Increasing the ROI of Social Media Marketing Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Besides surge of social media, influencing purchase choices and consumer tastes through on-line social networks and word of mouth is an increasingly significant portion of every marketer's occupation. Companies together with Dell Geico and eBay are adapting the traditional one-way marketing message and using it as a stepping stone to start a two way dialogue with consumers via societal media. Marketers understand that theoretically, social media should be a strong strategy to generate sustainable, positive word of mouth promotion. If marketers can only choose the best social media platform, design the right message and engage the proper users to propagate that message, their effort ought to be a success. But until now, that is been a huge if. Their framework calls for identifying social networking users who are not just powerful but also particularly interested in the company's product or service class and recruiting and incentivizing those influencers to talk about the product or service of the company's.

The authors describe the execution of their seven-step framework at Hokey Pokey Ice Cream Creations, an upscale ice cream retailer with more than a dozen factory outlets across India. Hokey Pokey's social media effort resulted in large increases in brand awareness, social media ROI and sales revenue growth rate for the company. The authors also describe three new metrics they developed for use in social media marketing efforts: the Customer Influence Effect, which measures the influence a social media user has on other users in the network; the Stickiness Index, which helps identify social networking users who actively discuss the business 's product or service group; and Customer Sway Value, which helps measure the financial gain or loss realized by an organization in societal marketing efforts by accounting for an individual's influence on purchases by other clients and prospects.

PUBLICATION DATE: October 01, 2012 PRODUCT #: SMR431-HCB-ENG

This is just an excerpt. This case is about SALES & MARKETING

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