Research and analyze a local, regional, national, or international brand. Identify a potential customer, analyze their current social media efforts, and recommend ways to change or enhance their current strategy.
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1. Introduce the brand you are selecting and why?
FroyoWorld is New England’s first and largest self-serve frozen yogurt lounge. FroyoWorld opened its first store at Yale University campus in the town of New Haven, Connecticut in the summer of 2010. After the business got great support from the community of New haven, it has opened few more branches around Connecticut. In less than a year, FroyoWorld became a successful franchise business with over 40 stores in New England, Puerto Rico and Australia. With all these branches, I have never heard about this brand. Ice cream and frozen yogurt are my favorite every time snacks. Since I came to Connecticut, I have not heard about FroyoWorld and once I had searched on Google about frozen yogurt stores FroyoWorld does not come at the top of SERPs (search engine results pages). Also, the brand does not have strong presence in social media platforms, the brand does so I decided to analyze its presence digitally, figure out the weakness points and bring some helpful recommendations.
2. Describe the brand’s social media presence. Where are they active? How active are they?
2. Describe the brand’s social media presence. Where are they active? How active are they?
FroyoWorld is on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The brand largest number of followers are on Facebook, over 35,000 followers. On Instagram, about 1000 followers and about 600 followers on Twitter. FroyoWorld joined Twitter on 2010 the same year it has opened the first store. Twitter account is not updated since 2015, the last tweet was before three years. The brand was very active on 2014 and 2013, but most of the content ‘Tweets’ was not specific for Twitter, it was linking to their Instagram. Some of the tweets uses hashtags that are not that related to the content like #cookimonster , #tgif , #delicious and #sogood. Generally, most of the tweets content are links and hashtags which is not appealing at all to read. FroyoWorld Facebook and Instagram accounts were not updated since last year, the brand did not post on 2018 yet. The brand activity on social media platforms is very weak, the content is not engaging nor appealing to read or watch.
3. Analyze the brand on social media. What personality are they trying to represent? What is their tone of voice? Do they have a mascot or spokesperson? Do they use influencers? Who do they seem to be targeting?
Each brand should build its unique persona and tone of voice on social media in order to be recognized and have clear image among huge numbers of brands. FroyoWorld has unidentifiable persona. The content which including pictures and videos on the brands Social media told that the brand persona is a combination of
friendly and joyful even though none of these content is up-to-date. The tone of voice is direct and humble. The sound of the brand, personality and the tone need to be determined after determining who is the target audience. The age group of FroyoWorld’s target audience is probable include all ages in both gender. Also, people who are looking for healthy alternative of ice cream that satisfies their sweet tooth without having to feel of guilty. The brand has not been representing or advertised by any influencers nor has spokesperson or mascot. Generally, the brand has not had strong presence in digital world.
4. Conduct a SWOT analysis.
- FroyoWorld SWOT analysis:
Strengths:
FroyoWorld offers a self-service lounge which give the customers to have the experience of customizing their own master piece frozen yogurt that can compromised with as many flavors and toppings as they want, not other usual frozen yogurt stores that offer full-service. With self- service, a frozen yogurt cup is weighed and charged by the ounce which making it appealing for the customers because they can control how much money they are spending on their cups. The brand has over 40 locations disrupted in New England, Australia and Puerto Rico to reach to as many people as they can. Frozen yogurt is healthy and nutritious alternative to desserts like ice cream and the tendency towards eating less sugar and fat or healthier is higher because of the increasing of diabetes and obesity rates.
Weaknesses:
FroyoWorld’s website looks visually unappalling and unprofessional. There are broken links which means most of the photos does not appear on the website and those photos does not have ALT tags that describes what the photos about once it does not appear. The photos that are appears are in low quality. FroyoWorld has not done any digital marketing strategies. In a search for “Frozen yogurt near me” and “Frozen yogurt New England” none of these keywords showed the website at the top results in the SERPs, which is probably due to the lack of implementing the search engine optimization tactics.
Opportunities:
FroyoWorld is physically spreading at almost every city in New England but it is not known online. The brand needs to make digital marketing strategies by creating social media marketing campaigns and paid search advertisement Also, updating their website and optimizing its results in search engines.
Threats:
FroyoWorld has very strong competitors including Arethusa Farm Dairy and 16handels. Those two brands are doing very well online, they have visually appealing and interesting websites, great and varied content on their social media. Lately, people are more likely to check the places online before they visit stores and usually goes by the first few brands that appear on the top of SERPs. FroyoWorld has very weak chance to be clicked on. Also, a well- advertised brand is more likely to remember which FroyoWorld does not have.
- How are they integrating social media on their website and in traditional marketing?
FroyoWorld has Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. The social media icons are at the end of their website which needs to scroll down a couple of times to see them. The brand was integrating social media to their traditional marketing, such as a post on Instagram about 50% discount for fathers on fathers’ day.
Also, announcing for new or seasonal flavors on social media like the following post on Instagram advertising for cool summer flavors.
5. Conclude with at least 4 recommendations for this brand or company to improve or expand their presence on social media
- FroyoWorld should consider using e-mail marketing, mobile marketing and paid display advertising to drive traffic to the website and increase brand recognition digitally. FroyoWorld can choose the area, best keywords and the time for displaying the paid ads. For example, targeting new haven, keywords based on IP address and location (zip code) would be like frozen yogurt near me and best frozen yogurt near me. The time to appear this ad on search engine is afternoons on spring days when most of students, and workers are free after school or work.
- Using story-telling strategy to create content that resonates with the target audience can help to increase the low engagement rate in Froyoworld twitter, Instagram and Facebook
- Create social media marketing campaign. An example of a campaign is setting the main objective of the campaign like gaining 25,000 followers on Twitter and Instagram in the last quarter of 2018. Increase engagement through numbers of shares, likes and follows. For example, post variable content like entertaining and educational content and commercial. Scheduling the posting times, like on Instagram, post interesting facts about yogurt on Monday, on Wednesday, post commercial ad for new flavors of yogurt or seasonal discounts on frozen yogurt cups, and on Friday and Saturday, reposting customers frozen yogurt cups by creating a contest of the best customize frozen yogurt cups and let other followers to vote for that and by the highest number of likes the top three winners will win a 25% off coupon on a cup of frozen yogurt. Using brand, content and trendy hashtags with the customers posts like #mymasterpiececup #Froyoworldbestcup #froyoworldcontest #tbt. Scheduling fixed content is a helpful way to keep active with the followers and make them engage with the brand in a regular basis.
- FroyoWorld should use social media to create social community with its followers. The company should focus on building relationships with the audience on social media. Social networking communities enable followers or customers to participate, share and engage more with brands. Facebook is a great example of external social network that most of the brand use it in order to build community. Froyoworld does have community where customers share their content and mention the brand, but it needs to be more active and up to date, the last post on their Facebook community was post on September 2017. The brand needs to be more active on Facebook and posting sharable content and promoting the Facebook community on other platforms and that probably would encourage users to share and participate more.
- FroyoWorld should publish high quality and sharable content on its website and social media including images, videos and blogs in order to earn backlinks from authorized and well-known websites such as yellow book. When users landed to Froyoworld website, the chances to click on their social media icons is high, so Froyoworld needs to rebuild their website content because it is directly connected with their social media.
- Redesign the website and adjust the place of the social media icons at the top of the website which would give the visitors the opportunity to share the website content on its social media account.
- Determine the target audience including their demographic, benefits, interests and behaviors, hence it would help the company to identify the buyer persona and make it easy to promote for them. for example, assuming that the majority of FroyoWorld customers are teenagers ages between (12-18), use influences to represent and advertise the brand, an example is using the main characters on ‘Stranger Things’ show, their ages are between (14-16) ‘Stranger Things’ is one of the amazing and most popular show on Netflix. Each character chooses the best frozen yogurt flavor and advertise for it, and that would impact perfectly on their fans. For example FroyoWorld will post the characters on their Facebook page and Instagram and encourage the users to try their flavors and post it , so this will increase users participation and sharing, and it will increase the engagement rate.
- Optimize the search engine, creating and using keywords across the important HTML Heading Tags would make the brand visible at the top of search engine result pages.
- Write and post specific content for each social media channel, such as short videos on Facebook, Images and stories on Instagram and interesting and enjoyable tweets on Twitter.
- Create interesting themes, seasonal and advertising hashtags that encourage people to interact and share. For example, on fall season use Instagram stories to share the process of making pumpkin frozen yogurt and use hashtags like #thefallwithfroyo and #pumpkinfroyo.
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References
Articles:
· Daoud, H (2016) 8 Essential Elements of a Social Media Marketing Strategy from https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/essential-elements-social-media-marketing-strategy/
· Lepage, E. (n.d.) How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan in 6 Steps from https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-create-a-social-media-marketing-plan/
Works Cited/Bibliography:
· Lee, K. (2014) How to Find Your Social Media Marketing Voice: The Best Examples, Questions and Guides from https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-marketing-voice-and-tone
· Schwab, S. (2011) Finding your brand voice from https://socialmediaexplorer.com/content-sections/tools-and-tips/finding-your-brand-voice/
· Tuten, T. and Solomon, M. (2018) Social Media Marketing (Third Edition)
· Wagner, N. (n.d.) SWOT Analysis for Gelato Shops from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/swot-analysis-gelato-shops-67349.html
