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Starbucks: Mobile Order & Pay ------Social Media Brand Monitoring 2

I wrote my first post about the social media analysis of Starbucks two weeks ago. In this second post, I will focus on one campaign- Mobile Order & Pay, which Starbucks started two weeks ago. I will share my new findings and analysis with you to see how Starbucks implement their marketing strategies on social media.

Starbucks Mobile Order & Pay

Starbucks Web site landing page on Oct. 13: Mobile Order & Pay

This is the landing page on Starbucks web site on October 13. As I mentioned in my first post, Starbucks usually changes its landing page to coincide with a current promotion that they might be offering. The new landing page is about Mobile Order & Pay, a new way to order your coffee. From the web site, I know that the Mobile Order & Pay is a new feature on the Starbucks mobile app, which allows customers to place an order remotely and then pick it up at their chosen Starbucks location.

Actually, this is not the first time to introduce this feature for Starbucks. When I searched on Google, I found this mobile ordering app was tested for the first time in Portland, Oregon, last December, and expanded across the Pacific Northwest in March and then reached about 4,000 stores in June of this year. On September 22, Starbucks rolled out the ordering app in more than 7,400 company-owned stores across the nation.

Social media overview

Let’s overview social media platforms in recent 30 days and see how Starbucks let groundswell accept and use this new app feature.

Facebook

Starbucks Facebook feeds on Oct. 13 and Sep. 22

Starbucks Facebook posted two feeds about Mobile Order & Pay on September 22 and October 13, the same time when the company web site launched the same news on landing page. These two feeds received about 20k likes and 2k shares.

I went through part of the comments, and found that most comments were positive, and some were neutral, just giving improving suggestions.

Of course not all comments are good news. A few of them were negative, such as complaining bad experience of using the new app. Starbucks replied every comment as they did before. Different from replying positive comments, Starbucks replied negative comments very carefully, and even gave the replier’s name and other contact information. This was really considerate and let the complainer feel more comfortable.

Twitter

Starbucks Twitter feeds on Oct. 13 and Sep. 22

Starbucks Twitterposted the same message on the days, September 22 and October 13, and received more than one thousand likes and hundreds of Retweets. The response of followers was kind of the same as Facebook. Most of the comments were positive. 
From the response on Twitter and Facebook, I can see that the new Mobile Order & Pay is accepted by majority of Starbucks target customers. And lots of customers are happy to share their experience on social media, and even give good suggestions to help Starbucks improve the app and service.

Instagram & Pinterest

Starbucks Instagram account did not post pictures about Mobile Order & Pay. However, when I searched #mobileorderandpay, I found 649 posts, which came from consumers or employees. The same thing happened on Pinterest.

In addition to these social media platforms on above, Starbucks also released the relative news on Google plus, You Tube and Linkedin.

This is the video on You Tube showing you how to place an order and pay ahead on the Starbucks® app for iPhone® or Android™.

Target Customers Analysis

Who use this Mobile Order & Pay? Yong people, such as the person who likes use smart phone app, or who is keen to try new things; Busy people, for example, busy, harried parents of young children can get in and out of the store more easily. Impatient person, who hates long waiting line; Or even speech and hearing-impaired customers, just clicking on the screen without any communication with others.  

Current Metrics Analysis

From the Google Trends in the past 12 months, we can see the interest in Starbucks Mobile Order in U.S. increased slowly in March, and the curve became sharp after September. I think this is because Starbucks rolled out the app nationwide in September and more and more people are talking about it.

Judging from the data on the Social Mention above, we can see that the strength increased week after week, and the reach range became bigger from 40% to 49% in two weeks, and the time avg. per mention became shorter. This proves that more and more people are talking about Mobile Order & Pay on social media.

In addition, I used Ice Rocket to analyze their blog citations. Just like the graph showed above, I notice that the highest peak of public interest is on September 22. On that day Starbucks rolled out Mobile Order & Pay nationwide, and a lot of news web sites reported this.

In a word, the campaign of Mobile Order & Pay goes well so far. However, Starbucks is not the only coffee shop in the world, especially in new England district in U.S., another popular coffee shop-Dunkin’ Donuts is on the way.

Competitors

When Dunkin’ Donuts began selling lattés and other premium coffee drinks around a decade ago, it was viewed as a direct attack on Starbucks. Now Dunkin’ Donuts has 10,000 stores in 32 countries and sales of nearly $9 billion. Starbucks is even bigger —has $13 billion in sales and more than 20,000 stores on six continents. Both are global brands, but the US is still their stronghold. Let’s look at the map below.

Starbucks has 11,100 stores in the U.S. and Dunkin’ has 7,200 U.S. locations. From the map, we can see Starbucks has more stores than Dunkin’. We can also see that each company dominates the region where it was founded -- Starbucks on the West Coast and Dunkin’ in the Northeast. And both are expanding across the country, from opposite directions.

 From the Google trends, we can see people have more interest on Starbucks than Dunkin’. And from the IceRocket, Starbucks also has more blogs citation than Dunkin’.

Based on the current situation, it seems like Starbucks has more advantages than Dunkin’. However, the competition is not end. Dunkin’ plans to double their stores to 15,000 within the next few years. And more, Dunkin’ Donuts plans to debut mobile ordering technology in the next year. The war between the two coffee giants is just beginning, and would be intense in the next few years.

Conclusion

Starbucks represents a brand that has fully embraced social media. We can find many details that how they achieve the five objectives to engage in the groundswell: listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing.

Starbucks has built a huge social platform to listen and talk to their consumers, including company web site, and 6 additional social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Inatagram, Pinterest, G+, Youtube). They also built an online community My Starbucks Ideas, where customers can submit ideas for better products, improving the customer experience, and defining new community involvement. Many innovative ideas of Starbucks come from here. For example, the idea of Mobile Order & Pay is from the online community as early as three years ago.

Starbucks encourages customer engagement and conversation occurs as naturally as possible. Even though they’re a huge company, they still spend enough time to reply comments considerately and give customers individual attention, not just like a robust. This energizes customers and improves customers’ interaction. Then what the company should do is listening carefully, observing, supporting and embracing new ideas from what they learn. I think this is why Starbucks could continue to focus on growth and innovation. Anyway, whether you’re a fan of the Starbucks product line or not, their social media success is undeniable.

Empower your employees to be your brand advocates

In the first ten chapters of the book Groundswell, I learned how to connect with customers in the groundswell. But what about employees? In chapter 12, The Groundswell Inside Your Company, gave us the answer.

In corporations around the world, employees are connecting on internal social networks, collaborating on company wikis, and contributing to in-house idea exchanges. Some of these applications came from management and others began as skunk-works projects, but what they have in common is this: they tap into the power of the groundswell of ideas among the people who truly know your business-your employees. It's a little scary to put such power into the hands of your workers, but if you want to run faster and smarter, you should consider it.

(Li, Bernoff, 2011, p. 234)

As we know, brand image is one of a company’s top priorities, whether you run a local restaurant or a global company. This isn't something you can fake or build overnight. Having a positive brand image isn't about creating a recognizable logo or name; it's about reputation, and you can't build or strengthen it alone. You need to earn the respect and trust of your employees so they support and believe in your company and its mission. Once you've established that trust, you can empower your employees to become advocates and share your brand's story with their personal networks. So as the authors of Groundswell said, connecting with employees is as important as connecting customers.

From the BestBuy case in the book, Blue Shirt Nation was created to listen to what employees had to say. Allowing employees to make suggestions, pitch ideas, or give feedback gave them a sense of accomplishment and responsibility in the company. It helped employees feel empowered, connected, and more committed on a day-to-day basis. It also helped BestBuy accomplish groundswell’s five objectives: listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing.

Actually, many people are passionate about their company and want to talk about it, but they need to know the company supports and even encourages those efforts. So what should company do? Engaged employees. Empowered employees. They live your brand story everyday. They embody the story. If you give them the tools, guidelines, brand-safe content, and support them; they will present your brand story in a trusted, authentic way.

Coffee chain Starbucks is another company dedicated to creating brand advocates out of employees. Starbucks is very care about employees and refers to their employees as “partners”. I believe that at least a part of Starbucks’ success is in how they treat their employees. Let’s watch this video to see what it's like to be a Starbucks partner.

 “We’ve up weighted our commitment in the training and development of our people because as brand ambassadors our partners must truly embrace the values of our company. We know that the longer we keep and develop our baristas, and the more they embrace our values the better our coffee and our service. ”

-----Brian Waring, Starbucks VP of Marketing

With employees being the most trusted sources for customers, it’s vital that your company’s employees are encouraged to participate in your brand. If you’re looking to cultivate loyalty and create brand ambassadors, why not start in your own backyard?

Starbucks: Expect More Than Coffee ------Social Media Monitoring 1

I am a big fan of Starbucks. I love the brewed coffee, special cups, other relevant products, and especially the comfort and relax environment in every store. However, I never thought why Starbucks is so successful to attract people gathering in the stores. This assignment pushed me to explore more about Starbucks’ marketing strategy.

1. INTRODUCTION

There are thousands of coffee shops in the world, but no one, like Starbucks, has been so successful. As we know, Starbucks is an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain. It is the largest coffeehouse company in the world. As of September 2015, Starbucks has 22,766 stores in 65 countries and territories, including 12,802 in the United States, 1,930 inChina, 1,409 in Canada, 1,121 in Japan and 825 in the United Kingdom. Today, Starbucks is no doubt a famous brand all over the world.

More about the history...

Though it is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, Starbucks is still a young company for 46 years, compared to other fast food giants (McDonald’s 60 years, KFC 85 years, and Dunkin' Donuts 65 years).

Starbucks began in 1971. Three students at the University of San Francisco were inspired to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment by coffee roasting entrepreneur Alfred Peet after he taught them his style of roasting beans. (Pendergrast, pp. 252–53) In the early time, Starbucks only sold roasted whole coffee in 1912 Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington. Until in 1987, Howard Schultz became the CEO of Starbucks, who rebranded Starbucks and quickly began to expand new markets and products. Between 1987 and 2007, Starbucks opened on average two new stores every day. Today, Starbucks has more than 22,000 retail stores all over the world, serving millions of customers with various products, more than coffee.

This video can guid us to see the company's history, concept and culture.

2. MARKETING STRATEGY

What makes Starbucks so special? Their success cannot live without the unique marketing strategy. According to the information on Starbucks official website, some of their best marketing strategies are outlined below.

•  Perfect Cup of Coffee – Starbucks places a huge emphasis on product quality.

•  Third Place – Starbucks focuses on creating a “third place” between home and work, a unique and relaxing “experience” and “atmosphere” for people.

•  Customer Satisfaction – Customer satisfaction is a very important issue with Starbucks.

•  Creating a Starbucks Community –The Starbucks creates a community around their brand.

•  Innovation – Starbucks thinks up creative and innovative ideas to add to their products or services.

•  Brand Marketing – Starbucks always focuses on “word-of-mouth” advertising and letting the high quality products and services speak for themselves.

Target market:

•    Starbucks opens stores in main big cities.

•    Target consumers: 18-45 year olds; youngsters who want to gather with their friends; Office workers and students who need to catch up with their work; Those who feel that drinking coffee is “cool”; People who are adventurous, willing to try new things.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA OVERVIEW

I was shocked when I look at the social media of Starbucks. It is crushing social media! Let’s look at these numbers:

•   35.94 million Facebook likes

•   10.2 million Twitter followers

•   6 million Instagram followers

•   216.3K Pinterest followers

•   83K YouTube subscribers

•   4.21 million Google+ followers

•   6.14 million Linkedin followers

Amazing job! Those numbers are staggering but well-earned. How do they do it? Let’s take a look.

a. Website

Starbucks website

Starbucks has a rather strong web presence, utilizing many different platforms in order to reach their consumers and provide information in various ways. On it’s main website, Starbucks continually changes the landing page to coincide with a current promotion that they might be offering. In fact, right now the landing page is about the campaign “One treefor Every Bag”.

Starbucks shop online web page

Besides, from the main Starbucks website, consumers can choose “Shop” which directs them to the online store.

b. Facebook

Interestingly, the Starbucks doesn’t post Facebook updates all that often. When they do, however, they’re usually eye-catching. The posts strike a good balance between fun contests, helpful tips for the java-loving crowd, and subtle sales messages to its customers. The recent post was released on October 9. As of Oct. 12, 229,885 people like this, 3162 people share this.

Incredibly, Starbucks replied every comment including positive and negative.

c. Twitter

Starbucks doesn’t update Twitter all the time, but they do post unique content. Checking out Starbucks’ Twitter page, it’s visible that most of the tweets are directed at users. They use Twitter as a service to reach out to customers talking about their in-store or product experiences.

For example, one follower named Sophie tweeted her disappointment with the coffee shop after she got a cup with the name “Sue”. Starbucks replied, “‪@Sophs_Ritchie‪ Sorry about that, Sophie! ”

In fact, many of their tweets start with “sorry about that!” or “sorry to hear!,” offering dismayed customers solutions to their problems. Instead of losing disgruntled customers, Starbucks directly responds, solving the issues and making sure that customers are, in the end, satisfied! Because people want their voices to be heard.

d. Pinterest and Instagram

Starbucks really shines on visually-oriented social sites like Pinterest and Instagram, where they can post appealing photos to attract eyeballs.

The company maintains 20 Pinboards featuring coffee recipes, tea recipes, Starbucks reserve, flavored coffee creations, pumpkin spice latte, Frappuccino, food, Starbucks cup art, store design .... The boards are full of fantastic images that are almost entirely sourced from third-party sites. I think this is an important part creating a successful Pinterest strategy.

Instagram is an assortment of cool images related to the coffee culture. Same as Pinterest, Starbucks’ Instagram also lets its followers primarily control the content. The vast majority of the images on Starbucks’ account are fan-submitted images from locations around the globe. Starbucks encourage followers to post their own Starbucks photos, along with a campaign-focused hashtag to connect the visual content back to the brand.

e. Others: YouTube, Google+, Linkedin

YouTube

There are 265 videos on Starbucks YouTube Channel. The videos are classified in different contents, such as Starbucks partners, Starbucks jobs, spots, giving back, Frappuccino, tea, coffee Q&A, music … Over 83k people subscribe to Starbucks YouTube Channel.

Google+

On Starbucks Google+ pages, Starbucks have more than four million followers. All of the posts content is taken from Starbucks’ Facebook page and Twitter feed, though there’s nothing drastically wrong with this tactic.

Linkedin

Starbucks also have Linkedin. We can see lots of information about the company, culture and job posted. There are more than 6.14 million followers. Some are employees, and some are those who are just interested in the jobs or company.

Whatever social media platforms Starbucks use, the messages they posted are positive, creative, funny, personalized. And the tone is widely from funny to heartwarming to quirky to artsy, but always reflects their brand personality. What mostly impressed me is the high frequency of interaction between the company and followers. On Facebook, Starbucks replied every comment! On Twitter, they also have lots of interaction to followers.

4. CURRENT METRICS

a. Social Mention

Judging from the data on the Social Mention anytime, it is good to see the strength (the likelihood that the brand is being discussed in social media) is 66%, which indicates most people are talking about Starbucks on the social media. And the sentiment (the ratio of positive to negative) is positive and neutral, and the reach (a measure of the range of influence) is 50%.

People can use many key words to find Starbucks, but the most common word is the name Starbucks. According to the listed sources, Starbucks appears in many different kinds of social media, the famous social media is Photobucket and Twitter. Moreover, this brand will be mentioned every 40 seconds in the Internet. That’s really a hot word.

b.  Google Trends

According to Google Trends, we can see that the interest of Starbucks is increasing gradually during the past ten years. The growth is very stable in a big picture.

 Starbucks is very popular in its homeland---United States. It is also popular in Singapore, Canada, Philippines and Hong Kong, because Starbucks stores are mainly located at big cities in developed districts.

c. Meltwater IceRocket

This graph from Ice Rocket shows the Daily Blogs Citation Trend of the term "Starbucks" in the last month. Clearly, the term Starbucks is a hot word, having averages 312.13 posts per day.

5.  CONCLUSION
Above all, I can see that Starbucks is not only a coffee company giant, but also a social media giant. Starbucks has a presence on most of the major social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Google Plus and Linkedin. In addition to these well-known social media, Starbucks has special marketing campaigns, its own online community – My Starbucks Idea, and even mobile applications. (I’m going to explore more about that in monitoring 2)  I can say that Starbucks has fully embraced the power that social media technologies have provided businesses.