A SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING PLAN FOR A MEDIUM-SIZED CONSUMER GOODS COMPANY

ABSTRACT
The objective of this study is to develop a social media marketing plan for the case company to integrate it into its existing marketing communications. The case company of this study is a medium-sized consumer goods producing company that advertises its brand and products using traditional methods of advertising (radio, television, flyers and event promotion). At the moment, these methods seem to be lacking in efficiency and effectiveness caused by the saturation of marketing information which is missing the target group of people. But since the modern communications are developing beyond geographical boundaries when selling and creating awareness of companies’ product and services on the internet, the case company intends to start using social marketing to expand its consumer audience.

This research employs a case study approach to tackle the company’s problem. The out-come of this research is a Social Media plan for the company. It enumerates the need for the enterprise to embrace the opportunities that social media communities offer in reaching target groups with customized messages about their brands and products. This proposal is based on the success stories of some SMEs within and outside developing countries; it is designed to suit the method of operation of the case company.

The outcome of this paper is a social media marketing plan for the case company to integrate social media marketing into its existing marketing strategy. The plan outlines strategic ways in which the case company can utilize the usefulness of online communities to their businesses, and the ways in which these recommendations can be implemented.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Introduction
            1.1 Overview of the Business Problem
            1.2 The Case Company
            1.3 Research Objective and Research Question
            1.4 Research Design

2 Method and Material
            2.1 Research Approach
            2.2 Analysis Method
            2.3 Data Collection
            2.4 Research Validity and Reliability

3 Literature Review
            3.1 Marketing
            3.2 Traditional Marketing
            3.3 Web 3.0 Marketing as a New Marketing Approach
            3.4 Social Media Communities
            3.5 The Social Consumer
            3.6 Customer Relationship Management
                        3.6.1   Reasons for Practicing Customer Relationship Management
                        3.6.2   Concept of Traditional CRM
                        3.6.3   Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM)
                        3.6.4   Social Media Tools
                        3.6.5   The Difference between Traditional and Social CRM
            3.7 Social Media Marketing (SMM) Strategy
            3.8 Summary of Literature Review

4 Case Company Analysis
            4.1 Company Overview
            4.2 Case Company’s Target Group in Nigeria
            4.3 Analysis of Internal Interviews
            4.4 Company’s Needs from the Point of Marketing
5   Best Practice of Social Media Marketing Dangote Groups Nigeria
            5.2 Nigerian Breweries PLC (NBPLC)
            5.3 Common Practices in the Best Practice Companies

6   Building the SMM Plan
6.1 Analysis of External Interviews
6.2 Proposed SMM Plan: Strategies and Tools
6.3 Proposed SMM Guidelines

7. Validation of the SMM Plan
8 Discussion and Conclusions
8.1 Summary
8.2 Managerial Implication
8.3 Validity and Reliability
References
Appendices


1     Introduction
This research aims to develop a social media marketing plan for a customer goods producing company. It explores the existing best practices and literature, and investi-gates practical examples and social media marketing strategies of real companies. The resulting social media plan intends to suit the social marketing needs of the case com-pany which is a Small and Medium Enterprises (SME).

1.1    Overview of the Business Problem
Owing to the fast growing pace of social communities on the internet, the world virtually knows no boundaries during interaction over the internet. Although there are some negative sides to the use of social media communication, customers are caught up in an improved method of communication over the internet (Strom and Strom 2012).

Social media communities are such that people tend to cluster, forming common groups of common perspective, goals and ideas, thus making it possible for knowledge and capabilities to be distributed across the members, within and among such groups. (Cadima, Ojeda and Monguet 2012)

Currently, the internet social media communities are also having a big impact on the modern business world. This is the reason why the case company wishes to capitalize on this fast growing trend in social media marketing communication. The case compa-ny aims at taking advantage of the positive side of internet social communities for ex-panding its business and creating awareness about its brand and products. The incor-poration of a social media method of marketing into its existing integrated marketing communications has also become highly important for the case company wishing to meet the ever pressing needs and expectations of its customers.

1.2    The Case Company
The case company of this Thesis is a medium size enterprise located in Nigeria, West Africa. The company specializes in the production of alcoholic and non-alcoholic bev-erages and livestock. Currently, the company has two branches for the production of food drinks, two fish farms and is currently constructing a third farm which is a semi-natural habitat for the production of a larger quantity of livestock to meet the growing demand of the livestock producers.

The company’s drink producing unit focuses on the production of fruit wines, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, bottled water and sachet juices. This department supplies its products to several leading, medium and small size super markets, hotels, schools and catering agencies within the country.

The livestock farm department focuses on the production of a variety of live fishes. The fish farm is currently serving the purpose of production and rearing of cat fish and sev-eral other ornamental fishes from birth to adulthood, due for harvesting. These live stocks are mainly exported on demand. The highest order for the fish products so far has been from customers in Central Europe, Germany.

Like many other existing firms, each of these two production units of the case company has a system of inventory, warehouse, logistics, research and development, human resource, management and customer service department. Presently, the company aims at being among the leading producers of food drinks in the country and also in-creasing its international customer base for the livestock produce. Thus, the viable so-cial marketing plan investigated in this research project, if applied, will help the compa-ny in creating more awareness of its brand and products, and boosting its market share.


1.3    Research Objective and Research Question

In this new marketing situation, the objective of this study is to develop a social media marketing plan for the case company to integrate it into its existing marketing commu-nications.

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Item Type: Project Material  |  Attribute: 88 pages  |  Chapters: 1-5
Format: MS Word  |  Price: N3,000  |  Delivery: Within 30Mins.
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