Flowers By Jane: Marketing Strategy, Target Market, Social Media Engagement And Environmental Analysis

Current Marketing Strategy of Flowers by Jane

Flowers by Jane with its headquarters at Adelaide Street, Brisbane have over 26 years of years of being one of the most loved florists of Brisbane. Flowers by Jane have been working extremely hard to deliver stylish and a learning to provide the best quality and the freshest flowers available in the local area at the time of delivery purchase (Flowers by Jane, 2018).

The company does not aspire to make the day a memorable one for its customers, but they want to delivery long term brand loyalty for its customer to attain sustainability in the longer run. Flower By Jane claim that they are the best irrespective of the fact that the customer is local, interstate or overseas, Flowers by Jane is the best choice when delivering flowers in Brisbane. Flowers by Jane has its product offering for number of occasions such as New Baby, Sympathy, Birthday party, Anniversary, Corporate events, Weddings and other auspicious occasions (Flowers by Jane, 2018). Flowers by Jane extend its services by Premium arrangement for its customers and also extend chocolate offering in the form of Gift hampers.

The underlying purpose of the assignment here is to understand the current marketing strategy of Flowers by Jane and its target market, how the company uses social media as an interactive platform to create its brand awareness in the market and also to increase its sales and engage the customers.  It will also be seen within the purview of the report to analyse one environmental force impacting the industry. A new consumer engagement strategy will be created for the company using the social media platform along with the budget implications, control and implementation strategy will give comprehensiveness to the plan.

Current Marketing Strategy of Flowers by Jane

Marketing strategy is the long term and forward looking approach of the company towards the goal of business sustainability (Goi, 2009). Marketing strategy is the summation of the 4P’s of the marketing mix (Gordon, 2011).  Flowers by Jane Marketing strategy in accordance to the marketing mix goes as:

Element of Marketing Mix	Implication
Product	Flowers, Chocolates, hampers and gifts for all occasions
Price	The price range falls into three categories: Under $ 60 $60-$80 Over $ 80
Place	Brisbane
Promotion	Promotion through Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Yelp, Google Advert

The marketing strategy is focussed on social media promotions.

Profile of the Target Market

Target market can be understood as the potential group of people who are interested in the product offering of the company for buying their products (Heslop & Nadeau, 2010).

Market Segmentation

Market segmentation is breaking down the target market into segments to apply a more focussed marketing strategy for effective penetration of the company’s product offering (Menzly & Ozbas, 2010). In the case of Flowers by Jane, the market segmentation is as follows:

Profile of the Target Market

Individuals: These are the people who are looking forward to gift flower, chocolates, gift hamper to their friends, relatives, colleagues, family on special occasion or as a token of showing their love to them (Cleveland, Papadopoulos & Laroche, 2011). This group of people are not looking for a specific type of product; they just want to gift their loved ones.

Corporates: Corporates buy gift to show appreciation towards its employees or to mark a good gesture for its customers (Chernenko & Sunderam, 2011). Corporates drives most of the sales during the holiday season. The market can be further segmented into; banks, health care, real estate, apartments, resorts, event promotions and many more.

Demographics: This includes personal attributes such as age, gender, sex, marital status, ethnicity, education or occupation (Finisterra do Paco & Raposo, 2010). The demographics for Flowers by Jane encompass people falling in the age group of 16-55, both Male and female, working class and educated. 

Geographic-This includes breaking the market in terms of the country, region, state, city or the neighbourhood (Hanafizadeh & Mirzazadeh, 2011). Geographic for Flowers by Jane include the area in and around Brisbane.

Psychographic-This includes attributes such as Personality, risk aversion, values or lifestyle (Alexandris & Tsiotsou, 2012). Target group of Flowers by Jane has ambitious, success oriented; achiever as their personality and their lifestyle is above middle class. These people have good purchasing power which helps them in buying the products.

Behavioural- This implies how people use the product, their loyalty and the benefits they are seeking for in the product (Rettie, Burchell & Riley, 2012). For Flowers by Jane, people are buying product to gift to their closes and loved ones, they are have moderate to high level of loyalty and they are looking to delight their loved ones by the product.

Competitor Analysis

This is extension of the marketing strategy encompassing the competitors; this involves identifying and evaluating the strategies of the competitors to assess their strength and weakness relative to one’s own company (Upson, Ketchen, Connelly & Ranft, 2012). There are many competitors of Flowers by Jane due to the high demands of the population; however the two major competitors of the company are Easy flowers and Petal florist network which pose a strong challenge to the market dominance of the company.

Parameters	Easy Flowers	Petals florist network
Presence on Social Media	Facebook, Google	Facebook, Pinterest, Yelp, Google, Instagram, Twitter
Brand Awareness	Generates through the use of Limited social media usage	High awareness driven through all the social media channels of marketing
Objectives	Promoting the new product offering and customer reviews to increase sales	The strategy is to push the sales of differentiated products on the social media page to increase the brand awareness and engage with its customers.
Engagement Strategy	Post on Facebook and reviews on Google	Sharing of posts on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest
Followers and fan Base	5786 people like the page and 5619 People follow the page.	15676 people like the page and 15139 people follow the social media page

Thus, it can be seen that Petals florist have a good social media presence, the number of posts, social listening and number of people following the page are the reflection of the same. Moreover, Petal florist shares more post on social media in comparison to easy flowers giving more content for consumers to consume and engage with, shows the dominance of the player in terms of its engagement strategy.

Market Segmentation

Environmental Analysis

PESTLE framework is one of the elementary models of environmental analysis which uses the factors such as Political, economic, environmental, technological, environmental and legal to assess the environment of any industry (Yuksel, 2012).

Within the purview of Flowers by Jane Company, technological factor plays a very important role in helping the company to leverage the technological advancement for optimum utilization.

Technological Factors

The world has a population of over 7 billion and the penetration of Internet and social media is more than 54%, which implies almost 3.8 billion people have easy option to consume and shop over the internet. Social media in the present day has a very important role to play in helping the company to become a brand, increasing the brand awareness, engaging and retaining the customers and also educate them. In the last couple of years, platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram has opened up plethora of avenues for the company to increase the brand awareness and influence people to buy the products online or Offline (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).

The companies are taking advantage of it to get more customer footfall and increase their sales. Over the last couple of year Snapchat has become the first choice of the millennial (18-35 Years), thus it makes very important for the brand to take leverage of the said social media platform. The company has a good way to interact and increase the engagement on Snapchat and target the growing population of millennial. These people are always on the go and consume information on their tablets or mobile devices, thus it makes much sense for Flowers by Jane to take leverage of the growing social media and use different engagement strategy to target its customers.

Customer Engagement Strategy

The global digital snapshot in the above picture reflect the growing importance to engage customers through the use of digital and social media platforms. As evident from the statistics, in a world with a population of 7.476 billion, the active internet user’s stands at 3.773 billion and the active social media users are 2.789 billion which shows a 37% penetration of social media.

Brisbane has a total population of 2.4 million out of which 67% people are active social media users. This shows how important it is to use Social media as a platform for engagement with consumers. Some of the strategies targeted towards engagement which Flowers by Jane can use are:

Competitor Analysis

Picking the right Platform

It is very easy for the advertisers to get consumed when there are plethora of platforms to engage with the customers, thus it becomes extremely important to identify the online behaviour of the customers, thus using the social media channel most appropriate to engage with the customers (Brodie, Ilic, Juric and Hollebeek, 2013). For example, Google Plus is a dying platform which does not have a strong numbers to show the content to, thus to invest in Google plus is waste of money.

On the contrary, platform like Facebook and Instagram which provides variety of options for selecting the target range of the audience, choosing demographic, physiographic and behavioural targeting helps the brand to narrow down its target group and push them highly relevant content (Fulgoni, 2015). Snapchat is another social media platform which is used by the present day youth to engage with the brand, Flowers by Jane has to ensure that they have a presence on Snapchat too, and it does not lose out on the growing opportunity provided by the platform. Hence the factors which have to be evaluated before picking the right platform are:

• Popularity of the social media
• Type of content to be used for Promotion
• Audience profiling
• Features of the platforms
• Options for targeting the customers
• Reach and engagement ratio

All these factors will help in identifying the factors used before picking the right platform. For example YouTube is good for video content, Flowers by Jane can use the platform to show the world how Flowers by Jane picks, screen, gift wraps and delivers product to its customers.

Building an Engagement Strategy

The right way to use a social media platform is to first evaluate the purpose of the engagement and what is the ultimate aim to drive the marketing efforts (Moreno-Munoz, Bellido-Outeirino, Siano & Gomez-Nieto, 2016). The company also has to understand what demographics engage with the type of content. For example a number of people prefer Visual content over text posts, thus Instagram to be used for those set of customers. Customer who needs to have more information can use Facebook as the tool for engagement strategy. You tube can be used when the company wants to shows how it selects its product range and delivers the product with the assured timely delivery. Thus, each product has its own advantages and limitations and makes much sense to first create the purpose of engagement, understand the demographics and the behaviour of people on the social media platform and engage them accordingly.

Supplementing the Social Media efforts

The success of the campaign on Social media depends entirely on the mileage the campaign receives and the effectiveness of the social media platform. It becomes really difficult to drive the engagement by the use of just one social media platform (Sashi, 2012). Thus, it is advisable to use a combination of social media platforms all at once and interlink the elements of the campaign to drive brand awareness as well to push the sales.

Environmental Analysis

For example a post on Facebook can show to the target group, the product offering of Flower by Jane, the product offering can be supported by the customer reviews praising the company wide range of selection. Another series of ad campaign on Youtube can show the process Flowers by Jane ensures in delivering the fresh quality flowers to the customers, and Instagram can be used to give an action to call button to the client to make the purchase. Thus, it is the collective efforts of all the social media channels giving mileage to the campaign resulting in brand awareness and driving sales for the company.

Development of a Community Management Strategy

In the present day context organization are focussing on building a community on Social media who become the positive brand advocates, engage with the offerings of the company and help in increasing sales (Marsh, Hamer, Pagnoni & Peterson, 2012). The community also helps in driving the brand awareness which is extremely healthy of the organization. Flower by Jane have to identify the social media platform where it has most active customers, in this case it is Facebook.  The company then have to monitor the behaviour of the people along with the useful information and discussion on the social media channels and also collect the feedback from the customers.

Next comes is the process of assessing the feedback of the customers and create a strategy to deliver relevant content to its target audience. Tailor the content to better suit the needs of the customers to drive a good engagement strategy by the brand. Engagement strategy can be driven by offering discount on the products, creating an online quiz for the customer and give them a chance to win gift hampers by Flowers by Jane, creating and circulate blogs on the company business process, practices and the ideation of its product selection.  Hence, there are millions of things one can do on social media to engage with the customers, the bottom line is to evaluate the right platform and the right engagement strategy for the customers to ensure business sustainability in the longer run.

Creating high engaging and value driven content

There are more than hundreds of company blindly promoting on Social media on their product offering in gifts to consumers and corporates. It becomes very difficult for customer to go through the content for all the companies because of the vast amount of data on the platforms (Seraj, 2012). Thus, the brand has to act extremely cogent in its engagement strategy with the customers. They have to create content which is not repeated, has certain value for the customers, the content is engaging, the content has all the elements of engagement and conversion and is visually spectacular. The content has to be so visually spectacular in appeal and enriching in value that customer not only engages, but also shares the post of the company thus helping in brand awareness as well aide in increasing the sales and spreading a positive word of mouth about the company.

Technological Factors

Marketing Budget for Social Media Campaign

The idea of the campaign here is to leverage the theme of Thanksgiving and promote the products to individual and corporate customers.  The theme is divided into the following:

• Showing the happiness flowers and gift can give to the loved ones in family.
• Showing the amount of gratitude the employer shows in the employee by thanking him by giving him/her flowers for their contribution to the organization.
• The campaign will go with the hashtag-#giftingflowersaredeliveringsmiles

The unified Hash tag will be circulated on all the social media platforms at the same time with push inducing and building desired to make a purchase for the customers.

The approximate budget for the marketing on Social media platform is as follows:

Platform	Cost
Facebook	50,000 AUD
Instagram	30,000 AUD
Snapchat	30,000 AUD
YouTube (Mask Head)	50,000 AUD
Google	10,000 AUD
Pinterest	5,000 AUD

All the above figures are approximate and based on the amount the company can invest in comparison to the sales it wants to drive in the holiday season. The company wants to increase the footfall by a factor of 5X on its store and wants to have a 7.5X increase in sales through the website.

Implementation and Control strategy

The implementation strategy for the above mentioned marketing plan is:

• Creating a small team of digital media specialist monitoring the posts, engagement, conversion and social listening on the platforms.
• Creation of engaging post and social media sentimental analysis.
• Analyse the data using the technique of big data analytics to identify the behaviour of the target audience and modulate the content accordingly.
• Review of the Marketing strategy on social media every quarter.

Control Strategy

• The control has to be seen by the management and reviewed periodically.
• Usage of metrics like; Cost per impression(CPM), Click through rate (CTR) and other metrics driving Return on Investment

Conclusion

Social media is a tool which has to be compulsorily used by the companies to increase the brand awareness and deploy engagement strategy to increase the sales of the company. Social media is growing at a rate unimagined and thus it is extremely important to leverage the platform for its best usage. Flower by Jane has a good social media presence but absence of a great engagement strategy makes it difficult for the company to focus on the desired objectives. Some of the recommendations which can help the company in driving a good engagement strategy through its advertising campaign are based on relevancy in content and usage of right media platform.

Flower by Jane digital team has to become extremely active on the social media platform and do effective social listening. Effective social listening will help in identifying and relating to the needs of the customers, which will help the company in customizing its product offering, thus building trust with customers.

The second recommendation for the company is to be reliable in its product delivery; this can also be shown by the company’s response within a specific timeframe and making customers realize that the company is there to help them when required.

Creation of strong relevant content targeted towards the target group will further help Flower by Jane is keeping a close tab on its cost as well as optimum utilization of the social media platforms. The company has to ensure that it offers value through discount coupon and other offers to further build trust and retain them with the company.

Customer Engagement Strategy

Flower by Jane has to use the info graphic study on the usage of Social media by the population of Brisbane to post the content on social media platforms. People are mostly active in the day, when they are travelling to work, in the evening when they are returning from work and then in the late evening when they are browsing social media for their entertainment. The company has to post relevant content when the users are most active, this will help the company in leveraging the platform at its fullest potential.

References

Alexandris, K., & Tsiotsou, R. H. (2012). Segmenting soccer spectators by attachment levels: a psychographic profile based on team self-expression and involvement. European Sport Management Quarterly, 12(1), 65-81. Doi: 10.1080/16184742.2011.637174

Brodie, R. J., Ilic, A., Juric, B., & Hollebeek, L. (2013). Consumer engagement in a virtual brand community: An exploratory analysis. Journal of Business Research, 66(1), 105-114. Doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.07.029

Chernenko, S., & Sunderam, A. (2011). The real consequences of market segmentation. The Review of Financial Studies, 25(7), 2041-2069. Doi: 10.1093/rfs/hhr143

Cleveland, M., Papadopoulos, N., & Laroche, M. (2011). Identity, demographics, and consumer behaviors: International market segmentation across product categories. International Marketing Review, 28(3), 244-266. Doi: 10.1108/02651331111132848

Finisterra do Paço, A. M., & Raposo, M. L. B. (2010). Green consumer market segmentation: empirical findings from Portugal. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 34(4), 429-436. Doi: 10.1111/j.1470-6431.2010.00869

Flowers by Jane. (2018). About Flowers by Jane. Retrieved from 

Fulgoni, G. M. (2015). How Brands Using Social Media Ignite Marketing and Drive Growth: Measurement of Paid Social Media Appears Solid But Are the Metrics for Organic Social Overstated?. Journal of Advertising Research, 55(3), 232-236. Doi: 10.2501/JAR-2015-004

Goi, C. L. (2009). A review of marketing mix: 4Ps or more?. International journal of marketing studies, 1(1), 2. Doi

Gordon, R. (2012). Re-thinking and re-tooling the social marketing mix. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 20(2), 122-126. Doi: 10.1016/j.ausmj.2011.10.005

Hanafizadeh, P., & Mirzazadeh, M. (2011). Visualizing market segmentation using self-organizing maps and Fuzzy Delphi method–ADSL market of a telecommunication company. Expert Systems with Applications, 38(1), 198-205. Doi: 10.1016/j.eswa.2010.06.045

Heslop, L. A., & Nadeau, J. (2010). Branding MBA programs: The use of target market desired outcomes for effective brand positioning. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 20(1), 85-117. Doi: 10.1080/08841241003788110

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business horizons, 53(1), 59-68. Doi: 10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003

Marsh, D. R., Hamer, D. H., Pagnoni, F., & Peterson, S. (2012). Introduction to a special supplement: evidence for the implementation, effects, and impact of the integrated community case management strategy to treat childhood infection. The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 87(5), 2-5. Doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.2012.12-0504

Menzly, L., & Ozbas, O. (2010). Market segmentation and cross?predictability of returns. The Journal of Finance, 65(4), 1555-1580. Doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2010.01578

Moreno-Munoz, A., Bellido-Outeirino, F. J., Siano, P., & Gomez-Nieto, M. A. (2016). Mobile social media for smart grids customer engagement: Emerging trends and challenges. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 53, 1611-1616. Doi: 10.1016/j.rser.2015.09.077

Rettie, R., Burchell, K., & Riley, D. (2012). Normalising green behaviours: A new approach to sustainability marketing. Journal of Marketing Management, 28(3-4), 420-444. Doi: 10.1080/0267257X.2012.658840

Sashi, C. M. (2012). Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media. Management decision, 50(2), 253-272. Doi: 10.1108/002517412112

Seraj, M. (2012). We create, we connect, we respect, therefore we are: intellectual, social, and cultural value in online communities. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(4), 209-222. Doi: 10.1016/j.intmar.2012.03.002

Upson, J. W., Ketchen Jr, D. J., Connelly, B. L., & Ranft, A. L. (2012). Competitor analysis and foothold moves. Academy of Management Journal, 55(1), 93-110. Doi: 10.5465/amj.2008.0330

Yuksel, ?. (2012). Developing a multi-criteria decision making model for PESTEL analysis. International Journal of Business and Management, 7(24), 52. Doi: 10.5539/ijbm.v7n24p52