Social Media Strategy and Marketing
Social media marketing plan is basically a summary of each and everything, which a person plans to do in order to achieve their individual business with the help of social media (Kacker, M., & Perrigot, R. 2016). The basic idea of any social media marketing strategy is to establish a certain goals and also objectives that will allow to react quickly whenever various social media campaigns are not meeting up the expectations of the customers. Social media marketing is basically devoted in reaching higher prospect on the social media. It tends to be more proactive than the traditional system of marketing (Davies et al.,2015). . Various business houses involves around more marketing help, like direct mailing, whereas, social media marketing takes the advantage of the personalized medium. It also provides a good channel for the companies to get a direct attachment with their target customers. The basic idea is to post contents , create conversation and also it helps to develop a relationship with the customers itself.
Whenever a person is specific with their plan, it will be more effective to implement it. It is also said, that the plan should be short and simple. A broad and huge plan may becomes impossible to attain sometimes. The plan acts as a guidance to the actions, at the same time it can be measured by the determination of the person.
Allianz operates as a global financial service company and it offers service to more than 85 customers on the worldwide basis. Social media presence
As per the report, more than 62 percent of the people in Australia are net users and they have a strong social media involvement in social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter as well as LinkedIn. This in turn provides a great opportunity for business like Allianz to connect with existing as well as probable customers and augment their sales. In the year 2012, social media presence helped small-medium sized companies to increase from 14 to 27 percent. This increased awareness of the significant impact that social media can have on the profit of Allianz. Social media is just more than another channel that is used to spread messages as well as offerings about the company. Allianz is associated with major social media a site that includes Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. As a result, they are able to get information about the customers regarding their habits, fondness and dislikes with the help of social media (Davies et al., 2015).
Professional social media tools have become broadly obtainable that allowed Allianz to monitor several social media channels at once. The social media presence had helped Allianz to expand their business as it helped to spread positivity about the company through word of mouth. It became easier for Allianz to come to know about their unsatisfied customers through the social media. In other words, the unhappy customers shared their opinion regarding the company on the social media. The social media presence helped the company to turn their discontented customers into an advocate of their company. Allianz is always benefited by making the use of social media as it increased the website traffic of the company. Social media presence helped the company to direct people to the official website of the company. It also helped the company to gain information about its competitors. The major competitors of Allianz include AVIVA PLC and RSA INSURANCE GROUP PLC (Kacker & Perrigot, 2016).
Social Media Presence
As per the report, more than 62 percent of the people in Australia are net users and they have a strong social media presence in social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter as well as LinkedIn. This in turn provides a great opportunity for business like Allianz to connect with existing as well as probable customers and augment their sales. In the year 2012, social media presence helped small-medium sized companies to increase from 14 to 27 percent. This increased awareness of the significant impact that social media can have on the profit of Allianz. Social media is just more than another channel that is used to spread messages as well as offerings about the company. Allianz is associated with major social media a site that includes Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. As a result, they are able to get information about the customers regarding their habits, fondness and dislikes with the help of social media (Davies et al., 2015).
Professional social media tools have become broadly obtainable that allowed Allianz to monitor several social media channels at once. The social media presence had helped Allianz to expand their business as it helped to spread positivity about the company through word of mouth. It became easier for Allianz to come to know about their dissatisfied customers through the social media. In other words, the unhappy customers shared their opinion regarding the company on the social media. The social media presence helped the company to turn their discontented customers into an advocate of their company. Allianz is always benefited by making the use of social media as it increased the website traffic of the company. Social media presence helped the company to direct people to the official website of the company. It also helped the company to gain information about its competitors. The major competitors of Allianz include AVIVA PLC and Rsa Insurance Group Plc (Kacker & Perrigot, 2016).
Social Media Audience
It is very important to reach the right people with the help of social media and as a result, the company needs to target those individuals who will be able to get associated with the company. Allianz mainly focus on word of mouth strategy with the help of social media. As a result, the company mainly targets those audiences who are amongst social media folk. As a result, it proves to be worthwhile for the company as with the help of positive word of mouth the company will be able to expand its business. The social media audiences that are mainly targeted by Allianz comprises of potential clients, bloggers, affiliate businesses, associates of potential customers and thought-leaders.
The company mainly uses Twitter and LinkedIn to get through their potential customers. Social media helps to gain valuable customer insights as it helps to generate a huge amount of data about the customers in real time. Through daily active engagement and social listening, Allianz had been able to gather relevant information about the target customers. The presence of Allianz in the social media has also helped the audiences to be connected with the company. As per the reports, 54 percent of Australians who follow brands on social media are more loyal towards those brands. Social ads are also economical way to promote the business and distribute content. Social media also offers powerful targeting choice that is reached to the right audience. With the help of social media, retention of the customers is increased through regular communication as well as timely customer service (Berthon et al.,2012)..
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is nothing but the use of social media platforms in order to market a commodity or service of a company. Most of the social-media platforms have their individual integral analytics with the help of which the companies can track the progress as well as success of advertisement campaign. Similarly, Allianz also address their stakeholders with the help of social media marketing that includes both customers and workers. On the planned level, social media marketing comprises the management program of the implementation, scope and governance. Social media usually plays a crucial role in both marketing and reputation management for Allianz (Tuten & Solomon, 2014).
Social media marketing also affects customer acquisition and customer relationship management. Allianz while formulating strategy found it is still in the way of focusing on establishment and also updating of social media presence. However, it is falling to direct traffic to the official Web site. As a result, social media marketing that is mainly used by Allianz mainly focuses on how to deliver contents that delivers value for the customers. This in turn helps the company to gain traffic as well as attention through various social media sites. Social media marketing has also helped the company to increase its brand awareness and loyalty.
Ethics, Privacy and Security
According to the Ethisphere Institute, the Allianz group has been tagged to the second annual “World’s Most Ethical Companies” list. As well as it has been totally recognized as the “Most Ethical Insurance Company”, by the same group. By the words of the General Manager of Corporate Affairs, Nicholas Scofield, “ Alliance has been honoured globally as one of the most ethical companies. Not only that it has been rated to be the “Most Ethical Insurance Company”. According to Alexander Brigham, who has been the executive director of Ethisphere Institute said that, the main reason why the Alliance Group has been honoured, is that they had already developed a meaningful and impressive ethical business practices that has helped them to prepare a complete new platform for themselves.
By the words of Michael Diekmann, the CEO of Alliance, the basic challenges the customers are facing are basically nothing but the challenges of their business. It includes the aging of the society, the constant increase of the temperature of the earth, and also the uncertainty of the future of the economy. Allianz, along with agents, employees, brokers and also other distribution partners is still building a positive alliance that generates knowledge. (Barrales‐Molina,et al., 2014). The solutions that has to be developed, needs to be both sustainable and innovative in nature.
In the year 2008, “World’s Most Ethical Companies” researchers and also analysts has reviewed around more than 10,000 of the world’s best leading companies mainly to determine around 100 finalists. The various steps of the process of evaluation have analyzed the codes of ethics, litigation as well as regulatory infraction histories; investments that have evaluated in both innovation as well as sustainable practices in business; to look at the activities of the companies in order to a massive improve in the corporate citizenship; and also working with the consumer groups for both feedbacks and ratings ( Rouziès & Hulland, 2014).
Allianz SE is a member of the “Transparency International” and it basically supports the “Principles of the United Nations Global Compact” and also the OECD Guidelines for Multinationals by the Code of Conduct. Allianz also leads the said insurance sector of the “Dow Jones Sustainability Index World 2007/2008” which is listed in “FTSE4GOOD” and in the “Climate Disclosure Leadership Index” (Evans, 2012).
Social Media Technology:
The basic idea of Social Media Marketing is to utilize the basic and actual social networking websites as a basic marketing tool. It also helps basically, to produce the content that the users will share with their social network in order to help the company to increase the brand exposure and also to broaden the reach of the customer. The company mainly encourages the viewers to share some animated shorts in relation to the Retirement Realities, Annuity Basics, and also Annuity Myths and Truths. The videos are basically a simple guideline for the people in order to relate to the topic. And it also provides with the option of easy share with through the social media gives it a more relevant to the topic as well. Not only that they had launched their own YouTube page so that customers could get an easy access to the videos ( Zaglia, 2013).
The basic difference of each of the campaigns is that all of them are unlike to the others in terms of their innovations. It has been said that the tough times can lead to great innovations. It has been found that Allianz’s animations which are basically whimsical aims at teaching without the help of any sound professionals. (Payne & Frow, 2013).
Allianz’s Digital Marketing Head, Aditya Sharma told, when asked about his views upon making use of the social media as an interesting platform for marketing, that they basically believes in the engagement with their audience. As a result of which all the campaigns made by them are all themed according to that view. It is not like that always the engagement with the customers are professional only. They also keep the things in an easy way by adding games and contest that will help to pass their brand’s message in a more casual way (Van Dijck, 2013). . It has been seen that the image of the brand and also the immediate feedback has been seen positive from the aspect of the audience. He also told that there are certain norms and regulations that has been framed by IRDA, which acts as the governing body of all insurance companies, and they also ensures that they are adhered to the norms given by them through their communications (Payne & Frow, 2013)..
According to him, the top 3 ways through which each and every insurance companies can approach to the social media are:
- Use of applications in a more innovative way in order to create games that gives information along with fun.
- Use of content that are relevant to the topic in a more elaborate formats like that of in slideshares, short videos, and So that it makes more detailed articles for the readers who are really serious.
- To keep the communication in a two-way direction by giving invitations to the audiences in order to share their experience and views with them ( Albarran, 2016).
Return on investments (ROI), according to the Allianz group, mainly measured by various ways. They are basically said to be as the number of audience, levels of engagement, building of the brand evangelists, and also business leads. And they are able to very much able to achieve them through their current social media strategies (Dunning, 2015).
According to Mr. Aditya Sharma, Social media is the basic focus of their company. They already had active participation and support from his fellow employees and also from their management sectors. Not only that their attitude towards this issue is very pro-social, as they regularly look for new ways that can be linked through social media. It can be blogs, websites or also through email signatures.
Various departments of Allianz also uses social media within their company in order to communicate with their potential and current customers both, with their new launched services, value added products and also through their launches of new products (Greve et al., 2013)..
The campaigns by Allianz, seldom has a very strong social message that the company wants to raise awareness upon. Recently they had created a short video, which deals with the road safety. For this occasion they had showed the world what is the result of unsafe driving. The whole video, turned out to be in great popularity, within a very short span of time. This shows the kind of response the latest digital video campaign has on the viewers(Yin et al., 2012).
Nowadays, social media has evolved into such a place that a customer easily carries on a real voice with the brand. Nowadays, brands have started to realize the power of the social media. And they have learnt to channelize, in order to create a powerful brand that mainly advocates from their social media groups(.Sroka & Hittmár, 2013).
A few years back, the brand, had concentrated on using their visual media messaging on a social level. But, nowadays the total scenario is very different. Each brand has their individual and complementary strategies for social and traditional media. This proves that though the brand’s basic message remains the same across all the mediums but their major difference lies to its presentation to the social audience (Pagani, 2013). It can be in a more dialogue oriented as well as in a more personalized manner.
In initial days, it was only the number of people on a certain page in the social media matters. But with the flow of time and the type of people associated it has been focused on the engagement and the interaction as well as reach. In a more specific way it can be said that, brands are nowadays stepping into the advantages of the individual that has been promoted through various social grounds. It also creates an individual identity and communities for them and for their customers (Albers et al., 2013).
References
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