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12/6/2015

300 East River N., Seattle, WA 98102 |By MaryAlice Yahyavi

Le Mac Macarons Social Media Marketing Plan Com Strat 563

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Table of Contents for Le Mac Social Media Marketing Plan

Executive summary 3 Brief Overview 4 Social Media Presence 5

Competitive Analysis 5 S.W.O.T Analysis 6

Goals 7 Strategies 7 Target Market 8 Tools and Implementation 9 Monitoring and Tracking 12 Measuring and Tuning 12 Budget 13 Return on Investment 13

Logos Appendix A 14

Survey Results Appendix B 15

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Executive Summary

Le Mac is a French macaron brand that people can buy at any time of day from our vending machines. Our main process for marketing is to used social media. The goal is to use the social web as a way to promote and develop Le Mac brand and to attract and gain a customer base. We will be using multiple social media sites (Twitter and Facebook), and conducting a market analysis to develop strong presence in the market.

Social Media goals for Le Mac macarons:

Strengthening the brand and gaining a social media following from our target demographic.

Providing great customer service though social media and developing a good reputation and trust in our local and online communities.

Search Engine Optimization to increase social media traffic and Le Mac brand conversations.

To have the Le Mac products trend on social media.

To help achieve these goals we will use social media strategies by listening, interacting, engaging, connecting, supporting, and enticing our target demographic via the social web. Le Mac's social media plan evaluates and measure the progress of our efforts. We have designed a budget for our social media marketing plan that shows where a majority of our funds will be spent.

Brief Overview

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The macaron cookies have been around since the Renaissance era and were made for special occasions, fairs, and holy celebrations. Today thousands of people travel to Paris, France in pursuit of the luxury of trying a macaron. Only in the last few years has the delicate sought after cookie made its debut in American bakeries. The price range per cookie is $.99- $2.50 and the basic traditional flavors are chocolate, pistachio, vanilla, strawberry, lemon, caramel, and raspberry.

There is a growing demand for these sweets and a few macaron bakeries have opened locally and online. All age ranges and genders are drawn to this small, delicate, and delicious cookies. They are sought after for a snack, dessert, event decor, and are great gifts. This product has a high visual appeal and with social media marketing we can find great ways to promote it and even get our customers to start promoting and interacting/ engaging in online marketing the product in their own ways. There is already a strong social media following for macarons. They are pretty and people like to display pictures of macarons on sites like Facebook and Twitter. I believe with the locations we have decided to place the Le Mac vending machines around multiple cities in the greater Seattle area. By doing this we are able to reach all of our target markets and demographics which will sell a large amount of inventory daily.

Social Media Presence

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Le Mac currently has two social media sites. The social media pages are new and we are starting to get noticed on both Twitter and Facebook. I make sure to post communication twice a week on each site. I am active with staying engaged with Le Mac followers and interact with them daily to build a good rapport.

Metric Communication/ posts

First year reach goal

Company post Feedback Average Response time to feedback

Facebook 3 to 4 weekly 500- 1200 2 posts weekly 3 to 4 comments & 16+ likes daily

1 to 24 hours

Twitter 2 daily 500- 1200 2 posts weekly 2 @tweets & 2 retweets daily,

1 to 24 hours

Competitive Analysis

This SWOT Analysis helps to list out Le Macs strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. to monitor my competitors social media sites and documentation of what their strengths and weakness are.

S.W.O.T Analysis

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Strengths for the Le Mac Has a positive social media presence:

Facebook, Twitter. Low in cost. Good relationship with customers. Works with local Non-profit organization

and building a community presence. Working to be accessible to different cities

in the greater Seattle area. Offer a variety of seasonal flavors and

different boxing / packaging for special occasions.

Product is relatable to all genders and age ranges.

Le Mac vending machines are accessible 24/7.

Offers packaging for special events (quick gift).

Weakness for the Le Mac Low social media follower count. No face to face customer service, only via

phone, online or through social media. Customers may have a short wait time for

restock of vending machine macaron boxes (if sold out).

If vending machine is down for repairs customer may have to visit another location.

Le Mac Opportunities Le Mac offers some flavors that

competitors do not offer. Le Mac works with other local

organizations to give back and become a positive name in the community for brand recognition.

Le Mac does offer large special event client's orders and offers delivery option in the Seattle area.

Room to grow to other locations in the state of WA.

Little local macaron competition and no vending machine competition.

Le Mac Threats Low social media traffic. No face to face customer service offered. Competitors have stores to offer and

expand on their merchandise and products.

Goals

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Le Mac's social media goals are to expand their customer base and provide daily interaction with customers. Since Le Mac locations are vending machines, social media will be a strong tool to increase our brand awareness and communicating new macaron flavors, promotions, answering questions, updates, and general news to our customers. Right now Le Mac will be working through Facebook and Twitter to achieve the following.

Expanding and strengthening our brand to our target demographic. Sending out communication on our products, events, and promotions. Offering our customers a communication tool to reach out to us and

establish a strong relationship. To help increase traffic at Le Mac vending machines. Generating product word of mouth on social media and from our

customers. Working to generate first page Search Engine Optimization placement

on the web.

Strategies

Le Mac has a small team of employees working towards building a strong brand recognition via the social web. It is important to us that our employees are trained and set to a high standard of communicating with a positive, supportive and helpful voice.

Le Mac's social media strategies:

Listening: To our customers feedback on social media as well as the customer feedback of our competitors so we learn what they enjoy and like as well as what issues they might have with the product and or services.

Interacting: The Le Mac team will personally interact on Facebook and Twitter with customers and followers. We will work to promote our brand and products as well as some of our customers by sharing pictures of them with our product.

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Engaging: It is our hope to have our local customers spread the word about Le Mac vending machines and cookies. We will offer fun displays on the side of the vending machines that customers can take a picture in front of and encourage them to post the photo with our product to Facebook and or Twitter using trending hash tags.

Connecting: Through our Le Mac social media sites we will connect with our customers by doing a contests and or giveaways once a month for special gifts and opportunities. We hope this will create loyal social media followers that will return back to our social media pages regularly.

Supporting: Le Mac will be active in the local community by engaging, helping and supporting local non-profit organizations. This is another way to help build a strong brand image and future customer awareness of our product.

Enticing: Enticing customers with photos of delicious and yummy macaron cookies. Additionally, having other customers post photos of them enjoying macarons or their event displays with our macaron products.

Target Market

Le Mac has a diverse target demographic ranging in age from 10- 70 years old. The main gender that Le Mac would appeal to are females. Because we appeal to different ages and different types of individuals a few characteristics I would use to describe our target market would be: adventurous, enjoys little luxuries, curious, fun and creative.

According to the research I pulled off of Google on social media users, I believe a majority of our active social media customers will be females between the age range of 13- 40 years of age. Stats show that adults ages 18-29, 89% of them use social media, ages 30-49, 82% of them use social media, ages 50-64, 65% of them use social media, and for ages 65+, 49% of them use social media. In addition to the demographic statistics it was interesting to find out a majority of Twitter users have a college education and are under the age of 50 and male and that men and women alike are

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both high users of Facebook. It seemed that Facebook was mainly looked at as a tool to help people to connect with friends and family members in the past but now is used more and more for people to share stories, experiences, special events information, and special promotions/ offerings with their friends.

User Personas

1. Teenage Female 14-19 yrs. old, Likes affordable, delicious, appealing pretty sweets, uses Twitter, Facebook, and Snap Chat for social media tools daily (expert level of internet user). Wants to trend on social media so needs to have her likes appeal to others for validation.

2. General office worker both genders, 23-65 yrs. old. Needs an affordable nice treat or gift for co-worker or family member without having to drive to the mall or spend too much time shopping. Uses Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and Instagram for social media (mid to expert level of internet user).

3. Everyday shopper 10-70 yrs. old. Looking for a fun delicious snack or the perfect gift for any occasion. May use Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Yelp, Instagram, Snap Chat, 4 square, etc... (mid to expert level of internet user).

Tools and Implementation

Le Mac will be a small company with an employee headcount between 3 to 5 people, the owner will post a majority of the social media marketing. From the demographic of our target audience I believe Facebook, Twitter, and our Le Mac website would be good social media tools that have a high user count. Eventually we will create profiles on Instagram and Youtube once we have a solid following from Facebook and Twitter.

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Facebook and Twitter implementation plan:

Create and set up profile pages that reflect our Le Mac brand and voice on Facebook and Twitter.

Post fun relevant pictures on Facebook and Twitter. Update page content and post at least two to 3 times a week on

Facebook and twice a day on Twitter. Share re-tweets and reposts of customer and or followers photos that our audience would like and find interesting.

Have a link to the Le Mac website on Facebook and share company content similar to what is on the website.

Get followers involved in discussions by asking questions or by posting voting polls for new seasonal flavors on the Le Mac Twitter page.

Share customer's Le Mac Stories and pictures on both social media sites. This will help with establishing a connection with our followers.

Promote photos with #LeMac #LeMacMacarons to build brand awareness on both social media sites.

Share product updates and information on both social media sites. This will help spark feedback conversations.

Share light hearted and funny posts from other sites and followers. Post a quarterly contest to keep followers active and have them share

the post in order to gain new followers that want to partake in the contest as well.

Post and share information on any local events that followers can find Le Mac Macarons participating at on both social media sites.

Le Mac Website:

The Le Mac website is our home base of our customer. All of our company information is shared on this site and it is a great tool for customers to view and learn more about our product and locations. The Le Mac website will have links on the home page to all our social media sites.

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By following the social media implementation plan I will know more about my audience. I will be able to learn what posts they interact on more, gather additional feedback, and I will see if they are sharing any Le Mac posts. I will also be able to learn more about my Facebook target audience as they have report tools to help share information on who is liking and viewing the page. Interaction is important to me so all the Le Mac staff will have access to reply or answer any questions on our site in a kind and friendly manner.

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Monitoring

Monitoring is a great way for the Le Mac team to see how our customers are receiving our product and social media marketing plan. It is also a great way to follow up on our competitors and how they are doing in the social media market. This will be done by "tracking" or creating a tracking plan which is done by researching content and relevant key words via the social web and search engines. We will have monthly reports on our tracking which will review web based metrics and stats.

A great tool to help us gather and monitor our social media followers actions is Facebook Insights. This tool will help us to gather additional demographic information (gender, age and location) on our followers as well as information about our posts and what type of communication our followers find interesting and react on to help us connect with our target audience. This is a tool that generates graphs for easy viewing of our social media posts statistics.

Another tool that we will use to help monitor the activity on our Le Mac website will be Google Analytics. This tool will help us analyze our visitor traffic share on our customers wants and needs via In-Page Analytics. This is a detailed reporting tool that really would tell us any and everything we would need to know like what devices people visit our sites, and how they interact with our content and marketing initiatives, it shows how many video view and mobile ad clicks we had. It is also shares what key words people use on their search engine searches.

Tuning

Tuning is an important step to help the Le Mac social media marketing plan maintain and grow in an effective positive way. The owner of Le Mac will monitor the social media sites and the marketing plan to help the brand stay

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relatable and relevant. It is our hope that with this continuous monitoring the outcome would be to have our customer base grow weekly, monthly and yearly.

Budget

Since Le Mac is a new company it is starting out on a novice budget for social media marketing. Below is a budget review for our first year in business that includes our soft costs, social media marketing, and technology investments. I included a the internal costs in the budget to show realistically how much money I would have to work with for social media marketing and marketing in general. All other areas of the business will be using a large part of the budget leaving minimal amount for the social media marketing which will require me to rely on tools that I can work with for free like Facebook and Twitter.

Novice Budget Internal Soft costs Staff to manage $65,818.00Research and Development $2,500.00Rent and Equipment $112,200.004 vending Machines and location

$55,300.00

Social Media extra fees Influencer/ blogger $1,500.00Online advertising/ website $2,900.00Technology Investments Monitoring tools $1,500.00Total $241,718.00

Return on Investment

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It is our hope to increase our online presence and website traffic in the first year of business. Currently, we do not know what the ROI will show for the end of this year since the company has just started up. Our goal is to increase our social media presence by 25% + from where we are currently. In order to grow and see what we can do to reach this goal we will monitor our quantitative and qualitative social media statistics and measures to help us stay competitive.

Appendix A

Logos

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Survey Results Appendix B

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