Digital & Social Media Strategies Presentation

Many digital and social media sites are widely used in marketing strategies.

Prepare a 10- to 15-slide presentation with detailed speaker’s notes and visuals elements.

Complete the following in your presentation:

• Identify a company that could benefit from better use of social media.
• Analyze at least 10 digital and social media channels and describe the strengths and weaknesses of each of these as a marketing tool for this company.
• Design an online strategy that maximizes the use of some or all of the digital and social media channels, as appropriate, based on your team’s analysis.
• Determine key performance indicators to measure the success of the online strategy.

Format your citations according to APA guidelines.

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Below is the outline for my portion of the marketing plan elements – target market and marketing goals. I want to make sure you have this to reference as we further build the marketing plan.

Marketing plan elements

i. Identify targets for promotion

Home Depot primarily caters to three types of customers:

1. Do-it-yourself customers such as homeowners

2. Do-it-for-me customers include those looking for third parties to provide installation services. 

3. Professional customers include contractors, builders, traders, interior designers, and renovators, among others.

4. Generation: baby boomers are Home Depot’s most important customers. Accounts for about half of Home Depot’s revenue. 

5. Fastest-growing segment in home ownership are millennials. Home Depot sees the younger generation as more interested in do-it-for-me services and as particularly value-conscious.

6. Gender: men are more desirable customers than women as they spend, on average, 30% more at such stores. 55% of customers are male, while 45% are female. 

7. Age: The average age of a Home Depot shopper is 50 years old

8. Income: Average income of $60,800 

ii. Establish goals for promotion

1. Increase brand awareness

2. Retargeting and promotion of customer loyalty

3. Generate leads and sales

4. Increase digital engagement 

5. Enhance customer experience in digital ecosystem 

Digital & Social Media Strategies Presentation

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Agenda
Introduction and overview
Review and assessment of marketing channel options
Review and analysis of digital marketing campaign elements
Analysis of key performance indicators

The Home Depot
Founded in 1978
Revolutionary “Hardware Store”
More than 2,200 stores in North America
Known for being employee-oriented (400,000 associates)
World’s largest home improvement retailer
Primary online presence: www.homedepot.com
Other Social Media Opportunities?

Image Credit: www.homedepot.com

In 1978, The Home Depot changed the way American’s looked at the typical hardware store. Consumers needs evolved from minor fix it projects into wanting to do bigger home repairs and remodeling (Home Depot, 2021). Large projects used to require hiring contractors. Thanks to platforms such as Pinterest and YouTube, consumers often attempt to save money by doing their own home projects and repairs.
The Home Depot has evolved into a socially conscious organization by focusing primarily on customers, then employees (Home Depot, 2021). Corporate staff and the CEO put themselves last in the chain of priority; banking on the fact that taking care of customer and employees first will lend itself to supporting them (Home Depot, 2021). The Home Depot has an extensive customer-oriented website, that displays over 1 million products for sale (Home Depot, 2021). It is organized well and intuitive to most consumers. This website utilizes various features to catch the user’s eye, promote new items and sales promotions, encourage financing opportunities, demonstrate vast options for any given item, and recognize a user’s location for product availability (Home Depot).
The Home Depot’s marketing staff has done well in utilizing their primary website to market their brand and products. Team 4 wanted to investigate how the Home Depot could expand its marketing efforts in other successful ways. Given that so many people are working from home and having to stay home more often during the Covid pandemic, The Home Depot has experienced an increase in sales (Repko, 2020). How can Home Depot take advantage of this to attract customers from competition stores, and how can they encourage new projects and ideas that customers might not otherwise think of?

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Digital Marketing Channels
Digital and social media marketing channels

Digital Marketing Channels
Display Ads
Advantages:
Versatile
Drives brand awareness
Data analytics
Targeted marketing
Disadvantages:
Low conversions
Lesser competition
Spam activities

Email
Advantages:
Cost-effective and high ROI
Massive reach
Promote brand equity
Marketing automation and analytics
Disadvantages:
Failure to reach target audience
Creativity limitations
Spam activities

Fig 1: Static banner example. Reprinted from Creatopy, 2018. Retrieved from https://blog.creatopy.com/display-advertising-guide/
Fig 2: Email marketing example. Reprinted from Blue Corona, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.bluecorona.com/blog/best-email-marketing-strategy-examples/

Display ads are proven to offer versatility in its creation and execution. Digital display ads are referred to as banner ads, which embeds and ad on a web page. The advantages include the versatility it offers- formats, colors, size, and copy (Iacob, 2018). Banner ad formats include static images (as displayed), GIF’s, and animated HTML (Iacob, 2018). Digital ads drive brand awareness, make available digital analytics, and can be targeted at select target groups or through retargeting efforts to customers (Iacob, 2018). The disadvantages include low conversion rates, as ads may reach groups outside of the target group who aren’t actively looking for the product/service; they aren’t a competitive format to promote a product/service; and finally, the potential for spamming users to get them to click on the ad, with many users associating banner ads with spam (LearnAdOps, 2019).
Email marketing is a simple communication mechanism. It proffers many advantages, which include a relative cost-effective marketing method relative to SEO and direct mail, and relatedly yields a high ROI. A study by the DMA found that for every $1 spent, email has an average $38 ROI (MailChimp, 2021). The obvious benefit is the massive reach of email. Further, it enables companies to promote brand equity by highlighting important product/service information. Lastly, it offers many automation and analytic options, from opens and clicks to website traffic and e-commerce data (MailChimp, 2021).
Disadvantages include the potential to not reach the target audience and potentially get marked as spam by current or prospective customers. Additionally, creativity may be stifled based on email format limitations which pale in comparison to the dynamic content available in other campaign formats (BigFootDigital, 2021).
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Analyze at least 10 digital and social media channels and describe the strengths and weaknesses of each of these as a marketing tool for this company.
This will likely take up 2-4 slides depending on how we lay it out.
Ayinde wants to work on this slide

Design an online strategy that maximizes the use of some or all of the digital and social media channels, as appropriate, based on your team’s analysis.
Perhaps a couple of us can develop the strategy based on the 10 previously mentioned?
This will likely take up 2-4 slides depending on how we lay it out.

Digital Marketing Plan
Primary marketing plan elements: overview of target market, campaign goals, promotion mix, messaging, budget parameters, and key performance indicators

Home Depot’s Target Market & Customer Profile
Generation: baby boomers and millennials
Gender: male (55%) and female (45%)
Age: average of 50-years-old
Income: average of $60,000
Do-it-yourself customers
Do-it-for-me customers
Professional customers

Target Market:

Home Depot’s target market are customers who have a penchant for rolling up their sleeves and getting immersed into the task or project at hand. The core customer group include those that are interested in DIY home projects; customers seeking consultation and installation services; and the professional suite of contractors, builders, interior designers, and renovators (Soni, 2015).
The customer profile includes primarily baby boomers, who account for approx. 50% of the company’s revenue (Bowman, 2018). There is a focus, however, on the millennial generation who are increasingly purchasing their first homes. The gender demographic is close to evenly split, with 55% male customers and 45% female customers; with the male population generating higher revenues, with spending habits average 30% more than female customers (Bowman, 2018). Lastly, the average customer income is $60k (Bowman, 2018).
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Marketing Campaign Goals

Increase brand awareness
Retargeting and promotion of customer loyalty
Generate leads and sales
Increase digital engagement
Enhance customer experience in digital ecosystem

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The goals related to our digital marketing campaign lead with a priority of driving our footprint and raising brand awareness with prospective customers. The digital marketing campaign will include omni-channel efforts and seek to expand our digital reach and drive digital engagement. We will also aim to promote brand equity and customer loyalty with our current customer base through retargeting efforts. This reinforces our commitment to CRM initiatives and providing an opportunity to nurture the customer relationship.
Equally important is our focus on lead and sales generation. Digital marketing efforts will drive increased site traffic and increased sales. Digital analytics will provide insight into campaign efficacy and analysis of site visits, click through’s, site navigation, and conversion rates.
This campaign will also enrich and enhance the customer’s digital experience with the company. There will be multi-channel options and the ability to switch from one personal device to another to continue with the shopping journey.

Promotional Mix

Advertising – Paid Communication to Identify the Company
Promote Discounts to Seniors & Veterans
Advertise Specials & Sales
Public Relations – Positive Image
Promote Diversity
Promotes Brand Awareness
Promote Current Social Issues
Personal Selling – Customer Providing Feedback
Word of Mouth is Inexpensive
Promotes Brand Value & Loyalty
Sales Promotion – Promotes Value by Creating Immediate Sales
Sales Attract Customers & Increase Revenue
Also Used to Reduce Inventory and Seasonal Stock
Image retrieved from: https://www.google.com/search

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A promotion mix is what an organization uses to combine various marketing efforts to better promote products or services, to a broader reaching audience (Marshall & Johnston, 2019). In the case of Home Depot, it appears as though the organization could benefit from all four areas of the Promotion Mix. As an example, advertising can be done in a multitude of ways, such as direct mailers, emails, the company website, or by social media. The Home Depot has a healthy website for reviewing products and making purchases. It is very user-friendly, but their social media presence could be stronger to promote themselves. Pinterest and YouTube are two ways that Home Depot can gain access to Do-It-Yourself and Do-It-For-Me customers. With Facebook’s algorithms, Home Depot can tap into targets of customers that are searching for materials and products. Public relations is another part of the marketing mix that the Home Depot can use to appeal to the masses, especially during this Covid phenomena of people staying home and longing to do home projects. While it is an opportunity to make sales, the Home Depot can also use public relations to demonstrate their Brand Awareness and commitment to public safety. Given that The Home Depot now has competitors such as Lowes and Menards, they do have the luxury of being the first in the industry to promote in this platform. Public Relations can go a long way to demonstrate commitment and viability. Personal selling is another platform that the Home Depot take advantage of and can continue to do so with an expanded social media presence. When customer have a good or bad experience, the first thing they do is post on the internet. Customer feedback can be dangerous, but it can be just as beneficial to provide customers with a platform to provide reviews and comments. By promoting their sales and outdated stock on social media, the Home Depot can gain new customers by bringing them in the door for sales pricing. This will get the customer walking around to see what else they have.

Key performance indicators (KPI)
Sales-Measures the number of sales by the hour, day, week, quarter or year. Monitoring sales will indicate growth and seasonal trends.
Average Order Value (AOV)- How much a customer spends on a single order. This helps decide how to price your products and where to cross and up sell.
Traffic (New vs. Returning)- The number of people that visit your website. How many of these visitors are new vs. returning users. This means new traffic is a sign your marketing is reaching new people (Estay,2021).
Bounce Rate- The percentage of users who leave your website after viewing only one page. High bounce rate means your content is not resonating with your target audience.
Traffic source-Where your visitors come from and how they got to your site. This KPI can help pinpoint which marketing strategies are working. If its direct, you may have great content marketing and a very loyal customer base.

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Conclusion
I’d be happy to tie this all up into a conclusion slide at the end before we submit.
Lory will do a cohesive conclusion slide to tie everyone’s work together at the end.

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References
Please add your references below.
Lory will organize, verify and finalize the reference slide in the final days.

Deeter-Schmelz, D. (2014).Personal Selling and Sales Management Abstracts.Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 34(4), pp.318-330.
Repko, M. (2020).  Pandemic induced nesting fuels Home Depot and Lowe’s sales – why it’s likely to continue. Retrieved from: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/20/home-depot-and-lowes-earnings-boosted-by-pandemic-induced-nesting.html
The Home Depot. (2021).  About us. Retrieved from: https://corporate.homedepot.com/about/sponsorships-paid-media
The Home Depot. (2021).  History. Retrieved from: https://corporate.homedepot.com/about/history
The Home Depot. (2021).  The social pulse. Retrieved from: https://corporate.homedepot.com/newsroom

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