Peace Scapes
Social Media
Executive Summary Our marketing team has taken an in-depth look at the possibility of Pearce Scapes incorporating social media in its marketing plan. We feel this is a marketing segment left untapped by your company and its competitors. Social Media websites are the largest growing websites used by consumers today. Having social media sites could give Pearce Scapes another opportunity to branch out to new consumers, show off pictures of recently completed projects, and update status’ to communicate with customers. We have researched and collected data, and believe in this report we can prove to you the cost and marketing advantages of social media. We have also taken a lot of time to analyze the actual website Pearce Scapes already has, and have compared it to your major competitors. We feel your company’s perception by consumers is made by their first encounter with you, so why not have a more interactive website that allows them to have multiple channels of communication with you? We feel like your website is very strong, especially compared to your competitors, but it could set you apart greatly by: Changing some of the formatting used on your website. Showing off recent projects, and having different strategies for photos. Making contact with your company more simple and convenient. Our team feels that through our research we have found a solution to solving your company’s possibility of using social media. This could greatly increase the amount of customers you branch out to with little cost, giving you a head start on your competition, We believe that with our data we can allow Pearce Scapes to begin to venture out in a new marketing plan almost unused by your industry, and allow you to be set apart from the average landscaping company.
1
Peace Scapes
Social Media External Review
We began our research by reviewing what your major competitors were doing to branch into social media. To your advantage none of your competitors have even began to use social media webpage’s in their marketing platform, but they have taken steps to innovate their website in order to attract more customers. We believe Mirror Lake Designs was the most promising web page out of all of your competitors. Their website had many features that we believe could help Pearce Scapes have more interested customers. Their webpage has a tab for every branch that their company is involved in. Each one of these tabs has a brief couple of paragraph description on each page, and many pictures showing their work. Their pictures broadcast each project that they do as a whole, but don’t go into detail on what they did in each project, which Pearce Scapes does a great job of. They also have a tab we feel Pearce Scapes needs a Before and After. This would allow customers to see what your company will actually do for them. Another thing that we believe they did well was allowing contacting their company to be easily accessible by the customer on their web page. Have a contacting you section available on your webpage that allows customers to access you directly on the website. The next company two companies we looked at were Carnahan Landscaping and Amazing Landscapes. Both of these websites have a few things Pearce Scapes could easily incorporate, but also some things to stay away from. Carnahan website was much more basic than Pearce Scapes, but had some things we like as well. Much like Pearce Scapes they have very zoomed in photographs of what they will do, but they also have included before and after photography and have pictures of every branch they are involved in including sprinkler and mosquito systems. Amazing Landscapes we believe is an example of a website that you should try and avoid when modifying your webpage. They have too much going on and load time is really long when opening their website. Also with the music and everything it’s a little too much for a landscaping website.
2
Peace Scapes
Social Media
Below we have made a bar graph just as a visual representation of the scale that we were comparing your webpage to the other landscaping companies we analyzed. As you can see we believe that your webpage is among the top for what we looked at, but there are a few things that you could do to make you really stick out. We’ll go further more into this in our insight and recommendation section. The major competitors that we compared you to all have aspects to their websites that if you incorporated to yours we feel could make Pearce Scapes have a leading edge in marketing. With so many competitors in the Houston area your webpage gives you an easy way to separate yourself from your competitors, and with an initiative in using social sites Pearce Scapes can be a leader in the landscaping scene.
Web Page Grade 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
Mirror Lake Designs
Carnahan Landscaping
Pearce Scapes
Amazing Landscapes
3
Peace Scapes
Social Media Existing Social Media Presence on the Web
We have also reviewed what Pearce Scapes has used on the social media scene. We also began this by looking at Pearce Scapes website, from the previous page you can see that many of your competitors gave us ideas to add to what you have already done. We have also looked into social media and it uses that we believe would benefit Pearce Scapes, including its use in sites like Facebook and YouTube and some sites to stay away from. This will make your first encounter with your customers’ one that surpasses you competitors. Pearce Scapes site was one the better sites that we saw, but we feel that a few changes could be made to make your website the best in your industry. We liked how detailed your pictures were and how they showed each individual part of the projects you do, but we feel you need pictures of the completed landscape as whole. We also believe that a before and after section is needed in your website. Take pictures of what your houses look like when you started, and showoff the work that you do with pictures that show your work. We believe Facebook and YouTube need to be the primary social media sites used by your company. Social media is currently used by 75 percent of consumers; this is a large segment of your market left untapped by you and your competitors. Facebook offers you the opportunity to be able to target your customer persona, which we will discuss later. According to Facebook stats the age demographic of 35 and above is the largest growing demographic and in 2010 represented thirty percent of the Facebook population. But once you have started a Facebook page it’s important you know how to use it, we believe that the best for Pearce Scapes would be a status update no more than two times a day, and make it at around a certain time each day. This is so your page doesn’t become an annoyance to people causing them to unlike it, but instead offers statuses that make people interested in your company. While marketing on Facebook be sure to
4
Peace Scapes
Social Media
include current articles that involve Pearce Scapes, or that you are just interested in. Some of the highest trafficked website statuses on Facebook are those that are not marketing a product. We would also recommend using a landing page in Facebook that welcomes customers and allows maybe a special offer if they like your business page. Successful social media companies like Starbucks, Toyota, and Heinz have used this in different ways to attract new customers. Here are a few things they have done that we believe you could easily incorporate: Toyota’s landing page highlight’s personal stories from loyal customers. Pearce Scapes prides itself on its loyal and repeat customers so this would be the perfect place to illustrate that. Starbucks uses their page to allow customers to purchase gift cards or advertise a special off; Pearce Scapes could maybe have 10% off a service if they like you on Facebook. But this could at least allow you to market any special offers. Along with a Facebook page in itself Facebook ad’s is something Pearce Scapes can use to target a specific market segment in a specific area. Our group made an ad for Pearce Scapes that targeted those 25 years and older in the cities your company says it services on your site. The cost came down to a $1.13 cost per click for every click that your ad gets. That’s exponentially lower than the cost it would be for that many people to see your ad in other advertising areas. The last current social media project that we believe would be profitable for you to use is YouTube. People are watching over 2 billion videos a day on this site, by a majority user range of 18-55 shared between half male and half female which is very close to the group you are targeting. Using YouTube you can embed videos of recently completed projects and put them on you website. Using a video would allow customers to be able to see the whole project in detail rather than just a zoomed out photo. Now that we have given you a foundation of what we believe will allow you to effectively venture into a social media, we are now going to tell you about your target customer persona and what we believe customers are saying about you, using this we can go more in-depth on how to change these by using social media as a marketing tool.
5
Peace Scapes
Social Media Customer Chatter and Review
What customers online are saying about you can be the difference maker in whether or not your company is chosen. Having so many other landscaping companies in the Houston area makes what your reputation is online even more important. To gauge what customers were saying about you we looked at yellowpages.com, Google, and Yahoo! to see what customers were saying about you on these sites. On yellow pages and Yahoo! your company has a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars, but you only have two reviews on Yellow pages and one on Yahoo! . This is where social media could come in hand; the more active your company is on the web the more customers you will get to interact with your site by doing things like rating your company and writing on Facebook. A recent Yale study proved that as your companies online rating increased, so will your companies sales, this is due to the increasing number of people that are using the internet for shopping. One of the major things we believe would be beneficial to your company is beginning to use Google Adwords; this would put your company on the top of a Google search of certain key words. For example if someone were to search “landscaping in Houston� Pearce Scapes is nowhere to be found. Using Google Adwords your company’s website would be front and center, highly increasing the likeliness of a search resulting in a sale for your company. The budgeting for this is very similar to Facebook using a cost per click on your ad, allowing you to set a budget for the maximum cost for one day. We set up a make believe account for you and entered in 6 keywords and came up with a cost per click of about 45 cents. Since Google is by far the most popular search engine this would be the easiest way to increase the traffic to your website with little cost.
6
Peace Scapes
Social Media
Targeting Your Customer Persona
“The Businessman” What are his attitudes about? Ease of Communication o Accessibility through several various channels o Quick and Painless interactions o Scheduling necessary communication on customers timeline Being able to work with schedule o Timeline is crucial in busy schedule. o Must be able to provide service when convenient Yard Maintenance o Although busy, wants his yard to be kept in order. o Must trust company to provide services regularly and get the job done right o Willing to pay as much as needed for the nicest yard possible.
“The Family” What are their attitudes about? Hassle-Free Maintenance o Wants Professional grade work o Doesn’t want clutter of machinery o Cannot afford luxurious landscape Be able to trust company o Do it right, the first time o Want to be able to spend their little free time with family. o Quality service for reasonable price. Being able to work with schedule o Must be flexible on communication o Maintain this flexibility when performing work o Convenience with bills, communication, and service.
7
Peace Scapes
Social Media
Above our group made what Pearce Scapes typical customer looks like. As you can see your target customer is someone who is middle to upper class, has a busy lifestyle and cares about their yard, but doesn’t have time or the ability to keep up with its maintenance. This is where Facebook ad’s can help you target this certain demographic. Below we have put a screen shot of what your Facebook ad page will look like. You can easily target the people who will actually be interested in using your company. Not only can you do location and demographics, but you can also target certain likes and interest. Facebook offers the most efficient way for you to advertise to your customer persona. This can help guarantee that the people that see your ad are those that are most likely to be customers.
8
Peace Scapes
Social Media Trends and Research
Social media is the newest and most trending way of marketing currently being used. According to a recent study by eMarketer in 2011 four out of five businesses with at least 100 employees will be on social media in some way. This is up from 42 percent in 2008 and will continue to rise through 2012. The graph below shows how this new way of marketing is and will continue to grow. Now is the perfect time to get a foot up on your competition and begin to venture out into this new way of marketing. This will allow you to establish your company in the marketing industry before all of your competitors join.
9
Peace Scapes
Social Media
Cost vs. Benefits Using these social media tools can be beneficial to Pearce Scapes in the expansion of their business and the innovative movement into current trends, surpassing your competitors. As we have already discovered, Pearce Scapes’ main competitors are absent in the social media world as well, meaning the Pearce Scapes has an opportunity to break the mold, resulting in successful marketing, driving traffic away from competitors and to your company. This can improve your sales, your revenue, and your quality of business.
These tools are all free. You can post updates, pictures, videos, and promotions just with the creation of an account. But to further expand the growth and popularity of Pearce Scapes, there is an integration of social media advertising that must be established.
10
Peace Scapes
Social Media
Facebook, for example, has a way to post ads on the website and pages for other users to see. Pearce Scapes can use this built in advertisement feature to target specific audiences, locations, and even genders if preferred. With the built in system, you can establish a budget suitable to your needs. Facebook will provide a way to select a daily budget as well as a pay per click price option. Facebook will even offer a suggested pay per click price that should be bid, as well as a way to choose what daily budget Pearce Scapes wants to contribute to Facebook ads.
Facebook also provides built-in, on-site tools to help manage these ads for Pearce Scapes as well. With the insights feature provided by Facebook, Pearce Scapes can determine:
How users are trafficking to the page How many visitors the pages are receiving (daily, monthly, etc.) How many likes the page is receiving You can also track the effectiveness of ad campaigns
11
Peace Scapes
Social Media
All of the tools offered are easily accessible on Facebook’s website, making it an easy way to market and reach target audiences in the landscaping community. The tools provided are also featured on Facebook to provide small or larger companies with an affordable marketing tool. Facebook will easily fit into Pearce Scapes’ budget making it an easy, affordable marketing technique to take advantage of, making your company exceed the norm that your competitors are following right now.
12
Peace Scapes
Social Media
Other forms of Social Media can be incorporated into Pearce Scapes’ marketing plan and budget as well. YouTube has become one of the most popular video hosing sites in the world. With YouTube, Pearce Scapes can create a channel specific to your company to portray the company in a different manner other than just pictures posted on the website.
People are watching over 2 billion videos per day via YouTube making it a common website shared among millions of people. It also host a wide variety of age in users from 18-55 equally shared between males and females, which just happens to be the target range for Pearce Scapes’ specific target persona. YouTube offers a way for consumers to SEE the company, rather than READ about the company, making it an essential tool for simplicity and ease for consumers in landscaping. Pearce Scapes can benefit from offering several videos including:
How-to videos Project show-cases Customer testimonials Use it to have fun with the customer!
13
Peace Scapes
Social Media
YouTube offers a variety of tools similar to Facebook, as far as insights are concerned. YouTube will provide ways to see: The way traffic is driven to your video Total views of your videos Break down of views by day, location, or demographics Hotspot which allows you to see which parts of video users are more interested in
With YouTube, you can use their website to imbed videos onto your actual Pearce Scapes website to drive users to your YouTube channel where they will be able to view all of your uploaded videos. Again, these videos can be testimonials, show-cases, or any type of related video that draws traffic to your company. This media tool is all appropriate for any company on the market today, but we feel extremely beneficial to Pearce Scapes because of the
14
Peace Scapes
Social Media
affordability. YouTube is free to any user that creates an account. There is a way for users to pay for promoted videos, or ad videos to drive traffic to your channel or website. However, we feel that this addition of paid advertising is not as profitable to Pearce Scapes as other tools; therefore we find no reason to budget in promoted videos, but rather just use the provided tools YouTube offers for free to any user. Another way we feel can be beneficial to Pearce Scapes is by utilizing the social media tool referred to as Twitter. This tool can be used in collaboration with the other social media tools mentioned helping to drive traffic to other websites relating to Pearce Scapes, helping to increase sales which in turn can increase revenue.
Twitter has little complexity as far as user interface and account creation. Once an account is created for Pearce Scapes, you can use Twitter for: Promoting online specials, sales, deals, or other promotions Promote news about the company Provide information about other websites or pages to follow Announce anything instantly customers We have researched Twitter extensively, working to determine if this is a beneficial tool to Pearce Scapes. We have discovered the benefits of other companies in different industries and have concluded that Pearce Scapes can use Twitter to their advantage; however, there must be a following base built up before Twitter can prove useful. These other websites and pages can help announce the
15
Peace Scapes
Social Media
addition of Twitter to Pearce Scapes many pages, helping to drive followers to Twitter.
Twitter has grown in use over the years and has become a social media norm for a wide variety of age groups and locations. Twitter needs to be used in alliance with Facebook, YouTube, and Pearce Scapes’ website. Pearce Scapes can use this to help attain those prospective customers in the market by driving traffic to the site and offering users special incentives.
16
Peace Scapes
Social Media
Another way Pearce Scapes can rise above the competition is by utilizing Google Adwords to increase your website’s visibility to consumers searching for landscaping companies. Google offers a unique way to advertise using the ever-so-popular search engine. This can allow for traffic to be automatically driven to your website, allowing consumers to visit your website rather than your competitors. Of the several competitors that were mentioned by Tom, none of them use Google as an advertisement tool. This is an excellent opportunity for Pearce Scapes to take initiative and integrate Google Adwords in the marketing budget.
17
Peace Scapes
Social Media
Google Adwords is an innovative way to advertise Pearce Scapes in today’s market. Google Adwords makes it easy to choose a budget for the advertisement you want to post (similar to Facebook ads). This creation of this budget will allow you to choose Cost Per Click or Cost Per Thousand clicks, which will be reflected in the budget established by Pearce Scapes. Google Adwords also offers a way to view the insights of your ad for the company by supplying insights on the traffic to your website. Google Adwords will supply the user with the amount of clicks on the website’s link, the amount of impressions, the length of time the user stayed on the website, as well as the direction the user took to view or navigate the website. This makes this a vital tool in managing the way Pearce Scapes is driving traffic to their websites, allowing for easy access to insights used to determine what changes need to be made to the advertisement. Google Adwords is extremely helpful in placing the ad in the relevant spot for users to acknowledge and traffic towards; however, there must be key management by Pearce Scapes in the assistance of this. Keywords must be looked at in depth to determine which words Pearce Scapes wants on their website that will drive users to their website when using search engines. These keywords are crucial to the relevance of your website and the visibility of it to users looking for a landscaping company. Google supplies a tool to the user to assist in the creation of keywords for the website. You must take advantage of this tool, creating the most relevant keywords to attract and drive traffic towards your site, especially using a search engine like Google.
18
Peace Scapes
Social Media Critical Success Factors/Next Steps
After you have set up your social media web pages it’s a necessity that your company has a strategy for how they will go about using these sites. Below we have a graph of what 140 corporate companies said their strategies were for using social media in 2011. Website integration was used by almost 50 percent of the companies surveyed. This is an important objective because the more integrated your sites are with your webpage the longer customers will be on there, and more likely to interact on your page and contact your company. The easiest way for your company to incorporate this strategy on your webpage would be YouTube videos like we said before, and a like button for Facebook embedded on your webpage. Communicating with your customers needs to be equally important when incorporating a social media strategy. Implementing these strategies is needed if your company is going to be successful in its social media platform.
19
Peace Scapes
Social Media
Another important factor of having a successful social media platform is gauging whether or not what you are doing is working. Judging this can be somewhat difficult because the traffic that comes to your page is heavily dependent on how large your consumer base is. During that same survey they asked what measurements were most successful in evaluating the success of your program, as you can see a vast majority of companies believe the best way to judge this is by engagement data, and overall consumer opinions. In order to have a large amount of consumer engagement it’s important that your website is interactive and invites customers to comment or like, and once they do carry on a conversation with them. These two things alone can dramatically help your company to have a successful transfer from the old way of television, radio, and newspaper ads, to the new social media advertising.
20
Peace Scapes
Social Media Insights and Recommendations
Pearce Scapes has a lot of options at its finger tips when it comes to social media. The main focus is to deliver an access of communication between the company and customer, and from our analysis the landscaping industry is lagging behind. Without a constant review of consumer interests and wants Pearce Scapes may just be another landscaping company on the list. We encourage E s s e n t i a l l y, t h e s o c i a l Pearce Scapes to grow into using more social media market is there for media to attract more the taking. customers. This will enhance customer interaction, good and bad, to further help give Pearce Scapes insightful feedback. Also, future customers will see the benefits and actual feedback of real customers to further promote what Pearce Scapes is all about. We believe that Pearce Scapes should invest in Google Adwords and take advantage of this advertising tool to grow your business locally and get better recognition. This will help potential customers be able to see your company when they search for landscaping companies in Houston, since Pearce Scapes doesn’t show up on the first page of results as it is. When the investment into Google Adwords starts driving traffic towards your website, Pearce Scapes wants to have a website that tells prospective customers everything they need to know to decide to choose this company. Pearce Scapes does well with the website currently, but we feel there certain things that can be done to help make the website even better. The website should have a better variety of pictures, rather than the ones currently being used. It should incorporate the entire completed job, as well as the close-ups that are on the website right now. This will show
21
Peace Scapes
Social Media
the customers just how detailed your work is, but also be able to show them the big picture scope of Pearce Scapes’ work. Although pictures are a must for the show-casing of work, a video can show even more. Pearce Scapes should create a video of before and after shots, work in progress, and the process of landscaping. This will not only provide customers with an example of your quality of work, but will also show them where their money is going and what it will look like when it becomes a completed project. With the busy lifestyle for both of your target persona, we find that it would help to maintain and drive traffic to your website by making it easier to communicate with Pearce Scapes. Have an email thread embedded into your website page to contact the company. This will allow the customer to email you more directly from just visiting the website. Another thing that will apply to your target persona is making them aware of Pearce Scapes’ licenses. In the economy we are living in today, companies have to obtain a license for everything, leaving many of them lagging behind. Pearce Scapes has obtained all the necessary licenses and then some, so we feel it would be beneficial for Pearce Scapes to post these in the empty space at the header of your website; make a bold statement with these licenses. The website will be the corner stone of everything else that you do to market this company. All the other tools will help to drive this traffic to Pearce Scapes, resulting in the pursued goal: sales and revenue. But these social media tools are not a “create it and forget about it” type of process. They must be maintained constantly and updated frequently. Have a certain time each day to use Facebook, Twitter, or update YouTube. From research, we recommend once in the morning, another at
22
Peace Scapes
Social Media
lunch, and one in the evening. This will help to accomplish the real time following method for Pearce Scapes. An important thing to remember is to keep the website fun. Don’t spend all your time promoting the website or the services. Customers will want to stay away from the site just to avoid being roped in by another cheesy advertisement. Remember; if it looks, feels, and sounds like an advertisement, then it is. Keep posts to a maximum of 3 per day on Facebook when it comes to promoting sales, or swinging a sales pitch. This will cause followers to lose interest. If promotions or sales are something that need be announced, Twitter comes into play. This is when the customer base following you will be able to see your daily promotions, prizes, etc. that you Pearce Scapes is offering. Pearce Scapes will be successful in utilizing these tools to help with the marketing structure. But to do this, maintenance is a must. When Pearce Scapes gets ready to expand, use these tools to help change location and target audience to assist in branching out into other communities and target audiences. Throughout the posts and the maintaining of these customer relations, it is important to keep a professional profile. You must engage with the customers to a professional business extent, but without promoting the service to the point that you are actually driving away potential sales. One thing to keep in mind during the integration phase of these social media tools: the main focus on creating and maintain these sites are to get more information from the target consumer and to increase the interaction with them, helping to drive sales.
23
Peace Scapes
Social Media
Pearce Scapes has a lot of options at its fingertips when it comes to social media. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are all platforms that we highly recommend to reach out to your target audience. The main focus on social media is to deliver an access of communication between the company and consumer. From our analysis, the landscaping industry is lagging behind in this. Pearce Scapes needs to push customer interaction within a social media hemisphere. This will enhance customer interaction to further give Pearce Scapes insightful feedback. Also, future consumers will see the benefits and actual feedback of real-time customers to further promote Pearce Scapes. With the integration of social media into Pearce Scapes marketing strategy, we strongly believe that you will see an increase in sales, revenue, and popularity making Pearce Scapes an easily recognizable landscaping company in the Houston area. The social media platform is there for the taking, making it imperative that Pearce Scapes utilize this to help your business grow.
24