Social Media Strategy Analysis

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April, 2016.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGY FOR OLD NAVY BRAND

Old Navy is a famous garments and its accessories retailer owned by an American multinational corporation, Gap Inc. It is headquartered in San Francisco. It is a retail company that deals with men, women and kids clothes. As a company that is of high interest in profitability and success of business transactions, it has made marketing one of the major strategic plans that are aimed at achieving the set standards and competing effectively in the global market. (Holmes, 2009).

In attempt to increase its market platform and enhance customer loyalty as well creation of awareness, Old Navy has engaged in social media marketing. This is an easy thing to do for any given company although it requires a good strategic plan so that to be successfully done. The customer segment for the retail company cuts across the entire society as it targets both adult genders and kids.

According to an interview conducted by Samantha Aldenton on the company’s director of digital and social innovations, Taylor Bux, it is clearly stated that Old Navy uses an interesting tactic to work its wide variety of influencers. The retailer has a three tier system that classifies various talents and they are used to best fit their digital properties. The three tier system works as follows:

First they have the top tier with which the influencers and talents with much pronounced reach, brand credibility and people that the retailer call on at specific times of the year. This is achieved by partnership with designers who founded Denim and how they could help create credible fashions for Old Navy.

The sandwiched middle tier entails the fashion bloggers who the retailer has been making core cast to work with while rotating out depending on their performance through metrics and engagement. Through working with the Collective Agency, the retailer has been able to source these influencers. The director pointed out that they are also working on creating brand evangelists group who can help advocate for the retailer.

The third tier is designed to connect and work together with the social ambassadors and merging them with their pre-existing online sales data. They are focusing on matching their real CRM database with the informal social database they have created on the back end.(Hiroko, 2015)

Another means that the retailer is attaining social media marketing goals is through the use of a twitter handle. The twitter handle is used to reach the customers from all over the globe and it helps to determine the customers’ needs and understand the customer requirements and expectations of their products. Through twitter handle, the retailer has been able to capture the attention of new customers through cereat6ion of awareness to members of the society that did not initially have an idea of the retailer company’s existence and their deals as well as their products. The photos posted on twitter can be of newly innovated products and thus helps to improve the communication between the company and its customers.

Facebook page for the retailer company also boosts their marketing means and helps reach a larger number of people through friend requesting and liking. The posts on Facebook are also designed to capture the attention of other Facebook users and this vividly increases the vastness of their market and number of customers.

Instagram is also used with related functionality as both Facebook and twitter.

Besides the company has a functional website which wraps up information about the retail company. The website acts as an informative means to the customers, stakeholders and even other interested influencers

The creation of Old Navy fan page has helped the interaction between the retailer company and the customers which has in turn improved communication and market for the Old Navy products. It has enabled easy understanding of the customer needs, which is a very important aspect of a production company since it helps create the relevance of the products through meeting the customer needs and requirements as well as expectations of their products. The fans are also used to act as ambassadors of the company’s products to the outside market.

Old Navy’s marketing strategy via social media is quite effective. It has been responsible for a significant number of sales over the past ten years. It is reported to have boosted sales by approximately 33%. (Fran et al., 2016)

Old Navy’s biggest competitor is H&M since they are both under the parent organization Gap Inc. and they produce closely related products. Old Navy’s rebirth has made it to perform better than its competitor H&M

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These social media marketing strategies are also vital in assessing the success of the company. Through designing an algorithm that keeps count of the number of clicks on the Old Navy website, checking the number of followers on twitter, instagram and Facebook can help approximate the vastness of the company’s ,market and then this helps design strategies to improve the company functionality.

Moreover, the type of comments posted by customers can also tell the quality of their products and the rate at which they are satisfying their customers. This can be used to determine means and ways of improving the standards of their production.

Besides, the company should engage in further research to design the most appropriate ways to maximise the effectiveness of the social media marketing techniques, this will better the performance of the marketing department in Old Navy Retailer Company and the entire company’s functionality at large.

References

Hiroko T., (2015). Old Navy Thrives after a Style Conscious Rebirth.New York Times.

Retrieved July 18th 2015.

Holmes E., (2009) Old Navy’s Renewed Zest is Likely to Lift Gap- WSJ.com. online.wsj.com.

Retrieved March 2nd 2013.

Fran C., Ray P., Duckworth S. and Burnett C., (2016).Market Leader: Social Media

Effectiveness, Quarter 1, pp. 34-37

https://www.wgsn.com/blogs/the-digital-digest-old-navys-tiered-social-media-strategy/