.1 Digital Application

of the 7PS to ASOS and Boohoo
Online fashion companies ASOS and Boohoo offer similar products aimed at similar demograph-
ics. ASOS targets 20-somethings and Boohoo targets 16–24-year-olds (ASOS, 2017; Boohoo, 2017).

Table 10.1 shows how they have digitised the 7Ps.

Table 10.1 Digital application of the 7Ps to ASOS and Boohoo

7Ps ASOS Boohoo

Product • Products grouped into demographics (men, • Products grouped into demographics
women) and products, brands and edits (men, women) and themes
• Also offers ’Marketplace’, enabling boutiques (campaigns, trends, get the look)
to sell direct
Price • Premier Delivery UK for unlimited next-day or • Boohoo premier – pay £9.99 for free
nominated-day delivery for 12 months – pay next day delivery for 12 months
£9.95 • Student discounts offered
Place • Orders via website and app • Orders via website and app
• Free delivery with orders over £20 • Collect from lockers
• Click and collect • Evening delivery
• Evening delivery • Weekend delivery
• Precise time delivery
Promotion • Places ads across social media • Places ads across social media
• Uses Instagram to promote new products • Uses Instagram to promote
new products
• Offer codes available online
 Building The Digital Marketing Plan 253

7Ps ASOS Boohoo

Processes • Encourages account registration to remember • Encourages account registration to
details remember details
Physical • Easy to use site with frequently changed • Easy to use site with frequently
Evidence home page changed home page
People • Online customer care • Customer support via Twitter
• Live chat

Case Questions
• Looking back at how ASOS and Boohoo apply the 7Ps, how else could their develop their tactics
to create a greater difference between each other?
• Do you recognise tactics employed by other organisations?
• What do you recommend they should do differently and why?

10.3.2 ONE-PAGE DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN

In Chapter 9 we looked at strategy and objectives, and considered how a strategy
translates into objectives. This was shown as an example in Figure 9.5, and if we
adapt that diagram and list some possible digital marketing tools to use, we can start
to create that plan.
Table 10.2 shows the strategy, digital marketing objectives and tactics that have already
been created. There are two objectives for each strategy and each objective has one
or more suggested tactics.

Table 10.2 Strategy, digital marketing objectives and tactics

Strategy Generate awareness Grow consideration Increase website conversion

Objective #1 To generate 10% more To increase engagement on To increase sales from the
visitors to the website by 31 social media by 10% in the website from 5% of visitors to
December next 6 months 10% before 31 May
Tactics #1 • SEO • Social media • Improve UX
• Online PR
Objective #2 To drive 15% more traffic to To encourage 20% of To encourage 15% of web
our website by the end of Q1 customers to leave a review visitors to share their email
before 30 September address within 12 months
Tactics #2 • Advertising to • Email marketing • Site design
drive traffic
• SEO
• Blog

The strategy is based around the social media framework (see Chapter 9) and the
objectives are aligned with this.
254 DIGITAL MARKETING

Under each objective I have added one or more possible tactics, which we can now
expand into a plan. Before we do, we need to consider that there are three fundamen-
tal stages in the user or customer journey: pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase.
These are described in the strategy as awareness, consideration and conversion, so
they are arranged in a logical order.
Another key factor is that we are targeting specific individuals or audience personas
(see Chapter 4) rather than everyone who may visit our website, social media space
or affiliate site.
This is because it’s fine to consider social media to increase engagement, but if our
persona doesn’t use social media, it won’t work. So now you need to revisit the one,
two or three personas you created earlier (see Activity 4.1: Construct a digital persona,
p. 104) and ensure these are still valid and resonate with the organisation’s strategy
and objectives. If not, you may need to adapt.
Having confirmed the personas, look back at your strategy and the desired objectives.
Ensure that you select elements from the digital toolbox which are relevant to the
objectives. To help with this, note which objective is being achieved for each tactic.
In some cases it may be more than one objective.
Table 10.3 shows an example of a one-page digital marketing plan outline. This
addresses the tactics only and does not address the resources required, nor the control
mechanisms and the measures. This provides a balanced overview to decide which
tactics should be selected and from this, the specific details concerning resources
can be added in the next phase.
With Table 10.3 we need to apply the plan to an organisation, so let’s imagine this is a
charity requiring volunteers, supporters and donors. I have added in three personas,
which we could outline as:

• Vic the volunteer – older, male, uses Facebook to stay in touch with grandchildren
only, checks email every day, visits the website, reads online articles
• Sam the supporter – student, rarely checks email, uses Instagram and only online
on mobile
• Diana the donor – business owner, donates money, has no spare time, uses
LinkedIn and Twitter, checks email, reads articles online

Your personas should contain significantly more detail and be evidence-based!

Table 10.3 One-page digital marketing plan

Strategy: Pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase

Digital Objective being achieved Persona 1 Persona 2 Persona 3
toolbox
element Vic the volunteer Sam the supporter Diana the donor

Email To encourage 20% of Email and ask for

customers to leave a review on how
a review before 30 volunteering makes
September a difference
 Building The Digital Marketing Plan 255

Strategy: Pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase

Website To increase sales from the Add case studies to
website from 5% of visitors the website to show
to 10% before 31 May the good work
Online PR To generate 10% more Create a case study Find companies for PR
visitors to the website by 31 on how volunteering on benefits for getting
December makes a difference involved with charities
Search To drive 15% more traffic Do not use PPC for these personas
engine to our website by the end
marketing of Q1
Blogs To drive 15% more traffic Articles on benefits
to our website by the end for companies to get
of Q1 involved in LinkedIn
Social To increase engagement Posts about Links to images Case studies on how
networks on social media by 10% in volunteers making from resources volunteering makes a
the next 6 months a difference and area with toolkits difference on LinkedIn
organising a on organising
volunteer event events
Social To drive 15% more traffic Ads on Instagram Urgent appeal ads on
media to our website by the end to download Twitter
advertising of Q1 useful content
from website
UX To increase sales from the Improve the
website from 5% of visitors mobile UX
to 10% before 31 May
Site design To encourage 15% of web Add resources area with downloadable
visitors to share their email toolkits on organising events
address within 12 months

The essential aspect to this one-page digital marketing plan outline is that where
there are blank boxes, this is because the tactics (email, online advertising or pay per
click) are not relevant for those persona groups.

Activity 10.1 Create Your Outline

Digital Marketing Plan
Using the framework from Table 10.3 and the Template online, create an outline digital marketing
plan. Remember that not all elements of the digital toolbox need to be completed, but you need to
have developed relevant evidence-based personas!

See Template online: One-page digital marketing plan outline

Table 10.3 contained a list of actions and based on this I can construct the plan. I
have had to extract each action and granulate the details, as shown in Table 10.4. This
example is based on just two of the actions identified, which started as:
256 DIGITAL MARKETING

• Email and ask for a review on how volunteering makes a difference

• Add resources area with downloadable toolkits on organising events

The first of these, emailing, involves a whole series of actions and leads into develop-
ment of the case studies which is a second tactic.

Table 10.4 Building the action plan

Area Action When Note Skills

Email Segment database into By 28 Ensure we have consent to Database
volunteers (V1 group), February contact! management
supporters (S1 group) and
donors (D1 group)
Email Email volunteers and ask for 15th of every Once they’ve added, move Database
a review on how volunteering month into new V2 group, so we don’t management,
makes a difference continue to ask and irritate mailing
management
systems
Case study Find volunteers willing to be By 31 March Try to get a balance of Communication
case studies, initially ask people, so there is some
around in the office variation in the case studies
in terms of demographics
and activities
Case study Invite case study volunteers By 30 April Aim is to get 10–14 case Communication,
into the office and interview studies listening, writing
Case study Organise photographer to By 30 April Get approval from volunteers Photography
get some images of case of photos and consider getting
study volunteers one image framed and
sending as a thank-you to
each volunteer
Case study Video interview and edit By 30 April Get sign-off for video at start Video
Case study Get approval/sign-off from By 15 May Ensure written permission Admin
volunteers for case studies obtained to use online and
offline for up to 3 years
Case study Edit as needed and publish to By 31 May Note to remove in 3 years Social media
website (written case study,
video, images and quotes)
Case study Share case study #1 on social By 30 June Add to content calendar and Social media
media schedule
Case study Build into 12 themes for one By 30 June Balance themes with the Social media
a month activities
Planning
Management
Case study Posts about volunteers By 30 June Advise volunteers 3 days Social media
making a difference and before that they will feature
organising a volunteer event and ask them to share!
Events Run workshop to identify (a) By 31 Hold at lunchtime and invite Management
all key events and (b) how August volunteers
to run successful events, (c)
what to avoid and (d) what
the charity could provide that
would be useful
 Building The Digital Marketing Plan 257

Area Action When Note Skills

Events Write up notes and extract By 30 Try to link the themes to the Management,
common themes. Turn into September organisation’s overall plan admin
checklists
Events Graphically improve the By 31 As some will print the docs, Graphics
checklists into attractive October make sure they are not
documents to easily blocked with colour that uses
download and print all printer ink!
Events Add checklists to resources By 30 Explore if these can be shared Web access
area on website November in other online places

Table 10.4 shows the overall area, the specific action, the date by when this should
happen, any relevant background or other notes, as well as the skills needed. It may be
that the digital marketing assistant can use video editing or a good photographer. This
is why the job roles are not yet added as it is about skills, not roles. Plus there are no
costs added at this stage. People and finances are added when we consider resources.

10.4 RESOURCE PLANNING – THE 9MS

After you have listed the tactics and created your plan you need to consider what
resources will be required to ensure it happens.
The foundations of resource planning are in manufacturing, where it was criti-
cal to ensure the right people were in the right place with the right machines and
materials, at the right time. This has led to a plethora of ‘M models’, from the 5Ms
of Efficiency (Manpower, Materials, Machines, Methods, Money) to the Six Sigma
techniques for improving processes (Method, Mother nature, Man, Measurement,
Machines, Materials).
I have adopted a blended approach, with 9Ms: Manpower, Money, Method, Mother
nature, Measurement, Machines, Materials, Management and Minutes, as shown in
Figure 10.1.

Digital Tool Online Freelance

Marketplaces
There are many online freelance marketplaces where companies (buyers) request a service, from
writing a blog article to creating an infographic, or editing photos to developing social media profiles.
Individuals (sellers) can either bid for the work or create ‘all in one packages’ showcasing what
they could do for a fixed fee. Some of these marketplaces include:

•• peopleperhour.com
•• upwork.com
•• freelancer.com
•• fiverr.com

Many students register with these sites to supplement their incomes whilst studying!
258 DIGITAL MARKETING

Manpower Money Materials

• People required to • The available or • Software or other
deliver the work required budget materials

Management Minutes Measurement

• Senior sponsor to • The timeframe needed • The consistent KPIs or
support the project to deliver the work metrics used

Method Machines Mother nature

• Approaches being used • Computers or other • Environmental factors
and if outsourcing is equipment needed that may need to be
needed considered

Figure 10.1 The 9Ms of resource planning

Depending on the company size you may not need all of the 9Ms, although it is always
sensible to utilise the first six as people are always required to deliver the work, a
budget is often needed and it is likely that in a digital marketing environment some
software or other materials such as written content, images or videos may be needed.
Regardless of company size it is essential to obtain a senior sponsor at a management
level to support the project, or the lack of support could lead to a project not starting,
being postponed or, worse still, failing. Timeframes help to explain the total time
required to deliver a piece of work and this can highlight if it would take too long
or if extra help may be needed.
Measurement is covered further in Chapter 13, Digital Marketing Metrics, Analytics
and Reporting, and the key at this stage is to ensure those involved in the project
have agreed consistent Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or metrics.
A project will fail if you are measuring likes gained for a Facebook page and if I am
measuring sales income via Facebook. We are measuring different numbers and they
will never tally, so ensure that there is consistency from the start.
The final 3Ms, method, machines and mother nature, often occur in larger organisations.
Method is becoming more important as organisations use freelancers or online services
to deliver certain aspects of a project (see Digital Tool: Online freelance marketplaces).
When scoping a marketing plan, consider whether there are internal skills and, if not,
what additional help is required (see Ethical Insights: Human beings not algorithms).
Using online freelancers often means you can speed up processes to facilitate faster
delivery of some parts of a project. In larger organisations it can be easier to gain
permission to spend £1,000 or $1,000 on a service, than it can be to start a temporary
staff-hiring process.
 Building The Digital Marketing Plan 259

Ethical Insights Human Beings Not Algorithms

There is a downside to online freelance marketplaces as their reward systems are neither managed
nor controlled.
One example is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (named after an 18th-century chess-playing
machine, ‘The Turk’) which recruits workers to complete tasks from requesters. The tasks require
human intelligence, which means they cannot be done in any other way. Typical projects require
people to categorise items, select correct spellings and find item numbers. The dark side is that
the fee for the work often starts at less than one US cent per item. So if you need to categorise
the Twitter comments from one hundred or one thousand tweets, you could earn 10 cents or
even one dollar!
A campaign against low pay and poor treatment on Amazon Turk was started, named human
beings not algorithms, where Kristy Milland, a ‘turker’ (as workers call themselves), contacted Jeff
Bezos to explain that she had completed more than 830,000 tasks on Mechanical Turk, earning
an average of 20 cents for each and was unhappy with the treatment received (Milland, 2015).
But Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is still alive and well – and used frequently by researchers!
See mturk.com

In a digital environment machines are coming to the fore. When the M models were
developed in manufacturing, machinery concerned the tools need to deliver the work.
Applied in a digital environment, this might include desktop or laptop computers,
tablets or additional mobile phones to monitor social media channels out of hours.
Planning for these resources in advance is a good idea as, again, gaining budgetary
approval in bigger organisations can take weeks (or months).
Mother nature is a well-considered factor in manufacturing. You may be planning to
develop a new software project in, say, San Francisco, where Facebook and Twitter
have their headquarters buildings, yet it is also well known for major power failures.

Activity 10.2 Assess the Resources

for Your Plan
Using the 9Ms of resource planning as shown in Figure 10.1 as a framework, start to assess the
requirements for your plan. You need to evaluate factors such as:
1. Are extra people needed to deliver the work? Could existing staff be trained? Could the work
be outsourced?
2. What is the overall budget available?
(Continued)
260 DIGITAL MARKETING

(Continued)

3. Consider materials, especially for digital marketing (see Chapter 4, Content Marketing) as
you might need copywriting, video production and more.
4. Identify the project sponsor in management and the timescale, which may be 3, 6, 9 or 12
months.
5. What are the agreed measurements?
6. Is method a factor or can all work be delivered in-house?
7. Are additional machines needed (e.g. do the design team need new Macs?) and is mother
nature a factor or not?
8. Add a summary line for each and build a larger commentary to explain and justify your
decisions.

See Template online: Resources for your plan

Smartphone Sixty Seconds® –

Searching for the Downside

1. Use your mobile phone and search for terms like those shown here and see what stories you
can discover:
•• Downside of Mechanical Turk
•• Don’t use Mechanical Turk
•• Mechanical Turk problems
2. Are the stories recent, up-to-date or from a few years ago?
3. Does Amazon’s Mechanical Turk respond?
4. If you were working there, how would you manage negative stories about your business online?

10.5 BUDGETING
Once the tactics and resources are all listed you might need to prepare a budget. If
you are working on a placement this may be for the senior management team, or if
you are on a community project, your colleagues may need to be involved.

10.5.1. SPECIFIC BUDGET SETTINGS

Traditionally budgets were organised based on specific settings, such as:

• Budget needed to meet objectives

 Building The Digital Marketing Plan 261

• Budget available
• Percentage of turnover
• Last year’s budget.

Budget needed to meet objectives

When the objectives have been formulated and the tactics listed, you allocate the
required funds to complete all activities. This method is also known as the ‘objective
and task’ budget.

Budget available
More often than not this applies to smaller organisations and is about the possible
available budget. Over the years I have received emails from students working on place-
ment who are on very small budgets. This means you need to become more creative!

Percentage of turnover
Typically used in services businesses, the percentage of turnover ranges from 2% to
20% but very much depends on the business. Financial institutions often work on
10% of turnover.

Last year’s budget

This method is more usual in larger organisations where a budget has been allocated
to different departments and you are given last year’s budget plus 5%. The downside
with this method is that departments are encouraged to spend the entire budget, even
if not needed, just to gain the same amount the following year.

10.5.2 DIGITAL MARKETING BUDGETS

In digital marketing there is greater flexibility as online advertising is auction-based
and so depends on the search terms being used, the volume of searches and com-
petition for the words. As an example, if you bid for a phrase like ‘online postcard

KEY TERM COST PER ACQUISITION

In a digital environment we consider cost per acquisition – what does it cost to acquire a new
customer? Acquisition can be acquiring data (email address), a donation or a sale.
As an example, if my average sale is £100 on a product that costs £25 to produce, my
profit margin is 75%. If my target profit margin is 50–70% I could afford to spend £5 to £50 in
acquiring the customer.
However, if it is an expensive keyword that costs £100, I would never make a profit and this
wouldn’t work. I therefore need to understand and factor in the acquisition cost from the start.
262 DIGITAL MARKETING

printing’ this may cost £10 per click. But if you bid for ‘e postcard maker’ this may
cost 10p. This means smaller businesses can more easily compete, as long as they are
creative. Newer budgeting models have been introduced, such as cost per acquisition.

10.6 ASSEMBLING THE PLAN

Having identified the actions, evaluated the resources and agreed the budget, you
are now ready to assemble the final plan.

10.6.1 SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN PLANNING

When building your digital marketing plan you will have considered promotion (see
Chapter 3, The Digital Marketing Toolbox) and you may need to create individual
campaign plans. This section looks at social media campaigns; if you want to organise
other campaigns see Discover More on Advertising and Promotion.

DISCOVER MORE ON ADVERTISING AND

PROMOTION

For in-depth coverage of online campaigns. read the latest edition of Advertising and Promotion
by Chris Hackley and Rungpaka Amy Hackley (4th edn, 2017).

To create social media campaigns you will need to adopt a campaign planning pro-
cess, and a blueprint for this is shown in Figure 10.2.

Objective Targeting Channel

setting strategy selection

Creative offer Timing and Media planning

and messaging integration and selection

Budgeting Pre-testing Post-testing

Figure 10.2 Social media campaign planning process

 Building The Digital Marketing Plan 263

Objective setting
Whilst you will have agreed objectives for the digital marketing plan, you will also
have campaign objectives. Think of campaign objectives as a subset of your main
objectives, one at a time, as shown in Figure 10.3.

Campaign
objective A
Objective 1
Campaign
objective B
Strategy
Campaign
objective C
Objective 2
Campaign
objective D

Figure 10.3 Framework for digital marketing campaign objectives

Let’s apply the framework where the strategy is the social media framework, focused
on conversion. The segment is students living away from home in the UK aged 18–22
with no cooking skills, moderately health conscious, mobile and laptop device users
for at least 5 hours a day
Objective 1: To gain a 10% increase in online sales in November

• Campaign objective A: To target UK students aged 18–22, living away from

home, via Facebook, in November, offering evening delivery
• Campaign objective B: To re-target web visitors using Instagram, during October
and November, with a 10% student discount offer

Objective 2: To increase adoption of the mobile app by 25% from September

to December

• Campaign objective C: To target UK students aged 18–22, living away from

home, via Facebook, in November, offering free app with calorie counter
• Campaign objective D: To re-target web visitors across the Google network,
from September to December, with the app details

The granulation or development of the details in the specific campaign objectives

makes it easier to construct the creative offer and messaging, which follows later
in this chapter.
The difference between the digital marketing plan objectives and the campaign
objectives is the detail. Campaign objectives focus on a platform and a specific
activity – such as re-targeting.
264 DIGITAL MARKETING

Targeting strategy
Once the objectives have been set, you will check that the targeting strategy, which
is identified in the main digital marketing plan, is consistent. What you should not
do at this stage is to introduce a new target audience.
Ideally you look back at your personas and integrate this at the campaign level too.
For example, if your target audience is fashion conscious 16–24-year olds, the cam-
paign targeting strategy should select specific age groups or genders in this target
audience. You might not select everyone as one group and may decide to target a
narrower audience, such as girls aged 16–18 years.
It is also possible that you may re-target those who have already visited your website
to encourage them to move from consideration to conversion.

Channel selection
With many social media networks available, channel selection can be a challenge!
The key is focusing on the social media networks used by the target audience or
personas. This is another reason why, when developing personas, you consider the
webographics (see Chapter 4, Content Marketing). If the webographics are not strong
or detailed enough, you need to go back and add greater depth and information.
Thinking about potential channels for the target examples in this section:
• Students living away from home might use Facebook to stay in touch with parents
• Fashion-conscious 16–24-year-olds might use Instagram to see the latest edits

The critical factor is ensuring you have research to back up and support your claims.

Creative offer and messaging

The objectives and targeting have been agreed and the next stage is building the
creative offer. However, the creative offer can be more challenging in a digital environ-
ment. Think about the size of an ad on Facebook – it’s tiny! So somehow you need to
communicate a specific message that appeals to the target audience in microseconds.
That’s a lot of work.

KEY TERM ADVERTISING APPEALS

The idea of an advertising appeal is explained well by Pragya Keshari and Sangeeta Jain,
writing in the Journal of Marketing & Communication:
Advertising appeal refers to the approach used to attract the attention of consumers
and/or to influence their feelings toward the product, service, or cause. These appeals
are normally categorized as emotional and rational, and are used interchangeably
as mood/logical or transformational/informational in different contexts. (Keshari and
Jain, 2014, p. 37)
 Building The Digital Marketing Plan 265

Advertising appeals (see Key Term) are either emotional, trying to elicit an emotion,
whether positive or negative, or rational, trying to connect with a practical or utilitarian
need, and are the foundation for the advertising message (Grigaliunaite and Pileliene, 2016).

Many consumer behaviour experts have explored examples of rational (effectiveness,

convenience, price, safety) and emotional (exclusivity, adventure, beauty, relaxation)
appeals (see Discover More on Consumer Behaviour). The key is that a single appeal
is used in an advert, aimed at a specific target audience, so that there is instant
understanding and no confusion.

DISCOVER MORE ON CONSUMER

BEHAVIOUR

Two books on consumer behaviour provide much more detail on appeals and consequences:

•• Consumer Behaviour: Applications in Marketing, by Robert East, Jaywant Singh, Malcolm

Wright and Marc Vanhuele (2016).
•• Consumer Behaviour, 3rd edition by Zubin Sethna and Jim Blythe (2016).

Smartphone Sixty Seconds® –

Finding Appeals
• Use your mobile phone and log in to a social network. What adverts can you see?
• Take one advert and identify the advertising appeal. Is it emotional or rational?
• Compare with classmates: do they see the same or different messages?

Activity 10.3 Propose the Creative

Offer and Messaging
Propose the creative offer and messaging for either:

• Campaign objective A: To target UK students aged 18–22, living away from home, via Face-
book, in November, offering evening delivery; or
• A campaign related to an organisation of your choice.

See Template online: Creative offer and messaging

266 DIGITAL MARKETING

Earlier in the chapter I gave examples of campaign objectives and one of these was:

• Campaign objective A: To target UK students aged 18–22, living away from

home, via Facebook, in November, offering evening delivery.

The nominated channel in this example is Facebook and it is a small advert. I have
limited space in terms of headlines and copy to create my offer.

Timing and integration

Social media and PPC adverts allow you to plan the exact timing of when you want
to launch the adverts. For example, Facebook allows you to schedule adverts (if the
‘lifetime budget’ option is selected) for specific days at specific times. This means
you can run adverts that are integrated with an overall message. For example, if your
campaign objective is to target UK students aged 18–22, living away from home, via
Facebook, in November, offering evening delivery, you may run the adverts between
4pm and 9pm, when the target audience is thinking about food!
Timing is one aspect and the important factor is to ensure that the whole campaign
is integrated or joined up with other marketing promotional activities.
If a campaign lacks integration, the customer will become confused. Imagine look-
ing at a photo on Instagram, clicking through to the website, but landing on a page
that doesn’t make sense – this is cognitive dissonance (see Key Term) and usually
results in customers abandoning pages.
Another aspect of timing is ensuring that you don’t run different promotions at the
same time. If you plan a 10% off and a 15% off campaign simultaneously, the 10% is
less likely to work and the advertising budget will be wasted.

KEY TERM COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

Leon Festinger, a social psychologist, developed cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger and
Carlsmith, 1959), which explained that individuals could have conflicting attitudes, beliefs or
behaviour, leading to discomfort.
Inconsistency in beliefs leads to dissonance or discomfort – for example, you may believe
that smoking is dangerous but you are at a party and meet someone interesting, who is
smoking, and instead of complaining about the smoke, you stand next to them, potentially
inhaling. Your belief that smoking is bad is inconsistent with your action (putting up with the
smoke) and results in a change of belief or behaviour.
Festinger described this as ‘opinion change following forced compliance’ (Festinger and
Carlsmith, 1959, p. 203).

Media planning and selection

Having agreed four campaign objectives, as in the worked example in Figure 10.3,
we can apply these to the overall media plan.
 Building The Digital Marketing Plan 267

To enhance the adverts we need to ensure that the website is up to date and contains
relevant information and we may also write some new blog articles that focus on the
challenges of being a student and cooking when away from home.
Table 10.5 shows a digital media plan example that explains the type of content that
will be placed and where. This would typically be supported with a commentary to
provide more details.

Table 10.5 Digital media plan example

General Helpful News about

Communication channel information recipes food Ad campaign
Website   
Blog   
Twitter   
Facebook   
Instagram   
Google adverts 

Budgeting
In section 10.5 we considered different budgeting options and in Chapter 3, The
Digital Marketing Toolbox, I explained the different search engine advertising
payment options. You might experiment with a small budget initially and monitor
the results. As you gain the evidence, results and confidence, you can increase
the budget.

Pre-testing
Before running the ads you might test different variables to see what works. These
may include:

• Images – which images are preferred by the audience?

• Headlines – which headlines provide greater advertising appeals?
• Body copy – which content provides greater advertising appeals?
• Landing page – when the target audience clicks on the link and is directed to
your website or a specific page, are there some pages that work more successfully
than others?

Ideally test one variable at a time to gain a better understanding of what works. In
many social media platforms you can run several different adverts at the same time
and gain feedback as to what worked.
Testing in a social media environment is fairly straightforward. Set a small budget,
run the adverts for a week and gather the feedback. This is also known as a ‘test
and learn’ strategy.
268 DIGITAL MARKETING

Post-testing
Sometimes referred to as tracking, post-testing is measuring results after the adverts
have run. In digital advertising this can take place quickly, literally in 24 hours. This
will provide data on which were the most successful ads and why. You can repeat
the ad format to re-test in case this was an exception!

10.7 MANAGING THE WORKLOAD

Once the tactics and resources are all listed and the budget has been submitted, you might
need to reduce the costs or re-allocate priorities. One framework for assigning elements
such as manpower, money, methods, machines, materials and minutes is the impact and
effort matrix (Gray, 2010), which is shown in Figure 10.4. The matrix is ideally completed
in a small team and creator Dave Gray suggests that this takes 30 minutes to one hour.

High

Quick wins Major projects

Yes! Maybe
Impact

Fill ins Thankless tasks

Maybe No!

Low
Effort
Low High

Figure 10.4 Impact and effort matrix

Source: Gray, 2010

And a plan should be reviewed! In Chapter 14, Integrating, Improving and Transforming
Digital Marketing, we will consider how this happens, so you can stay ahead.

FURTHER EXERCISES
1. Think about your own skills – can you write, code or edit video? Visit one of
the online marketplaces and, based on other people’s listings, create your own
profile and find out who in class gains an assignment first!
 Building The Digital Marketing Plan 269

2. Organise a social media campaign for your university’s marketing degree. First
evaluate the different social media channels, based on the target audience, and
recommend one channel to use in this campaign. Develop outline visuals and
copy that could be used on this channel.
3. Create a digital marketing plan for an organisation of your choice, that embraces
all aspects of the customer journey (see also Chapter 2, The Digital Consumer).

SUMMARY
This chapter has explored:

• How to apply the 7Ps in a digital context.

• The 9Ms of resource planning, which illustrated that it is much more than a
budget and people.
• How to assemble a digital marketing plan.
• Social media campaign planning from setting objectives to developing the crea-
tive offer and messaging.
• The impact and effort matrix to ensure that the focus is on the areas where you
will gain results, rather than the areas that will have little impact on the business.
 11
SOCIAL MEDIA
MANAGEMENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES
When you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
Understand the different types and functions of social media
Apply the purpose of social media within organisations
Analyse social media adoption
Evaluate the issues in managing social media within an organisation
Create a plan to manage social media within an organisation

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
When you have worked through this chapter, you should be able to:

• Create an outline social media policy

• Use a social media scheduling tool
• Create a social media strategy
 Social Media Management 271

11.1 INTRODUCTION
There are many types of social media and this chapter will make you more aware of
the concepts around social media management at a personal and work level, so that
you can better manage all aspects of social media.
Critical factors in social media management are explored with information on the
different types of tools available for monitoring a brand online and key issues to
consider when managing organisations in an online environment.

11.2 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Media Networks (SMNs) started in 1996 with a platform called SixDegrees that
later closed due to lack of interest at the time (boyd and Ellison, 2007). One of the
reasons for the lack of interest is likely to be due to internet speed as most people
with internet access around that time had dial-up internet connections (you had to
click a switch to gain internet access) and the speeds ranged from 28.8 kbs to 56 kbs.
Today if you have 4G you could have speeds of 40,000 kbs (that’s 40 Mbs)! Imagine
trying to send a photo with a speed of 28.8 kbs; it would simply never happen.
Today the most dominant current social media network in the United States and
Europe is recognised as Facebook, launched in 2004 and now with over one billion
active users. You may think that Facebook is in decline, but its numbers tell a differ-
ent story. Each quarter, more users have joined the platform.
What has changed is that the social media networks started as a means to connect
people but today they are big advertising companies and publishers. Table 11.1 shows
the main social media platforms, when they were established, the worldwide monthly
users, their current owners and their revenue model.

Table 11.1 Overview of main social media platforms

Approximate worldwide
Platform Established monthly users Owners Revenue model
LinkedIn 2002 530 million Shareholders via Recruitment,
Microsoft (NASDAQ) advertising,
membership
Facebook 2004 1.8 billion Shareholders (NASDAQ) Advertising
YouTube 2005 1 billion Shareholders via Google/ Advertising
Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ)
Twitter 2006 330 million Shareholders (NYSE) Advertising
WhatsApp 2009 Not published Facebook Not monetised at
present
Instagram 2010 600 million Shareholders via Advertising via
Facebook (NASDAQ) Facebook ads platform
Pinterest 2010 200 million Privately owned Advertising
Snapchat 2011 300 million Shareholders (NYSE) Advertising

Sources: LinkedIn https://press.linkedin.com/about-linkedin

272 DIGITAL MARKETING

Facebook https://investor.fb.com/home/default.aspx

YouTube www.youtube.com/yt/advertise/en-GB

Twitter https://investor.twitterinc.com

Instagram https://investor.fb.com/home/default.aspx

Pinterest https://about.pinterest.com/en/press/press

Snapchat https://investor.snap.com

WhatsApp https://investor.fb.com/home/default.aspx

11.2.1 DEVELOPMENT OF THE MAIN

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
Looking at the main social media platforms in Table 11.1, the first of these mega social
media networks to be founded, LinkedIn, is a business to business, rather than busi-
ness to consumer, social media platform that has been described as a corporate social
networking tool. In researching how the multinational corporation IBM uses social
networking, Ann Majchrzak, Luba Cherbakov and Blake Ives (2009, p. 103) defined
corporate social networking as: ‘the use of technology to help employees identify,
in the interest of furthering the business of the firm: 1. Who knows what; 2. Who is
interested in what; and 3. Who wants to contribute to what.’
LinkedIn was purchased by Microsoft and is likely to be embedded into the IT com-
pany’s ecosystem. It is notable that LinkedIn has a mixed revenue model, earning
most income from recruitment solutions, not promotional advertising, unlike the
other platforms. As a business to business system, it also generates an income via
membership packages, enabling members to access different levels of network data.
Facebook has over one billion monthly active users and its core value proposition
to advertisers is access to its user base, which is larger than most countries, except
China and India. You might question the numbers, but as a stock exchange listed
corporation, Facebook is subject to external scrutiny and to monitor the numbers of
claimed users it created a measurement system, named ‘Monthly Active Users’ (MAUs)
and ‘Daily Active Users’ (DAUs), which has inspired other social media platforms to
adopt the same terminology.
YouTube has also claimed over 1 billion monthly viewers, although there is no
documented evidence for this. Twitter, established one year after YouTube, has
smaller user numbers, at over 300 million. Like Facebook, it is listed on the stock
exchange and has shareholders controlling its destiny, with its income currently
derived from advertising. WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, does not yet offer an
advertising option although I am sure this will change. Also, Facebook doesn’t
report WhatsApp stats yet.
Instagram is the next largest social media platform, with over 600 million monthly
active users. As an image-sharing social network it is popular within the fash-
ion, tourism and food sectors. Not everyone is aware, but Instagram is owned by
Facebook which means that it is subject to the equivalent legal guidelines about
user numbers.
 Social Media Management 273

With an estimated 150 million users, the smallest platform shown in Table 11.1 is
Pinterest. A niche social media platform, it is said to be popular with early adopters.
When Pinterest started, it was invitation-only. If you received an invite you could
welcome 10 other people into the network. I remember gaining an invite and having
the equivalent of 10 golden tickets to share amongst friends and co-workers. Everyone
wanted to join. We devised a system so that I shared eight tickets and those eight shared
amongst another eight – we could keep two tickets in reserve, for ‘just in case’ situations.
Although Pinterest is the smallest platform in this table, its user base is still larger
than every country in Europe. Snapchat has started to share its audience numbers
as it launched on the New York Stock Exchange. We will watch this space for more
in the future.

11.2.2 DEFINITION OF SOCIAL MEDIA

There are many definitions of social media that were valid for their time, such as
Hoffman and Novak’s (1996) definition: ‘a dynamic distributed network, potentially
global in scope, together with associated hardware and software for accessing the
network, which enables consumers and firms to (1) provide and interactively access
hypermedia content (i.e., “machine interactivity”) and (2) communicate through the
medium (i.e., “person interactivity”)’. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) suggested that
‘social media is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological
and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange
of User-Generated Content.’
In this fast-moving environment these definitions are soon out of date and naming
specific activities may account for emerging developments. Plus the majority of defi-
nitions are not memorable. It is difficult to adopt and embrace a definition if it is not
straightforward to recall.
My alternative and concise working definition of social media (not social media net-
works) which is future-proofed and includes all possible connections is:

Social media is the facilitation of interactive, connected, marketing purposes at

organisational, peer-to-peer and personal levels.

It’s easy to remember and demonstrates that social media is more than a communica-
tions channel, helping both consumers and organisations in many ways.

11.3 TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Having considered the dynamics of major platforms, it is helpful to consider the types
or classification of social media because different social media brands have different
purposes, which impacts on the digital marketing plan.
There have been efforts to classify social media networks by both practitioners and
academics. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) considered types of social media
in 2009, so that they could illustrate advertising opportunities (Interactive Advertising
Bureau, 2009). The IAB provided three basic categories of social media tools:
274 DIGITAL MARKETING

• Social media sites

• Blogs
• Widgets and social media applications

Focusing on the format, rather than the function, this was a simplistic classification
model that failed to describe the purpose or usage. As one of the earliest classifica-
tions, created in 2009 when revenue for internet advertising in the United States
amounted to $22.7 billion (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2010), which had more than
doubled to $59.6 billion by 2015 (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2016), this started the
notion of categorising social media.
An alternative approach was taken by researchers Andreas Kaplan and Michael
Haenlein, who described social media using theory (Kaplan and Haenlein,
2010). Kaplan and Haenlein took four recognised theories: (1) self-presentation;
(2) social presence; (3) media richness; and (4) self-disclosure. We looked at
self-presentation and self-disclosure theories in Chapter 5, Online Communities,
so let’s investigate these other theories further as they are often used in social
media research.

11.3.1 SOCIAL PRESENCE THEORY

Social presence theory was first defined by John Short, Ederyn Williams and Bruce
Christie as the ‘degree of salience of the other person in the interaction and the
consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships’ (Short et al., 1976, p. 65).
Charlotte Gunawardena subsequently provided an easier to digest definition: ‘the
degree to which a person is perceived as a “real person” in mediated communication’
(Gunawardena, 1995, p. 151).
Social presence is influenced by the intimacy (interpersonal or mediated through a
device) and immediacy (asynchronous or synchronous) of the medium. Social pres-
ence is often lower for mediated (e.g. telephone conversation) than interpersonal (e.g.
face-to-face discussion) and for asynchronous (e.g. email) than synchronous (e.g. live
chat) communications. Effectively, if you are speaking to someone face-to-face it’s a
different experience to chatting online. So in a nutshell, the higher the social pres-
ence, the larger the social influence that the communication partners have on each
other’s behaviour.

DISCOVER MORE ON SOCIAL PRESENCE

THEORY
There is a useful article by Guoqiang Cui, Barbara Lockee and Cuiqing Meng in the Journal of
Education and Information Technologies: ‘Building modern online social presence: A review of
social presence theory and its instructional design implications for future trends’ (Cui et al., 2013).
 Social Media Management 275

11.3.2 MEDIA RICHNESS THEORY

Writing in Management Science, Richard Daft and Robert Lengel examined why
organisations processed information and concluded that this was based on the
assumption that the goal of any communication is the resolution of ambiguity and
the reduction of uncertainty (Daft and Lengel, 1986).
You could think of an email from your tutor with your end of first-year grades, con-
firming that you have progressed. The purpose of the email is to let you know where
you are and ensure you are prepared for your next year. It reduces any ambiguity and
uncertainty, especially if some grades were lower than expected!
Considering that their work was created over three decades ago, Daft and Lengel
(1986, p. 560) classified ‘less rich’ to ‘rich media’, with face-to-face being most rich
and numerical documents less rich, as shown in Figure 11.1. However, if we consider
email as being on the same level as item (3) personal documents, it may be better
for the tutor to pick up the telephone and speak to you instead, especially if some
grades were disappointing!

(1) Face-to-face

(2) Telephone

(3) Personal
documents such
as letters or
memos

(4) Impersonal
written
documents

(5) Numeric
documents

Figure 11.1 Increasing levels of media richness

Source: Adapted from Daft and Lengel, 1986

From studies into media richness we know that the richer the medium, the more
effective it is. This explains the effectiveness of social media sites that contain richer
information, from text to images and from emoticons to live video.
Having considered these different and also similar theories, to categorise social media
Kaplan and Haenlein first blended social presence and media richness and secondly
276 DIGITAL MARKETING

self-presentation and self-disclosure, on their classification axes. Let’s investigate

the classification further, but first we should look at the visual representation in
Figure 11.2 that they created.

Social presence/Media richness

Low Medium High
Self- High Blogs Social networking Virtual social worlds
presentation/ sites (e.g. Facebook) (e.g. Second Life)
Self- Low Collaborative Content Virtual game worlds
disclosure projects (e.g. communities (e.g. (e.g. World of
Wikipedia) YouTube) Warfare)

Figure 11.2 Classification of social media by social presence/media richness and self-
presentation/self-disclosure
Source: Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010, p. 62

Online content like Wikipedia is seen as low/low – low on media richness and
presence and low on self-disclosure – after all, you never know the identity of the
authors of the page and whether the content is accurate! At the other extreme, par-
ticipating in a virtual world provides high levels of media richness and high levels
of self-presentation.

Having provided this classification, as Kaplan and Haenlein noted at the time
(p. 61), ‘there is no systematic way in which different Social Media applications can
be categorized. Also, new sites appear in cyberspace every day, so it is important that
any classification scheme takes into account applications which may be forthcoming.’
Young Argyris and Kafui Monu researched the corporate use of social media
(Argyris and Monu, 2015). They focused on four types of tools based on a survey
via the Harvard Business Review which identified the instruments ‘most com-
monly used for external communications’ (p. 141). Within the four social media
tools, shown in Table 11.2, they concentrated on ‘backbone’ features (p. 149) and,
similar to Kaplan and Haenlein, they noted that this is a fast-changing environ-
ment and commented, ‘listing all existing features of the four tools is not feasible
or necessary because many tools are being constantly adapted and upgraded as
the technology advances’.

Table 11.2 Prominent features of the four social media tools

Social media tools Features

Wikis Editable forum, search, multimedia support, web content management

system, information structuring (hierarchy) and tagging.

Social networking sites Profile, newsfeed, feedback, friend list, personal message, group and
subscription/hide

Microblogging sites Short message (tweet), metadata tag (hashtag), short-message

sharing (retweet), follower list (contact list), and reply

Video-sharing sites Video content, related video, comment, viewer counter and ratings

Source: Argyris and Monu, 2015, p. 149

 Social Media Management 277

11.4 BENEFITS OF USING SOCIAL MEDIA

Having considered the types of social media, the next question is how can they be
used for organisations?
Students tend to know how to use social media at a personal level and are often hired
on the expectation that this knowledge will translate into the workplace and you will
understand how to manage social media for a range of organisations. Let’s examine
how social media can be used at work.
There are benefits from using social media at a personal level, as well as
for organisations.
Benefits for consumers in brand engagement via social media include:

• Entertainment – to have fun

• Social interaction – to connect with others
• Information – to gain information
• Personal identity/status – to build online identity and recognised status
• Communication – to communicate with brands
• Community development – to be part of a community
• Remuneration/discounts – to gain offers and special deals
• Purchase – to shop
• Reviews and product rankings – to provide reviews
• Submit opinion on products/services – to share opinions
• Customer service – to seek customer service

Benefits for organisations include:

• To entertain
• To interact
• To provide information
• To gain brand recognition
• To communicate
• To develop an online community
• To provide offers
• To sell
• To gain product reviews
• To elicit feedback
• To deliver customer service

Looking into the business benefits of social media in more detail, Vilma Vuori and
Jari Jussila (2016) in Finland developed a framework for a social media strategy
which they called the 5C categorisation tool. The five categories are (a) communicat-
ing: publishing and sharing content; (ii) collaborating: collective content creation;
278 DIGITAL MARKETING

(iii) connecting: networking people; (iv) completing: adding, describing and

filtering; and (v) combining: mixing and matching. Their summary, shown in
Table 11.3, explained the purpose of each tool, with examples of the type of tool
and possible applications.

Table 11.3 Summary of the 5C categorisation

5C categories Purpose Tools Application examples

Communicating: Publishing, discussing, Blogs, media Blogger, WordPress, Flickr,
publishing and expressing oneself, showing sharing systems, YouTube, Periscope, Reddit,
sharing content opinion, sharing, influencing, discussion forums, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr,
storing microblogging, instant SlideShare, Prezi
messaging
Collaborating: Creating content together, Wikis, shared Wikipedia, TWiki, GoogleDocs,
collective content collaborating, produsage workspaces MatchWare, Trello, FlowDock
creation
Connecting: Socialising, networking, Social networks, Facebook, LinkedIn,
networking people connecting, playing, communities, virtual SecondLife, World of Warcraft,
entertaining worlds Habbo Hotel, Pokémon GO
Completing: Adding metadata, describing Tagging, social Feedly, Flipboard, Pinterest,
adding, describing content, subscribing updates, bookmarking, Foodgawker, StumbleUpon,
and filtering combining, rating, serendipity syndications, add-ons Yelp
Combining: mixing Combining other tools and Mash-ups, platforms GoogleMaps, Hootsuite
and matching technologies according to
situation and needs

Source: Adapted from Vuori and Jussila, 2016

The 5Cs is a useful way to help decide which tools are more relevant for organisa-
tions. It may be that an organisation you work at simply wants to communicate, so
they may not need all the other platforms available.

KEY TERM PRODUSAGE

Professor Axel Bruns from Queensland University of Technology in Australia coined the term
‘produsage’ in 2006. He defined produsage as ‘the collaborative, iterative, and user-led produc-
tion of content by participants in a hybrid user–producer, or produser role’ (Bruns, 2006, p. 276).

Activity 11.1 Application of the 5Cs

Think about an organisation of your choice. Use Table 11.3 as a framework and apply the 5Cs to
the organisation. Investigate which applications they use and identify the purpose. Consider which
categories work well and where they could improve.
See Template online: Application of the 5Cs
 Social Media Management 279

11.5 SOCIAL MEDIA ADOPTION

AND IMPLEMENTATION
Using social media within organisations varies enormously. It depends on the senior
management team and their understanding, as well as their commitment to purpose-
fully use the platforms, rather than jumping on the proverbial bandwagon where you
hear the words ‘we need Instagram because our competitors are using it’, which is
hardly a strategy, but it’s scarily commonplace.
Social media adoption and implementation is a journey. It often starts with some
form of experiment and registration with one platform, say Twitter or Facebook. Then
there is some understanding of how the platform works and the benefit to business
and this is followed with a greater adoption and focus.
So how we do measure or pinpoint where an organisation is in terms of its social media
journey? Two researchers based in Ireland, Aidan Duane and Philip O’Reilly, developed
a stage model of social media adoption, showing the five stages that businesses step
through until social media is fully integrated into the organisation. This is a strategic
model and identifies the organisation’s focus as well as the structure – if any – and the
management involvement. Shown in Figure 11.3, it is a useful tool to assess organisa-
tions’ social media presence and to review their competitors. It provides a benchmark
with a clear map of the next stage in the journey. If you are seeking a job interview
with an organisation or working on a placement you could identify their current stage
and recommend a digital marketing plan to increase social media adoption!

Stage Strategy Focus Structure Management

1. Experimentation It is experimental Announcing launch Individual or None or
and Learning with every of SMBP, posting a departmental drive very little
department doing number of comments, involvement
their own thing images and videos,
and providing some
product/service
information
2. Rapid Growth It is coordinated Consumer-centric Bottom-up Support and
across all focus. Efforts widespread user encouragement
departments by aimed at increasing participation
management, and internal and external coupled with top-
a number of goals awareness. Customers down management
and objectives are encouraged to
have been connect, follow, like,
established recommend, and
comment on products
and its service
3. Formalisation It is formalised Planning, strategy, A more centralised, Controlled by
and controlled governance and corporate-driven management
across the alignment with overall model to coordinate
company, with a business strategy efforts
strategy aligned
with the business
plan. Staff adhere
to an established
set of rules

(Continued)
280 DIGITAL MARKETING

Figure 11.3 (Continued)

Stage Strategy Focus Structure Management
4. Consolidation It is very well Optimisation of Extension of Shared by
and Integration integrated with processes and creating corporate model to management/
key business scale. Fundamental integrate external staff
processes across business change. partners, suppliers,
the company, Pursue alignment with customers,
and it is driving external partners/ communities,
a fundamental suppliers. Co- experts, etc. Micro-
change in how we creation/ideation, outsourcing of
do business crowdsourcing emerge activities may also
occur
5. Institutional It is embedded De facto application Aimed at customers, Shared by
Absorption into the core of for key business tasks. suppliers management/
what we do, and Enterprise-wide social and partners, staff or
how we do it, media technologies for as business decentralised
from customers the entire workforce connectivity is
to suppliers, from transformed
internal partners Generate new/ to establish
to external reengineer existing wider business
partners business models relationships

Figure 11.3 Stage model of social media adoption

Source: Duane and O’Reilly, 2016, p. 82

Activity 11.2 Investigation of the Social

Media Adoption Stage Model
1. Select an organisation of your choice.
2. Investigate their online social media presence. Based on the stage model of social media
adoption shown in Figure 11.3, analyse whether this is experimental, coordinated, formalised
or fully integrated.
3. Make an appraisal, based on some research and select a stage and provide evidence or
examples to support your claims.
4. Compare with classmates to see if different people have identified organisations at different stages.

See Template online: Stage model of social media adoption

11.6 MANAGING SOCIAL MEDIA

Having agreed which types of social media applications might be used and where
the organisation is in its journey, the next step is managing social media, but where
should you start?
Writing about the needs of financial institutions, researchers Jeffrey Loop and
Alexander Malyshev identified five requirements for managing social media (Loop
and Malyshev, 2013), which could be applied to a range of organisation types:
 Social Media Management 281

1. Risk management programme

2. Governance structure with clear roles and responsibilities
3. Policies and procedures regarding use and monitoring
4. Employee training programme
5. Due diligence process for selecting and managing third-party service providers

Other researchers have considered factors in managing social media too. Moving
from requirements to roles in examining strategic responsibilities in social media
management, public relations experts Marlene Neill and Mia Moody (2015) identified
nine job roles with responsibilities for social media:

• Policy Maker: Developing policies for employee use of social media

• Technology Tester: Choosing new social media channels and software
• Communications Organizer: Creating and distributing messaging, scheduling
posts, and monitoring conversations and sentiment
• Issues Manager: Identifying potential crises through monitoring of social media
channels and developing protocols for responding to negative comments
• Relationship Analyzer: Identifying and engaging with influencers such as the
media
• Master of Metrics: Choosing appropriate metrics for social media channels and
reporting results, may involve budgeting and selecting external services
• Employee Recruiter: Portraying their company/organisation as an attractive place
to work, using social media to recruit new employees, screening job applicants’
social media profiles, and using social media to recruit candidates
• Policing: Educating employees about the social media policies, putting controls
in place and notifying employees of inappropriate conduct; controlling number
of social media accounts on various channels
• Internal Collaborator: Working with other internal departments to manage social
media channels

What’s interesting is that several of their themes cross over with those identified by
Jeffrey Loop and Alexander Malyshev.
Let’s explore each of Loop and Malyshev’s five recommendations, combined with the
work of Neill and Moody, to understand why they matter and how this could work
in practice.

11.6.1 RISK MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME

Similar to a crisis PR plan, a risk management programme would identify potential
risks and recommend mitigation should these occur. It is important to be prepared
for unexpected events, as in social media bad news spreads fast. This is not just my
intuition (and possibly yours) but is also based on formal research. Computer scientists
Anna Fang and Zina Ben-Miled (2017) in the United States conducted a survey using
282 DIGITAL MARKETING

news about Brexit on Twitter to prove this. Their results indicated that bad news had
a higher re-tweet ratio, and was shared and spread further on Twitter.

KEY TERM EWOM (ELECTRONIC WORD

OF MOUTH)

The accepted definition for eWOM or electronic word of mouth was created in 2004 by Thorsten
Hennig-Thurau and his colleagues as:

any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about
a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions
via the Internet. (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004, p. 39)

Sharing news online is often referred to as eWOM (see Key Term) and will have a
positive, negative or neutral valence (see Key Term) or tone. Jacob Hornik and his
colleagues noted that other researchers suggested that negative information may
draw more attention due to the surprise factor and could also have greater impact
(Hornik et al., 2015). To address this, Marlene Neill and Mia Moody identified several
dedicated roles: ‘Issues Manager’, ‘Communications Organizer’, ‘Relationship Analyzer’
and ‘Employee Recruiter’, all of which manage social media content within organisa-
tions. These roles will become more popular as social media continues to grow. The
change will be that greater expertise will develop based on both the experience and
theory that’s being created.
Before launching an activity on social media, you may decide to evaluate the risk. See
Case Example 11.1 #AMA Ask Me Anything for an example of an evaluation.

Case Example 11.1 #AMA Ask

Me Anything Risk Evaluation
A long-established, smaller charity that collects and redistributes clothing was considering a change
in policy. The directors had embraced social media and were very enthusiastic about asking fans if
they would agree to this. The mechanism was through an #AMA session for one hour on Facebook
(see Key Term – Ask Me Anything #AMA in Chapter 8, Audit Frameworks).
The idea was that questions would be posed on Facebook and the fans or other respondents could
ask anything in the one hour allocated and the charity would need to respond.
With over 100,000 Facebook fans this was a brave aim and I asked if we could conduct a risk
evaluation before launching the event. It was agreed that we could evaluate the potential risk of
holding the event and we would present our findings back to the senior management team. The risk
evaluation summary is shown in Table 11.4.
 Social Media Management 283

Table 11.4 Risk evaluation for an #AMA event

Factor Issues
Agree specific aims for the session – what did we want Clear aims agreed
to achieve?
Was the #AMA the only way to achieve the aims? Aims could be achieved outside Facebook, via
surveys or focus groups
Imagine every possible scenario that could happen, What if we missed something big?
list every ‘what if’ situation that could occur
Create a response for all scenarios Again, what if we missed something big?
We need to consider the potential for trolls to invade We would need to recruit additional help and could
the session and take over. How would we respond? risk brand reputation
We should plan the response team who would be Small team, and although others could be brought in,
involved in responding to comments they would need training, which requires additional
investment
We need to monitor several channels as this could spill How many channels and how could we do this? We
over from Facebook to Twitter and beyond could use a social media management system, but
there’s a time lag with many of these and they might
miss critical factors
As messages can be circulated for hours afterwards We might need to organise a shift system as some
(Laufer and Brassell-Cicchini, 2013), for how long would people may join in the conversation much later at
we monitor the channels? night. Investment needed to manage this

Having evaluated the potential risks we recommended that the #AMA should not go ahead. The
risks were too great, the team too small and additional investment would be required. The senior
management team agreed. The decision was to explore the change in policy using other means, such
as focus groups or online surveys. These would be within a closed environment and less susceptible
to the external negative backlash that could occur.

Case Questions
• Was it a good decision not to go ahead with the #AMA?
• Are there any risks we should add to the evaluation that we missed?
• Can you think of a situation where an organisation has gone ahead with an event or activity
online and it went wrong?

11.6.2 GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE WITH

CLEAR ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Ensuring no laws are broken and everyone knows who is in charge is critical in any
aspect of business, so this is not a surprising addition. The challenge in social media
management is that often the senior management team don’t always understand social
media. To a certain extent the ‘Policy Maker’ role, defined by Neill and Moody (2015),
meets these requirements and the ‘Technology Tester’ role may also have a part to
play to ensure appropriate channels are selected from the start.
284 DIGITAL MARKETING

KEY TERM VALENCE

In psychology and marketing, valence means the strength of an emotion.

Usually considered on a binary scale such as positive or negative, attractive or repulsive,
it is often referred to as message valence and in research is often combined with message
frequency (volume).
Message valence is used during elections to measure positive and negative messages
about candidates. An example is an investigation into the role of valence in online reviews
by Nathalia Purnawirawan and her colleagues (Purnawirawan et al., 2015). Their research
found that the review valence had an impact in influencing attitudes – perhaps not altogether
surprising, but it demonstrates the importance of positive online reviews!

DISCOVER MORE ON VALENCE

These articles consider valence in different settings.

•• ‘Understanding branding in a digitally empowered world’ by Tulin Erdem and colleagues,

published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing (Erdem et al., 2015).
•• ‘The role of emotions for the perceived usefulness in online customer reviews’ by Armin
Felbermayr and Alexandros Nanopoulos, published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing
(Felbermayr and Nanopoulos, 2016).
•• ‘Social media and relationship development: The effect of valence and intimacy of posts’
by Amy Orben and Robin Dunbar, published in Computers in Human Behavior (Orben
and Dunbar, 2017).

11.6.3 POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

REGARDING USE AND MONITORING
Marlene Neill and Mia Moody see this requirement being managed within a policy
maker role and they suggested that this may involve staff from PR and human
resources along with legal teams. Whilst this is likely to be the case in larger organi-
sations, in smaller firms, this role and others may be given to one person.
The whole area of social media policy is a mess. Technically when you start work
and sign your employment terms and conditions, this will generally include a clause
about focusing on working at work (rather than messaging friends on WhatsApp
and sharing Snaps) and often there’s a sentence about ‘not bringing the firm into
disrepute’ – saying or doing something you shouldn’t. But, this is the issue: most
people don’t translate the idea of using social media as breaking the rules.
 Social Media Management 285

And it gets worse. On one hand organisations want you to engage with customers, on
the other they don’t want you spending time on social media. One example is shown
in Case Example 11.2, which looks at the National Health Service and social media.
The issue regarding social media and policy is that it is still in its infancy. Policies tend
to be created after legislation has been passed and there is still a lack of legal prec-
edents in this domain. In the United States Kimberly O’Connor and Gordon Schmidt
have written articles about staff being fired for comments on Facebook (Schmidt and
O’Connor, 2015) and also students being suspended for inappropriate use of personal
social media (O’Connor et al., 2016) (see Ethical Insights: Sacked for social media).

Ethical Insights Sacked for

Social Media
Be careful what you tweet and post! Twitter’s terms of service state ‘You should only provide Content
that you are comfortable sharing with others’ (Twitter, 2017, p. 9), yet many people have been sacked
for speaking badly about their workplace or co-workers on social media.
In 2017 a long-serving employee, Mrs Plant, published negative comments about her employer,
API Microelectronics Ltd, on Facebook. Several colleagues talked about the post and her employer
invited her to explain the comments. As they were not satisfied with the explanation, she was sacked
under the company’s policies. She was unhappy about this, feeling that it was unfair, so took her
case to court. The court found that she had been given sufficient advice by the company regarding
social media settings and she was in breach of the social media policy and therefore she lost her
case (and her job).
Her post is now forever public. It is available online via the UK’s Ministry of Justice website and
anyone searching for her name in the future will find the whole sorry story. Whilst the post doesn’t
seem too bad (I have seen much worse), it had a negative impact on the company and was shared
with colleagues who re-shared it amongst a wider group (Ministry of Justice, 2017).
There are many situations like this and they are growing on a worldwide basis. For more examples
read the article ‘Fired for Facebook: Using NLRB guidance to craft appropriate social media policies’
by Gordon Schmidt and Kimberly O’Connor (2015).

Smartphone Sixty Seconds® –

Seeking Tribunals
• On your mobile phone, search for Mrs E Plant v API Microelectronics Ltd: 3401454/2016
• You will find the employee tribunals page and can open the entire court transcript.
• In the employee tribunals page you can also search for ‘social media’ and filter by organisations –
select ‘Ministry of Justice’ as the filter.
• How many cases can you see?
286 DIGITAL MARKETING

However, the entire legislative system in the United States is different from European
and UK law, so until more legislation is in place and social media usage is fully under-
stood, the roles of the policy maker and policing will continue to be needed. One
short-term solution is a form of social media policy and if you are not sure where to
start with that, see Digital Tool: Social media policy maker.

Digital Tool Social Media Policy Maker

Creating a social media policy involves answering a few questions. Whilst it is not a substitute for a
properly prepared legal agreement, this blog article is a great starting place to understand what is
needed in a social media policy.
To use the tool, visit the website and look at the 12 questions. Work through each one to create
your outline policy!

• See https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-policy-for-employees

11.6.4 EMPLOYEE TRAINING PROGRAMME

Many researchers recommend training in social media usage for several reasons:

• To inform about policy

• To educate about the influence of a message
• To understand the language and terminology within the policy
• To explain the impact on future careers.

The fascinating fact is that most training is aimed at employees. However, when big
mistakes happen online, they can be due to the senior management team! And it is
not just about the misuse of social media, it is also about poorly considered cam-
paigns that go wrong on social media. Marlene Neill and Mia Moody recommend an
‘internal collaborator’ role to manage this and it may be that if marketing and legal
had a conversation about possible campaigns, there would be fewer campaigns that
end up on Twitter as #fail stories!

11.6.5 DUE DILIGENCE PROCESS FOR SELECTING

AND MANAGING THIRD-PARTY
SERVICE PROVIDERS
As Jeffrey Loop and Alexander Malyshev were writing in a law journal, it is not
unusual that they included an element of due diligence or reasonable steps to avoid
 Social Media Management 287

committing an offence. Applied to digital marketing, we would probably consider this

some form of appraisal to verify security measures and understand how the system
worked as well as keeping data safe. The ‘technology tester’ role might be useful
here, as could the ‘master of metrics’ who may notice unusual activity and remove
potentially difficult situations before they developed.
The process could be as complex or simple as the organisation needed. We have
looked at issues concerning managing social media online; the next factor is about
customer data. To advertise on Facebook (or Instagram) you might share your customer
database. How do you know it will be secure with so many hacks taking place? If
the data is not secure there could be big fines ahead (see Key Term – General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR), p. 19).
One example is a large supermarket in the United States, Target, who suffered a major
data breach when one of their service providers fell for a phishing email. The end
result was Target agreeing to pay out around $10,000 per customer whose personal
and financial details were hacked (Kluwer, 2015).
This indicates that it is not just staff that need training, but third-party suppliers too.

11.7 TOOLS FOR MANAGING

SOCIAL MEDIA
Having understood the issues in managing social media, the next question is how?
Whilst there are agreed job roles, social media is a 24/7 always-on environment so
how is it possible to monitor and manage all comments and stay up to date?
There is a plethora of tools to manage different aspects of social media, which I will
discuss in this section.

11.7.1 SOCIAL LISTENING

Social listening involves monitoring conversations about a brand or other organisation.
In a pre-digital era a conversation between a consumer and a company tended to be
a monologue (one-way conversation), which is classic communications theory. The
organisation broadcast its message to its audience and there was little opportunity to
respond. Imagine responding to an advert in a newspaper – much more effort than
commenting on an advert on Facebook! The one-way ‘conversation’ or monologue
was limited by the lack of technology. A comment was made, followed by a response.
Without technology, this could take days or weeks.
Over time, this moved towards a dialogue where, for example, if you emailed a com-
pany and gained a response, a two-way discussion started. This evolved and became
a trialogue where a three-way conversation could take place with different people
entering into the conversation or debate. For the first time, people could add com-
ments after content such as a blog post and others could contribute their feelings too.
The advent of web 2.0 changed the dynamic. A key change in technology enabled
individuals to comment and share opinions between each other, potentially men-
tioning the brand name but not speaking directly to the brand. These multi-way
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communications are known as polylogal conversations or a polylogue. We could also

call this a totally messy conversation – a bit like being at a party where five people
are speaking at once to everyone!
Having seen that all these conversions are taking place at the same time, what are
the best ways to monitor what’s happening? You can monitor mentions of the brand
name or product types and you can analyse the valence using sentiment analysis
tools (see Key Term in Chapter 3).
Although sentiment analysis can be automated, the computing tools have a downside
as they are unable to detect sarcasm, humour and irony. Marketing researchers Ana
Isabel Canhoto and Yuvraj Padmanabhan (2015) conducted a comparative study of
automated versus manual analysis of social media conversations and their results show
flaws in many computing tools. This software is still at an early stage and improving,
but it is worth sampling some content manually, as a sanity check, if you conduct
this type of research.
You may wonder why you would bother monitoring the brand name. This is for
several reasons. Firstly, it allows you to provide customer service where it’s needed –
customers don’t always shout on your doorstep; they may be somewhere else, such
as in a forum or on a Facebook page. Secondly, you can identify potential influencers
and brand ambassadors who speak positively about the organisation. Thirdly, you
can provide advice where needed.
There are many sophisticated social media monitoring and management tools, as
shown in Table 11.5. It is worth noting that the creation of social media tools is one
of the fastest growing businesses in social media, and with fees from a few dollars a
month to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, you can see why!

Table 11.5 Social media monitoring and management tools

Brand Content Management Customer

monitoring Scheduling management and reporting service Company Web address
X X X Agora Pulse agorapulse.com
X Buffer buffer.com
X Content Cloud contentcloudhq.
HQ com
X CoSchedule coschedule.com
X X Crimson crimsonhexagon.
Hexagon com
X X X Edgar meetedgar.com
X X Gorkana gorkana.com
X X Hootsuite hootsuite.com
X X X Marketing marketingcloud.
Cloud (was com/au/
Radian 6) products/
social-media-
marketing/
radian6/
X Netvibes netvibes.com
 Social Media Management 289

Brand Content Management Customer

monitoring Scheduling management and reporting service Company Web address
X Social Bakers socialbakers.
com
X X X X X Orlo Orlo.tech
X X X SparkCentral sparkcentral.
com
X X X X Spredfast spredfast.com
X X Sprinklr sprinklr.com
X X Sysmos sysomos.com

These tools provide a range of functions from monitoring conversations and alert-
ing teams when a crisis may be starting, to joining up each aspect of the customer
journey to better attribute conversion actions.

11.7.2 SCHEDULING TOOLS

Scheduling tools allow the user to schedule or plan in advance the content to be
issued. This means you can schedule a whole month’s worth of tweets in a single hour.
Where content is evergreen (see Chapter 4, Content Marketing, p. 109) and has no
sell-by date, it can be used at any time and is useful in this situation. Other times when
scheduling might be used is when an organisation is exhibiting at an event and they
provide a countdown, as well as reminders, to attend their booth or exhibition stand.

Activity 11.3 Use a Social Media

Scheduling Tool
Go to Hootsuite.com

• Select PLANS and FREE.

• Register for a free account and connect your Twitter account.
• Prepare and schedule some posts.
• Search for a subject of interest, add as a content stream and monitor for 10 days.

11.7.3 CONTENT MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Content management tools are slightly more sophisticated than simple scheduling
tools and enable you to search for content streams, share content plans across teams
and manage when content is issued. If you are a fashion business, you may create a
content stream that follows London Fashion Week or Paris fashion houses. You can
290 DIGITAL MARKETING

see all the conversations in one place, as can your team. If you promote a hashtag for
an event, you can establish a content stream to monitor the hashtag use.

Digital Tool Hashtag Finder

If you are thinking about using a hashtag it is a good idea to see if it has already been used. These
free tools allow you to see if, when and where the hashtag has been used:

•• HashAtIt.com
•• hashtagify.me

11.7.4 MANAGEMENT AND REPORTING TOOLS

Management and reporting tools look at the amount of engagement (see Key Term)
your social media content attracts, as well as the positive and negative valence or
sentiment surrounding the brand, product or organisation.
Although these tools provide insights – which are also freely available via the social
media platforms – the difference is that these tools aggregate the data into one page
or report. If you were to get a job as a social media manager, you would probably
appreciate the time that this would save! As you might imagine, such fabulous time-
saving tools also come with a price tag. At the top end you might budget £500,000 a
year for a comprehensive social media management and reporting tool suite.

KEY TERM ENGAGEMENT

Engagement or consumer engagement is broadly explained as a customer’s psychological

and emotional relationship with an organisation. The concept was first suggested in the field
of marketing in 2005 as Roderick Brodie and his colleagues undertook an exhaustive review of
when, where and how engagement was used and explained the concept in some detail. As a
result they offered their own definition of engagement based on five fundamental propositions
assembled from their research:

Customer engagement (CE) is a psychological state that occurs by virtue of interactive,

cocreative customer experiences with a focal agent/object (e.g., a brand) in focal service
relationships. (Brodie et al., 2011, p. 261)
 Social Media Management 291

11.7.5 CUSTOMER SERVICE TOOLS

As the name indicates, these tools provide a customer service function. Usually across
several teams, these tools enable managers to allocate support notices or tickets to
different individuals as they occur. So if I contact a brand with an issue about a prod-
uct, or delivery or a general enquiry, it can be filtered to the right team to provide a
speedy response.
Typically these tools are charged on a licence basis, so if I have 150 staff I pay for 150
licences. There is often a minimum monthly fee which makes some of these tools too
expensive for smaller organisations.
Bringing all the social media management skills together, Case Example 11.2 shows
an example of best practice applied to a small charity with limited resources. This is
also a blueprint for a social media strategy.

Case Example 11.2 Midlands Air

Ambulance Charity Social Media Strategy
The air ambulance in the UK is an amazing service that is a collective of registered independent chari-
ties, often based on regions, that all provide helicopter emergency medical services. If critical medical
help is needed, the air ambulance may be called even if a land ambulance is present.
The Midlands Air Ambulance Charity funds and operates three air ambulances across six Midlands
counties: Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire and the West Mid-
lands. This constitutes the largest air ambulance operating region in the UK. The charity also provides
secondary cover to the surrounding areas, such as Warwickshire and mid-Wales.
They have adopted a social media strategy, which we will explore here.

Conduct a Social Media Audit

Before using different social media channels, they reviewed other charities to see how they used
social media. This provided useful background to better understand what channels to consider and
the potential resources required.

Create Social Media Marketing Strategy and Goals

The Midlands Air Ambulance Charity has aligned its digital marketing and social media strategy and
uses the social media framework (see Chapter 9), as shown in Table 11.6.

Research Your Audience

Their audiences include supporters, volunteers, survivors, corporate supporters, air crew and staff.
The levels of engagement vary between groups.

(Continued)
292 DIGITAL MARKETING

(Continued)

Table 11.6 Midlands Air Ambulance Charity aligning the digital marketing and social
media strategy

Digital marketing strategy Social media strategy

Awareness Share information
Consideration Audience engagement
Conversion Fund-raise
Evangelism Recognise supporters and volunteers

Build Your Social Media Accounts

The charity’s primary social media channels are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These are regularly
updated and generate significant interaction in terms of traffic, engagement and messages.
Another social media account under consideration is Instagram. The challenge is the way this
platform works as it is not possible to schedule content. As images need to be added immediately,
it could be dangerous if the social media manager creating the content has their own Instagram
account on their own phone and forgets to switch accounts when posting!

Create Content Calendar

The Digital Communications Coordinator has created content themes as well as calls to action. There
are guidelines on posting frequency so that the charity is not ‘too noisy’ and seen to be spending all
day posting on social media channels.
A master content calendar (see Key Term in Chapter 4, p. 111) has been created, based on the
strategic plan and the communications plan. This included identifying (a) a theme for each month;
(b) a focus on events; and (c) any relevant external content.
A more detailed monthly content plan is developed with topical or other pertinent material.

Post, Listen and Engage

There is a process in place to listen to the audience:

• Positive comments are shared and liked.

• Negative comments may initially be ignored if not relevant. If there is a specific issue, the indi-
vidual is messaged to try and provide a resolution. If the content is abusive or offensive, the
individual may be blocked.

Track and Measure Results

A monthly report is created to measure the activity against the social media goals. This tracks how
information has been shared and the audience engagement.
Recognition of the supporters and volunteers is measured through the number of shares, especially
of images demonstrating fund-raising activities.
There are plans to attribute donations, although many of these can occur offline with donations
in shops, giving at events or other activities.
 Social Media Management 293

Review and Improve

Quarterly update meetings look at overall activity and if improvements are needed. This raised the
question about Google+, and with so few people using the network there was a question as to
whether to continue. On balance it was decided to continue adding content for a further six months
as Google+ is beneficial for search engine optimisation, rather than real engagement.
An annual review takes place for a more in-depth review and to develop the outline content
calendar for the following year.

Case Questions
• Identify an example of best practice of social media management.
• Explain why you selected this example and how the best practice is demonstrated.

FURTHER EXERCISES
1. Identify and justify the benefits of using social media, for either a fashion retailer,
a games company or a sports organisation.
2. Discuss the risks of using social media for an organisation of your choice and
provide recommendations on how these risks could be mitigated.
3. Create a plan to manage social media within an organisation. This should address
responsibility for sharing content and identify the roles required within the team.

SUMMARY
This chapter has explored:

• The type of social media available for organisations.

• How social presence and media richness theory apply to social media usage.
• The benefits of social media for organisations.
• Factors in social media adoption by organisations.
• The different tools available for social listening and online management.