BUS5023 Digital and Social Media Marketing Assignment Sample

• Type Assignment
• Downloads573
• Pages10
• Words2468

Introduction

Digital marketing refers to communicating and promoting the product and services via use of Internet. This includes many different channels like marketing via email, social media platforms and so more. In present era, social media marketing is considered as one of the best and cost-effective digital marketing strategy. The report will evaluate the social media strategy of the company of fashion industry Marks & Spencer of United Kingdom. It will cover about the current social media platforms used by the company, its social media objectives and strategies. It will also evaluate current social media performance and highlight recommendations to further enhancement. For students looking for help with writing assignments, understanding these strategies in a real-world context can be highly beneficial.

Background Context 

Marks & Spencer is one of the major British multinational fashion retail company, located in London, England. The company was founded in 1884 by the Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer. The company offers quality and affordable merchandise for all ages including men, women’s and young. The company also offers elegant home décor, beauty products, furnishings, wines, floral pleasures and so more via its network of 1487 stores as well as 98 websites worldwide. Company has more than 78000 employees and caters needs and requirements of 30 million customers each year. The company profit in the year 2022/ 23 amounted 11, 931. 3 million that is increased in 2024 amounted 13,040.1 demonstrates company success (Revenue of Marks & Spencer, 2024).

BUS5023 Digital and Social Media Marketing Assignment Sample

Liked This Sample? Hire Me Now

Jhon Smith 4 Years | MBA

Apart from this, M & S also deals in a private label brands such as Indigo Collection, Classic collection, Per Una, North Coast and so more. The private label brands help the company to become successful in making customer familiar with the M & S (Gielens et al, 2021). The company focus on providing products according to the needs and requirements of the customer therefore it’s emphasize on offer sustainable merchandise that made of organic materials. It also use renewable energy sources, waste management strategy, 3 R policy and sustainable packaging to grab the attention of eco-conscious customers.

Social Media Inventory

In era of digitalization, the use of digital platforms for the purpose of marketing increase rapidly. Marks & Spencer to grab the attention of the target customer of all age including men, women, boy and girls use social media marketing. The company uses several different social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, YouTube and so more. The company uses the social media platforms to promote its merchandise and other product portfolio (Kelm and Ibrahim, 2023). Company posts several product image, videos and other information to aware the target customer about the M & S products and its associated services. Currently, people of all age group remains engage on social platform as a result using this media enable the organization to increase visibility of brand, as well as awareness.

On social media platform M&S posts its content as well as stories at leads three times per week, to maximize brand visibility and engagement. Posting thrice in a week also enable the company to identify the customer view about the company product and service via the help of the feedback. On Facebook, company posted 1 or 2 times a day as major number of user enhance on this platform. On You Tube company creates and share video content once in a two week, this leads to help attract wide range of the potential customers.

Marks & Spencer social media marketing objectives are as under:

• To increase brand awareness of M & S by 10% in next 6 months via the effective use of social media platforms.
• To increase size of social communities as well as target audience by 20% by sharing valuable content on the social media platforms in upcoming 1 year.

In context to this, M & S focus on using different kind of strategies to attain the social media marketing strategies.

Posting video content: The Company use video content that display and demonstrate brand personality, new offerings and services. It is one of the engaging and effective ways to communicate information faster and access it to the wide audience in short span of time.

Influencer marketing: For the content of Instagram platform, M & S collaborate with the popular fashion or social media influencers to create a video and content to increase brand awareness (Leung et al, 2022). This strategy helps the business to attract large number of customers as recommendations made by the popular influencer trust by the target audience. The different influencer includes Bella Freud, Hannah Waddingham, Sienna Miller and many others.

User-generated content: It is also a marketing strategy that includes posting photos, videos, customer reviews, and testimonials on social platform for the purpose of marketing of brand. It leads to help the business to advertise its brand effectively as it build trust and authenticity among the customers (Soylemez, 2021). It is one of the best marketing strategy as it help in engage customer automatically. For instance, M & S post about the customer review on the Instagram, by viewing the post customer make decision of purchasing. Thus, it is a cost-effective and engaging strategy.

Social media quiz and give away strategy: M & S use online quiz and give away as a social media marketing strategy to increase awareness and social communities. Organization run online quiz where ask question about the brand and its product and services to the customers and ask its social media community to tag company on their stories. The winners get gifts in return, it is one of the best marketing strategy helpful in creating brand awareness and engagement.

 M & S use different marketing strategies on different channels and platforms. For example, influence marketing strategy use on Instagram, video content use on Facebook, YouTube while user-generated content use on both Instagram and Facebook.

The main competitors of M & S are Next Plc, Primark and so more. As compared to the marketing strategies of the M & S, this two dominant competitors also use same marketing strategies. Both companies use video content, user-generated content as well as influence marketing to market its merchandises, other products and services in the effective as well as efficient manner (Collin-Lachaud et al, 2024). The competitive companies have a different social media marketing objectives as it’s depend on their target market, customer behavior and so more.

Current Performance

M& S current performance of social media marketing is quite effective, as company with the help of the video content on the Facebook and Instagram able to grab the attention of wide range of target customers but in current time as all fashion companies use video content as a result it makes onerous for the M & S to attain its marketing objectives in a crucial manner. Generally, as each company use same video content leads to make customer lack interest in watching video content thus, this kind of content not working well for the M & S. In addition, the video content not working well for the organization as is expensive for company as well as time-consuming from the point of view customers. The bad quality and lack of proper internet availability make difficult for the customers to download and stream videos as a result all company efforts in terms of time, money and energy goes in waste.

The user-generated content such as customer reviews, testimonial, images and videos act as appropriate content for the social media to increase awareness and engagement for M & S product. In present time where all business uses different marketing strategy, it becomes difficult for the customer to believe to which company (Al-Abdallah et al, 2024). However, the user-generated content build a greater trust within the brand and customer as it includes honest and authentic content. Thus, use of customer review for the purpose of marketing help the business to create trust and rapport with customer, result in increased brand awareness and profitability. Therefore, for the M& S marketing purpose the user-generated content is working well as it leads to build trust as well as credit worthiness with the audience as it generated from the source that is trustworthy and unbiased.

Apart from this, content on social media through influence marketing also work well. Collaboration with the top influencers helps the company to increase its conversion rate, boost customer engagement, and result in increased company sales and profitability. The influence marketing also includes content regarding sharing discounts code, recommendations, giveaways and so more, it leads to motivate the potential customers to effectively engage with the social media content result in increased sales and repeat orders (Joshi, Gabhane and Somashekhar, 2022). Therefore, influence marketing content is significantly working well for the organization M &S.

Recommendations

From the evaluation of current performance of the M & S marketing strategies, it is identified that company required enhancing its social media performance by working on the strategies. Some of the recommendations are as under:

• M & S is advised to focus on improving its video content for Facebook and Instagram platform. The company should emphasize on competitors analysis, to identify the marketing strategy of its competitors. Through competitor analysis of Next Plc, it is recommended to M & S to keep eye on emerging trends in marketing and customer taste and preference (Mowat, 2021). In present time there is shift in trend from stories, post to the reels. Therefore, M & S recommended to use video content in form of reels to get interest of target customer and enhance engagement and brand awareness.
• M & S should focus on using social platform Pinterest for the purpose of marketing its product, aids in increase awareness. Each pin that organization pins to Pinterest is consisting a direct link to website; hence increase traffic and customer engagement.
• M & S to enhance its social media performance for marketing recommended to choose the platform based on the requirements and needs of the target customers. For instance, to launch a social media marketing campaign or to use strategy of quiz and Giveaways Company should focus on one social platform channel. It leads to help the company to reach wider audience in cost-effective manner. Adherence with the recommendation enables the M & S to provide quality content for the purpose of the marketing.
• Referring to the content marketing framework, it is important for the company to create relevant, valuable content to grab the attention of wide range of customers. M & S should focus on creating quality content with the help of evaluating currents trends, customer behavior as well as needs and preference of the customers.
• To enhance influencer marketing of the M & S, company is suggested to collaborate with the famous and viral influencers with no past controversies as well as negative image within the market. Partnership with the appropriate influencer help in positively increasing awareness of brand as after collaboration, company and influencer treat as one by the customers (Bu, Parkinson and Thaichon, 2022).
• M & S should focus on research its competitor`s marketing strategy to further enhance its own company social media marketing performance. It is important to keep eye on the particular keywords, phrases, hashtags used by company and their marketing strategy and performance via the help of competitor analysis.
• To improve the social media marketing performance, Marks & Spencer advise to empathize on posting the relevant content on regular basis on all social channels. The customer remain engage with the brands when they view their post once in a day, it also help them to prioritize the brand first at the time of making purchasing decision (Atherton, 2023). It leads to enhance social media performance as sharing valuable and reliable content leads to grab attention of broader audience, correspondingly help the brand to successfully attain its social media objectives.

Conclusion

To sum up all, it is articulated that digital and social media marketing plays a crucial role in company success. The report based on the M & S social media marketing strategy the company use various social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube to promote it products and services. It is identified that M & S use video-content, user-generated content, giveaways and influence marketing to increase brand awareness. The competitors company also use such marketing strategies for their business as well such as Next Plc, Primark. The report highlighted recommendation that company should decide marketing strategy considering competitors strategy, focus on creating video content based on current trends in market.

References

Books and Journals

• Al-Abdallah, G., Barzani, R., Omar Dandis, A. and Eid, M.A.H., 2024. Social media marketing strategy: The impact of firm generated content on customer based brand equity in retail industry. Journal of Marketing Communications, pp.1-30.
• Atherton, J., 2023. Social media strategy: A practical guide to social media marketing and customer engagement. Kogan Page Publishers.
• Bu, Y., Parkinson, J. and Thaichon, P., 2022. Influencer marketing: Homophily, customer value co-creation behaviour and purchase intention. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 66, p.102904.
• Collin-Lachaud, I., Do Vale, G., Reynolds, J. and Cuthbertson, R., 2024. A retailing dilemma: sell only in-person or go multiple channel and digital?. Journal of Business Strategy, 45(5), pp.348-355.
• Gielens, K., Ma, Y., Namin, A., Sethuraman, R., Smith, R.J., Bachtel, R.C. and Jervis, S., 2021. The future of private labels: towards a smart private label strategy. Journal of Retailing, 97(1), pp.99-115.
• Joshi, N., Gabhane, D. and Somashekhar, C., 2022. How Social Media Marketing is Helping in Customer Retention and Customer Engagement: A Case of Marks and Spencer. ECS Transactions, 107(1), p.17027.
• Kelm, R.C. and Ibrahim, O., 2023. Modernizing marketing strategies for social media and millennials in dermatology. Clinics in Dermatology, 41(2), pp.246-252.
• Leung, F.F., Gu, F.F., Li, Y., Zhang, J.Z. and Palmatier, R.W., 2022. Influencer marketing effectiveness. Journal of marketing, 86(6), pp.93-115.
• Mowat, J., 2021. Video Marketing: Create engaging video campaigns to drive brand growth and sales. Kogan Page Publishers.
• Soylemez, K.C., 2021. Impact of individual and brand level factors in generation of different user-generated content. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 38(4), pp.457-466.

Online

• Revenue of Marks & Spencer. 2024. Online. Available through: <https://www.statista.com/statistics/413349/garks-and-spencer-manroup-revenue-mds/ >