Social media assignment on Yarchagumba’s target audience
Question
Task: There are two elements to theassessment in this module – an individual element (a written report) and a group element (a video submission).
Individual element
You will develop your own social media strategy to promote the website that you will build for your MKT7A4 assignment (web marketing).
You should submit a report (3,000 word maximum) which addresses the following points:
- Identify three social media networks that you think will be most helpful in helping you to generate traffic to the website that you have designed for your MKT7A4 assignment. If you’re not taking the MKT7A4 module then you can write your report using another website with which you’re familiar – this choice must be agreed with the module leader before you start work).
- Justify your choices, explaining clearly why you have selected each one and how you intend to use it. You should give details of specific ideas for content and campaigns that you would use for each network. This can include both free and paid campaigns.
- Discuss the metrics that you will use to evaluate the success of your social media strategyfor each network and overall, and how these metrics will be collected.
Answer
Everest herbs processing Pvt. Ltd. is a company selected in the present report on social media assignment which is based in Nepal founded in 1997. The company is known for its one of a kind product called the yarchagumba beverage. Yarchagumba is a royal herb popularly known as the Himalayan aphrodisiac. Yarchagumba has scientifically proven to have several health benefits as well as it is a rare herb found in high altitudes and is obtained by professional cultivation. The beverage contains not only the premium herb yarchagumba but also five other miraculous herbs which makes it so unique. Yarchagumba could truly be considered a health beverage considering its benefits. Some of its benefits mentioned in the social media assignment include being an immunity booster, strengthening heart, liver, kidney and lung being anti-ageing to name a few. The company was recently in 2019 acquired by a businessman in Nepal itself, after its acquisition the company has been completely remodelled and its products have been redesigned. After its acquisition Yarchagumba as a brand has aimed to go international and not remain a local brand. The company plans to expand itself in all continents across several countries. The overall mission of the company discussed in the social media assignment is to work towards the development of rural communities through sustained herb conservation, cultivation, and promotion for the benefit of mankind.
As for online participation of the company it has a newly built website and an Instagram page along with a Facebook page, they do not do online selling of products but have their products selling at several online stores and websites in Nepal. The release of Yarchagumba was as recent as December 2019 with the official launch in February 2020. Their Instagram and Facebook pages have a fair number of followers and that is where the company receives most of its enquiries about products.
By utilizing Yarchagumba’s marketing mix as mentioned in the context of social media assignment the company could target the correct audience and educate them about the product and introduce it further to not only the local but the international market. The online participation of the youth and the main target audience related to Yarchagumba is very high as by the use of social media Yarchagumba could find a way to personalise its relationship and connect with its potential customers. One of the advantages of internet is that it enables businesses to reach a worldwide customer population, so that customers can survey, select, and purchase products and services from businesses around the world (Al Kailani & Kumar, 2011)
As yarchagumba plans to go international a strong social media would be mandatory as it would promote the product and attract the right audience for the product.
Facebook
As noted in this social media assignment, Facebook is a social media platform that is used by all age groups, especially in Nepal. The audience active on Facebook is Nepal is much larger than the audience on any other social media platform. Facebook could be considered as a platform social media that is used by all social classes and most age groups but especially those that would be best for the targeted audience of Yarchagumba. According to internet world status Nepal has a total of 29,136,808 Facebook users as of 2020. In recent years, social networking sites and social media have increased in popularity, at a global level. For instance, Facebook is said to have more than a billion active users (as of 2012) since its beginning in 2004 (www.facebook.com). It is evident in the social media assignmentthat social networking sites can be described as networks of friends for social or professional interactions (Trusov, Bucklin, & Pauwels, 2009). Facebook in Nepal is not only used to socialise but also to create business links and spread awareness about new products in the market. As Yarchagumba would have a very large target audience because of its health benefits and it being one of a kind alcoholic beverage Facebook would be a great platform for it to market itself as Facebook allows anyone to market its product and promote it with very specific alterations and specified audiences.
While promoting products on Facebook yarchagumba should specifically educate and remind customers about their unique selling point that it is a health beverage. Every post needs to remind the potential customers of the authenticity of the product yarchagumba.Trust and loyalty is one of the most important thing for a brand to attract for being recognisable by many customers. This can be achieved through Facebook because it is a platform that is seen to be used by every age group.
Facebook is seen to be the most important social media that allow the business to get more amount of impressions, clicks and conversion rate. Facebook is the most effective platform to attain audience size, attention, organic reach and targeting. Talking about marketing in Facebook it would start by knowing the types of advertisement this platform allows the user and the unpaid or owned media benefit. It is one of the most versatile ways of advertising your product giving you around 11 advertisement variations such as boost your post, promote the page, send people to website, increase conversions to website, get you app install, raise attendance on events, claim offer by audience, video news and others. Setting up a business profile page is an owned page that is owned by the brand and choosing an advertisement is a paid promotion. Herein social media assignment, Yarchagumba can instantly start making use of paid Facebook ads and its benefits based on their objectives because it already has owned media that is Facebook page. However, Yarchagumba needs to ensure that the page is a business profile that can achieve promotional benefit such as has a business logo, contact information, information about their product and link of their official website and Facebook URL. Owned Facebook page helps in getting organic reach, however, due to reduction in organic reach of Facebook the business needs to adopt the pay-to-play media.This means that Setting up a business profile page is an owned page that is owned by the brand and choosing an advertisement is a paid promotion needs to choose the type of ads they want to use to promote their business on Facebook through paid media. Some of the best type of ads that Yarchagumba can use are boost your posts, send people to the website and video views. Yarchagumba can simply click the manage ads option in their page and choose the ad they want to set up. Using boost the post would allow the business to add creativeness in all its posts and make it look different in different location such as desktop news feed, mobile news feed and in Ad preview. Thus, it can allow Facebook to spread its awareness in three areas to reach their target audience easily. It can also use the paid ad for sending their customer to their website. This means that Yarchagumba can make use of a single short video about its beverage showing how it is beneficial and add a call to action to their video post like learn more, shop now or book now. This gives Yarchagumba the opportunity to redirect the audience to the website and deliver right message. Owned page and paid ads both will allow Yarchagumba to achieve earned media to ensure whether the owned and paid media was successful.
The research on social media assignmentmentions that content generation is the most important activity in Facebook to make the best use of owned media that is the business page of the company. However, to ensure to drive traffic in the post it is important that the brand engage in continuous communication with the audience. Treadaway and Smith (2012) stated that communication is the most important way to keep users attached to the brand pages. Communication should be a strong asset of Yarchagumba in all the online and offline channels to ensure increasing its recognition and promoting word of mouth. Yarchagumba can initiate engagement through a number of ways such as asking questions in their page for target audience, post coupons and surveys to keep audience interested and post video content more than picture content. Engaging content creates high ranking algorithms in Facebook and develop engagement with more personal tone of voice. Moreover, Yarchagumba can also engage in daily interaction by replying to the questions and queries posted by the viewers on their posts.
In addition to communication, Yarchagumba should make sure that all its content posts whether it is a picture or a video on Facebook should have a purpose. This is because without a purpose posting a message will not be productive, as it will not allow the customers to know the kind of funnel it belongs. The social media assignmentexamines the words of Colicev et al. (2019) that there is close relationship between user generated content and the stages of marketing funnel in which customer can map its journey. Yarchagumba can start with the informative effect which is the first funnel or awareness stage. In this stage Yarchagumba can post content showing information about the brand, its products and value. Further, it can generate boost the page content such as “learn how” option to increase awareness of their beverages to the audience. These post will be for potential target customers of Yarchagumba that is not following the brand on Facebook based on their age (18-40), location (Nepal) and interest (Health conscious). The middle funnel is related to consideration and purchase intent in which Yarchagumba can generate video content showing the benefits of the beverage where the farmers can talk about the kind of herbs Yarchagumba acquire from them for their products. This will be for customers that already use their products and such video content will intensify their interest and make them a repeat customer. Thus, each stage has a purpose to achieve through the posts.
Along with posting it is important for the brand to measure the success of the social media strategies and this can be achieved using metrics. Yarchagumba can achieve this in Facebook based on certain metrics such as like, comment and views (Treadaway and Smith 2012). These metrics identified in the social media assignment can be used to measure the success of the brand in Facebook for the first stage of marketing funnel to determine the awareness it created. The metrics for second stage of the funnel will be number of clicks in the ‘buy now’ or ‘book now’ and the number of actual booking that happened in online website where Yarchagumba sell their products. Yarchagumba can start live video and interact with viewers about their products and answer to their questions live. The number of viewers and number of positive comment also acts as a metric for measuring success.
Instagram
As evident in the social media assignment, Instagram could be considered the second most used social media platform in Nepal. It is second most popular social media in Nepal with 13000800 active Instagram users in 2018 and this accounts for 4.3% of the entire population. With most of the user being from the age group 18-30 that makes Instagram a useful platform for Yarchagumba to target its potential customers (Napoleoncat 2020). Most of the people in Nepal shared that they use Instagram to follow brands and get daily updates on their products and benefits. Users in Instagram is seen to prefer looking at different kinds of contents from the brands and not only about their products. Instagram is a platform where variations is expected in the posts to attract the attention of the users. Moreover, a plain Instagram page is not effective and this requires the users to develop an attractive bio for the page. Yarchagumba should thus focus on creating a strong bio on their page that describes about their products, its benefits and a link to their website. This will attract users whenever they click on their profile and get a positive impression about them.
Moreover, Yarchagumba should focus on posting contents that are creative in nature and not simply a picture of their beverages. This can include some pictures of their ‘back end business processes such as making of the beverage, their activities for employees and others. Further, Yarchagumba can post video promotional contents of celebrities specifying about the benefits of their product and tagging the brand page in their own Instagram profile using hashtags. The content and posts should come frequently on their pages to keep the followers engage and make their profile visible easily to anyone in their search pages. This will keep the users find their profile easily and increase the number of followers of Yarchagumba.
The analysis on social media assignmentmentions that visual content should be the most important priority of Yarchagumba because Instagram pages gains its popularity by the number of followers and this can only be attained through visual content more than written ones (Colicev et al. 2019). Moreover, the videos and pictures used in the content should be the one that aligns with the supportive behaviours of the phone, as Instagram is majorly used in smartphone apps rather than on desktop. In addition to this point noted herein social media assignment, even visual content should also be followed by short descriptions and directing them to the link in the bio. Yarchagumba can use some hashtags that describes them and their products such as #beverages, #alcoholic beverages, #herbs, #anti-aging and similar others that can describe their brand value and help them appear in searches. Like Facebook, Yarchagumba can also take advantage of live streaming in Instagram where they can come live and interact with audiences along with suppliers from where they acquire herbs so that they can explain its benefits and value. This further generates interests of the followers and help them turn them into buyers. Yarchagumba can measure the success of Instagram marketing by analysing the number of followers, the extent of likes and comments in their posts.
Twitter
This report on social media assignmentmentions that Twitter is yet another popular social media site used by users in the world and 1.89% users in Nepal till 2020. Most of the twitter users in Nepal are between 26 to 30 years of age and this makes suitable for Yarchagumba to make use of Twitter as their social media marketing choice (Butmedia 2020). Yarchagumba can use Twitter to increase their recognition in the global sphere because what is trending in Twitter becomes known to the entire world. Twitter trending is one of the most popular thing seen in media today where fan pages are created and trending tweets are made to be known to others. Yarchagumba can benefit from Twitter by building latest trends in the beverage industry like “herbs beverage” and others.
Yarchagumba can open their own ‘Twitter handle’ account where it can post their contents and make it reach the audience. This will help Yarchagumba get exposure to the celebrities that are available on Twitter. Yarchagumba can further ads up to celebrity tweeting for their product range and use a proper tags so that the brand content and appear in the ‘twitter feeds’ of the users. Twitter can used Yarchagumba for increasing their word of mouth engagement and marketing among their target customers. For Yarchagumba to be successful in Twitter it is important that they pick up the right handle name, profile photo and a header image (Soboleva et al. 2015). Similar to Instagram it is also important in regards to the case scenario of social media assignment to set up a string bio to build brand personality.
Yarchagumba needs to tweet in peak hours such as weekends for their beverage products for increasing their chances of being recognised. However, unlike Instagram Tweets should be with minimum hashtags such as a maximum of two hastags is effective in generating users. For being a part of top tweets it is important that Yarchagumba tweet frequently and be trending in twitter when it is used by other twitter handle or retweets. This is the most effective way depicted in the social media assignment to make their brand known in Twitter. Yarchagumba can customize video content or record a new video for Twitter such as showing their variations of products and the sohphistication it offers. Videos in Twitter should be quite formal and personality driver unlike Instagram and Facebook. This will be the best way to interact with the potential customers (Leung et al. 2015). One most attracting feature of Twitter will be Twitter poll that can be used by Yarchagumba to create more trending activities such a “It is a long weekend, what do you prefer relaxing?” and this will be followed by options such as drinking, eating, resting as home and others. The readings used to develop this social media assignmentsignify that the number of votes received for drinking will show the chances of potential customers to attract. However, creating a call to action is one most important thing to keep in mind.
Post Examples
References
www.yarchagumba.com
http://www.nepl.com.np/cordyceps/benefits_of_cordyceps.php
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/49085318/SNS_Market.pdf?1474726976=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DThe_Effects_of_Social_Media_Marketing_on.pdf&Expires=1591386477
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ra33hXYj35nZTZesA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm
Butmedia, 2020. Center of Media Research. [online] butmedia.Social media assignment Available at:
Leung, X.Y., Bai, B. and Stahura, K.A., 2015. The marketing effectiveness of social media in the hotel industry: A comparison of Facebook and Twitter. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 39(2), pp.147-169.
Napoleoncat., 2020. Instagram users in Nepal. [online] napoleoncat. Available at:
Soboleva, A., Burton, S. and Khan, A., 2015. Marketing with Twitter: Challenges and opportunities. In Maximizing commerce and marketing strategies through micro-blogging (pp. 1-39). IGI Global.
Treadaway, C. and Smith, M., 2012. Facebook marketing: An hour a day. Social media assignmentJohn Wiley & Sons.
