Seamus Company Ltd Social Media Marketing

The problem facing Seamus Company ltd is how to maximize on the profits. This happens as a result of two things namely minimizing on the costs of production, logistics and sales and at the same time maximizing on the sales. The sales can be maximized by engaging many customers and enticing them into buying the products of Seamus Company ltd. The solution our company recommends to Seamus is the use of e-commerce and more specifically social media to do marketing since this method requires very little costs to help the information reach to the customers and at the same time increasing the sales massively.  The social media platforms picked for the creation of business website are facebook, twitter and linked in because of the huge number of followers they have. This proposed solution helps the customer by making important information reach him or her therefore making informed decisions when buying goods and services. The main objective of the project is to help Seamus Company with a workable and result oriented solution that takes a very short time to yield results. The funding of the project is expected to be from Seamus Company and is estimated to be at $5,520 for three days for the three social media websites. Our expertise as a company is all about creation of business websites and this is an area where we have excelled a lot and we have offered the same for approximately5 years now.

Brief project overview

The problems

Seamus Company has the feeling that it has not optimized on the minimization of costs in marketing and sales of its products.  Another one is that the SC has not realized its sales fully despite doing well in certain sectors. How can the company target many more people in its adverts and sales?

Solution

The solution to this problem can be the use of technological advancement in sales and marketing.   The best is involving the use of social media apps in advertisements. There are so many social media platforms that the youths use particularly those in middle and high schools to do many things like communicating with friends, chatting with peers, obtaining relevant information for their lives and to get credible news from all over the world.  In the contemporary world, social media is not only used by the youth even though they form the majority of the users but even elderly people who can be teachers or even parents of these teens that the company is targeting.

Why social media and why now

Technology that is employed is a tool called internet. Social media makes it easy for one to pass information to a multitude of people in no time.  Some of the platforms are you tube, google plus, Facebook, twitter among others. In marketing, social media has a capacity to play a very big role. It gives the user freedom and might in terms of getting in touch with the targeted individuals. The targeted individuals could be colleagues at work, business associates, friends, relatives, customers, clients etc. There are also other benefits that are associated with these social media platforms. Examples are immediate response and the communication can be two ways where you chat with one another comfortably.

Publicity and advertising entail passing of pertinent information about goods, products or services to the potential or prospective customers in order to inform them about key features of your product and persuading them that your offer is the best and therefore they should give it a try. One very key matter that those in marketing should ask of themselves is what way can social media marketing be conducted in order to make the most out of it.

Social media is able to inform the people on everything about you. Be it your brand, what you stand for and even your goals. It can make some customers to identify themselves with you. It can also facilitate the marketing of some goods and services a company offers. For instance, one can create a business account on twitter with a logo that is seen by many people and in the process they get informed about your company and your products or services.

Because of the ability of social media to provide room for chatting, reply and interaction, the customers can ask questions and express their doubts if at all there are, and makes the companies using social media for advertisement and marketing to be in a pole position to convince customers to buy their products and seek their services.

It is true that there are so many anecdotes that are about social media making so many people to be successful in the quests.  Some of these could be looking for a job, marketing and advertisement etc. Social media offers a platform for communication between the customers and the manufacturers.

Social media can be used to create a formidable relationship between the company and its customers. This makes the customers to buy your goods without having a second thought.  It is important to recognize that social media has a variety of people and each group have got their identity and hence businessmen should take advantage of these different groups. Honestly speaking anybody in the business and more specifically the marketing sector that does not engage the use of social media in its operation loses a lot in the contemporary world. This essentially means that the company that uses social media for marketing is several steps ahead of that which does not use even with all the other factors remaining constant.

Social media creates a platform for interaction between the customer and the seller. Chatting with people, getting to go through the comments and tweets makes you understand what they want you to do and this ultimately helps you to formulate plans and strategies for meeting their wants, becoming relevant in the market and becoming successful. You therefore need to ensure that you are interacting either in the form of chatting, tweeting or going through the posts by the customers. Social media makes information to reach your targeted group in time. They only need to log in and the news will be all over. The customers can also reach the company in time and this leads to promptness.

 It is advisable to the marketing sections that they understand the best way of using the social media platforms in order that they get the best out of them. The company marketing team must show high level of innovation and creativeness. You get to come up with unique brands, colors, pictures that are very attractive to your targeted customers. Your method of passing information should yield results. The method should be able to make customers feel addicted to your sites to the extent that they miss them in the event for any reason they take long without visiting your marketing sites.

You need to distinguish and isolate your staunch, faithful and dependable customers, those who can be your customers whether potential or not. Then you refer them to your page where they can access information about all that you offer. From there most of their problems and queries will certainly be solved and answered. One more good thing with social media is that managing it is pocket friendly and it makes stronger the image and authority of your business in the digital generation and by extension digital world.

A company should also engage their customers to help them market their products more. Every individual in social media has or has the potential to attract many friends that they can sell to the idea about your products and so you should use them as well. The other friends of your followers could be meeting your products for the first time and therefore the fame and popularity of your company and products keep on rising which is good for sales and the ultimate profits you get. Your followers can also persuade their friends into buying your products especially when you engage them.

 The world is fast going digital and social media is one of the components of the digital identity of the contemporary world. Businesses must get into social media and move with it. It enables the customers to be able to interact with the businesses freely in a way that both of them mutually benefit from these platforms.  A customer can even order the product he wants and is rightly delivered at his doorstep without much ado. The management can also get to know the desires of a customer without physically going to them to ask them.

 The competitors of most firms have already embraced social media and there is high likelihood that they are doing well as a result of the same. Therefore, it is an earnest appeal to those firms that are not using the same to jump into the boat of social media and sail with others together in the river of marketing and business Social media can enable you identify your potential and correct your weaknesses in advertising through the response given to you by your customers. The action is to strengthen your potential and eliminate the weaknesses.

 Right now people get into social media for different reasons a lot more frequently. A business entity can take advantage of this and provide people with information about their companies and businesses. Millions of people visit the sites in a second and that is why nobody can ever afford to ignore social media in marketing. In fact, transactions are done on line today and a company can go an extra mile to buy and sell goods on line and if possible using social media.

 Social media does not have a lot of bottlenecks that prevent people from accessing the sites. This gives a subtle freedom to the people to choose what they want to use it for. One can take advantage of this and you can bet that there are no levies charged for the usage.  We can keep on arguing that social media is a hot bed of marketing since it has so many people in it. Marketing is all about how many people you can reach out to and how best you can convince them and therefore the platforms are good for marketing and should be fully embraced.

 The business people cannot just ignore social media. All you need ids to know how to get in touch with your customers using a language they understand. It can be written or in picture or in video form. I think visiting social media to the marketing is not about getting on the pages in a few minutes and then logging out. The companies must plan to engage social media in the longest time possible or even 24 hours in seven days. If the company is able, then it should deploy somebody to oversee the use of social media where he records any data that he thinks is relevant, ensures that all queries are solved and customers are satisfied with the information they need.

According to Whiting and Williams (2013) when there is a positive and fruitful contact between a business and its customers through social media, there is high likelihood of good returns to those doing marketing. When social media is well managed, the mistakes and errors that could be there in the information is reduced and this is good. In a case where the number of recipients is infinite like social media, distorted information is amplified and therefore precaution must be taken to give precise and accurate information.

There are some rules that are in that are to be adhered to in the use of social media, ensure that all of them are followed and your company is responsible in all that it posts. This makes many customers to believe in what you offer. Otherwise when you are reckless not many people will believe in your products and consequently not purchasing. To me this is worse than not making your company and products be known in social media. It is important to do research on which social media platform will get you maximum sales. After finding out, you can use it to make your products be known

According to Kirtis and Karahan (2011), one of the effective ways of reducing costs by a firm is employing the use of social media in marketing. Any time a certain activity helps in reducing costs with sales remaining constant or increasing like social media, business people will tell you to gram the same with both hands. Social media is therefore a worthwhile try in business.

Our organization’s Background

 Our company is called Roy and Ken marketing Solutions.  It was established in 2013 by the two individuals Roy Bennet and Ken Mc Carthy who were the only two that worked for the same. In the span of five years it has been able to get five other full time employees and at times outsources for workers when there is a lot of work.  Our mission is to be a reliable marketing solution provider to the companies and the customers. The vision of the company is to be a leading organisation in e-commerce services. The company has been able to help several small scale and large scale businesses and firms to incorporate e-commerce in their marketing especially the use of social media platforms. Three most notable firms are Lizzy Fashions ltd, John furniture and solutions ltd and the west end mall and restaurant. Our clients after making use of our services have registered a remarkable improvement in sales while reducing significantly the cost of the same.

The three businesses that have implemented our proposal and have reaped big

  Lizzy fashion had been making sales of not more than $30,000 per month before engaging us in December 2015. After offering our services to her shop, she has never registered less than $100,000 monthly. For John furniture, their sales before August 2016 had not exceeded $15,000 per month. In August, 2017, we helped his business entity incorporate the use of social media. By December last year he had overwhelmingly many customers to the extent that he said he could not meet their demands as he was and therefore went for a loan of $200,000 in order to expand his business as new year of 2017 was being welcomed by the people of the world. He is now making a profit of not less than $70,000 a month. The west end mall and restaurant could sell goods up to the tune of $120,000 a week in December, the year 2015. They engaged our proposal to use social media which we created for them linked in, Facebook and twitter the same December.  Within the first three months of 2016, their sales had gone up to $500,000 per week.

The project goals and Target Audience

Goals.

1. Enhancing a busy traffic.

It is important that many individuals whether customers or not visit website for information. The website should be able to have all the relevant information that the customers may need about the products or services a firm offers. The pictures of the products must be put in a way that is appealing and very attractive to the eyes of the visitors. For the customers, the information must be able to help them make informed decisions on the products they want and their prices. Some people are not customers because either they don’t have the information about the products they need which you stock or the products are not enticing. The website should be able to solve all these problems. We also aim to create a website that is addictive to the visitors. In that they want to visit without stop. For us to achieve all these we put into consideration the characteristics of the population targeted, their interests and the gadgets they use to access this information.

2. Creating website that is interactive.

 This enables the customers to make inquiries about what they want. For example, instead of a customer to physically come to the company shops to inquire of a book that is not available consequently registering disappointments, he can do that from the comfort of his office or house and can even make payment and the book delivered to him using the e- commerce platform. The customers can even make suggestions on what improvements they would want the company to make in order for sales to be more effective.

3. Creating website that provides users with personalized encounter

You must recognize that every individual has got his or her own way of using and interacting with social media platforms.  It is therefore important that the website can make it easy for you to follow what the users have been doing. The most liked product and even sometimes when the popular product is missing from the stock, you can suggest to the customers a look alike so that they can consider the same. The website should be able to make it completely easy for the customers to use in order for them to have good and enjoyable time in it. This improves their connection to your website and hence a very good encounter.

4. Creating a website that can be accessed through mobile phone also.

Comparing tablets, personal computers and cell phones, it is arguably right to say that there are more cell phone users than computer users. Cell phones can also be used for a longer time without being recharged as compared to computers.  Mobile phones are also used everywhere i.e. in the bus, field, along the road etc. Something which is a little bit more difficult with the laptops. Therefore, for the website to reach out too many people, it must be cell phone supported and this has to be a priority.

5. Creating an all-round website.

The website should be able to provide the customers with almost every way that they need.  It should go beyond pictures. It should be able to provide information on products in video form, picture form, should enable writing and blogging. This has an advantage of making the company to be able to be able to see which tool is more popular with the users and even advertise more with it.  The website should also be flexible enough to allow changes be effected as the company monitors what format is loved by many users. This ultimately enables the company to narrow down to using the formats, styles and methods that are popular with the people.

6. Relationship with other websites.

The website should also allow for the partnership and association with other websites that may not necessarily be for advertisement. The other websites could be for sports, health, food etc. It is therefore upon the company to identify popular websites and partner with them by advertising its products in such hence reaching out to very many people. One secret in sales is making your product be known to many people. One cannot buy what he didn’t know existed unless he gets the information.

7.  Creating website that allows for evaluation and recording.

The website must be able to record the number of users that visited the site and the company must be able to assess this with respect to sales and hence make an informed and accurate decision on products sales.

Target audience

 The people targeted the most are the middle and high school students. That they get to buy the books that will help them in improving grammar. Most young people are on social media and they visit the sites regularly. However, the old are also targeted as well. Social media is increasingly taking the world by storm. Everyone wants to subscribe to it. I have witnessed so many people wanting to change their phones to social media enabled in order to be part of those that have signed up and start up their own account and finally be able to interact with others. The elderly in the society are key in so far as sales is concerned because some of them are teachers while others are parents that in one way or the other may need to know the books so that they can buy to their teens.

Scope of the work

    Creating web page on Facebook

The page has to be specifically used for business from links, updates, marketing new products, comments on the products, their qualities, prices and storage shop etc. The company can use its profile to create a business account where all the information regarding the product can be found. Steps involved in this process are outlined below:

Log in and then enter into the company’s face book account. From there, you have to create an account that is more specifically dealing with business. Let us name it Seamus Company Business page. After that select a group that fits the business whether it is a company, place, musician, writer, concert, hotel etc.

After that, you must be able to give all the pertinent information concerning the business. This relevant information includes the name of the company, physical and postal addresses which could include even the street where the business is located, and the page category that best describes your company. The company must also be able to give ways that customers can use to access and communicate with them like the facsimile, telephone and mobile phone numbers and email address.

The company must then upload some photo known as company profile photo. The photo should be one that gives a good image of the company. It needs to be appealing to the customers and if possible should be connected to the products and the beliefs of the company or whichever business entity it is. Picture is a powerful tool to many people. It is said that either it makes or breaks an individual, business or company. Therefore, the best should be uploaded in this section and must also be very clear.  The company must go for high resolution picture.           

The subsequent steps are done with the page already in use. The company must do invitation of people who should be encouraged to invite their friends to like the page. The target has to be infinite and if possible the increase should be exponential in the beginning.

There are other important business details that should be included in the business page in order to ensure that whoever visits it is completely informed about the basic and relevant information about the company and its dealings. For this to be made possible, Facebook page has a notification that asks if you would wish to improve the status of the page. In the additional information, there should be a short, clear and concise description of the company. The company should also use this to inform the customers of its time of operation. This includes the days of the week and the hours of the day so that whenever a customer wants to visit the premises for whatever reason, he or she knows when it is open.

The company must follow it by finding a username. This is what the people will use to find the company. For this reason, therefore it should be very easy and simple to help the customers and users to locate the page. Then add uniform resource locator to enable users to get straight to the page from Facebook hence saving time. The company must also develop customers group at this point to help the m to interact within themselves concerning the company and its product. From their genuine chat and discussions, the company can therefore tell whether their products and services are satisfying and loved by the customers.

There should be a button that is added to the Facebook page. It helps the users to do their businesses very fast while at the same time able to view the page. Some of these activities are ordering of goods, communication on the page either through phone or even message. The company should be able to provide its users with the videos that give more details about the company. Videos enable even intricate parts of the products to be viewed by the users well.

 At this point, the Facebook page is ready for use and can help in the interaction between the customers and the company. The Facebook page at this point should be able to help the company to improve on its products and services according to the description of the customers.

 After the successful creation of the face book page, it is at the discretion of the company though advisable to engage more with the customers about the products and services.  Let the engagements be more of interactive than one directional and then the use of the page will be very fruitful to the company and also of great help to the customers.

 Creating a business twitter account

The steps below are written in order during the process of opening a business twitter account.

Creating a general twitter account has to be the first thing. This is known as signing up the account   and from there the company can just log in any time they want to transact their businesses on twitter. The company must then create a business twitter account. The emphasis must be put on the profile which communicates to millions of people about the ideals of the company. The profile must give an accurate information and must be able to appeal to these people so that you get many customers. It is real business not fun. We help identify a unique name that is given to the company on twitter and the password for security that no one else can use the account. Twitter asks for other details like cell phone number to allow for confirmatory evidence that you are the rightful owner of the account in case of anything. Then a profile photo is chosen of the company that fits the purpose of marketing.  It must be striking and appealing and representing the target of the company. It is good to remember that it will appear at any point where you have tweeted and so it is in itself a marketing tool.

The details of the company is the neat one. You use this part to make the users know you more. By that I mean the nature of the company and the products. There should be a short description of the company that enables the users to have a good picture of what is going on in the company and what can be offered to them  b y the same company.

 The bio part must be done with precision. It is the one that enables the company to tell the world why they should buy its products but not those of their competitors, and why the users should interact with your account more often  than not. It gives information on very key features and plans of your company. These are the time that the company will be operating i.e how many hours a day and which days specifically your shops will be open.

Create a link that is distinctive ti enable you as a company to follow the activities of  the users of the link using your twitter account. After that the account profile must be editted in accodance with the requirements of both the company and business. You can as well alter the twitter handle to conform with the brand of the company and the business. This point must be done with considerable  pre-caution.. It contributes a lot to the  message that you relay to your users and what ideals you are identified with. You have to show consistency with the message, that at all time the key thing is the brand of the company. This point must be able to inform the customers now and in futurew of the relevant information on products that they need to know.

 At this point, it is clear thst the company has a fully functional twitter account that can be used to engage, inform and interact with customers on twitter at present and in future. With all these in mind, the business twitter page should help the company record significant increase in sales.

Creating an account on linked in

For a start, one has to create the linked in page for his business or company. For this to be successful, one is required to have an authentic email address. From the linked in account, you can now go ahead to create the business account on linked in.

 In the company linked in account, the company’s logo has to be inserted and also a cover page. Any time the members of the linked in do a search for your company, it is this logo that will appear. This logo also appears in all the profiles of the workers in the company. It is therefore very important because these workers have got several friends that they connect with in the link in and hence can help market the company a great deal.

 The company’s characteristics and identity is added.  This is where the company’s products and services are marketed an again this part is used to convince the linked in users why you offer the best in the line of your products.

Then, we create easy links for the company in the linked in in order to invite and make more followers develop interest.  We can connect linked in account to other platforms like Facebook, emails, magazines, journals among others to reach many people and create a highly networked link. This promotes sales a great deal bearing in mind that, which is about how many people you reach out to and to what extent do you convince and entice them into using your products.

 Developing button on the company page in the link in is what follows. This helps the visitors to easily follow the company’s link in. The link in should be very accommodative of the employees and so the platform must be able to cater for them as well. They are in a better position to add followers and to be the best product and brand ambassadors.

Most social media platforms follow the same procedure of opening an account as those of twitter and Facebook. However, linked in is a little bit different. It is worth noting that Facebook, twitter and linked in are the three top most platforms that are used in terms of following. Linked is the most relevant in terms of professional links and details in terms of work and business.

Timeline

The timeline is an approximation of the time that is to be spent in creation of the social media sites business page.

Week 1

To come up with appropriate program that will help solve problems facing Seamus Company

Week 2

Submit the first draft of the proposal to the programming officer at Seamis company

Week 3

Go through the proposal with the employees of our firm

Week 4

Develop an estimate of the budget to be used in the project and upload all pertinent and applicable documents  and again make them ready

Week 5

Editing the second draft of the proposal. Submit the second and the final draft of the proposal to the programming officer of the Seamus Company ltd inclusive of the estimated budget and the relevant documents.

Once the project begins, the time required to do the work will a day for each social media platform and therefore the work will take three days. Each day will have the following done for each social media website.

Time

Job Description

1 hour

Log in, username and password

2 hours

profile development

3 hours

Uploading of pertinent photos of the company.

 NB: The time is inclusive of the interview between our staff and the management especially about the information needed to create the social media marketing website and the task to be done.

Budget

Cost Element

Unit

Quantity

Unit cost($)

Cost($)

Direct labor

 Hours

6

200

1200

Equipment and materials

N/A

N/A

N/A

500

Transport

TRIP

2

20

40

Miscellaneous expenses

N/A

N/A

N/A

100

Total

1840

It is for one social media platform say facebook. Since they are three namely facebook, twitter and linked in, the total amount is $5,520.

Evaluation frame work

criteria

Expectation

Services offered

Creation of business websites on social media platforms

What should be expected as the output

The sales

What is considered a success

 Increase of sales by 100% within three months

Where to get the data

 The sales office

How the data will be used

To decide whether or not our firm did a good job

SC would be very much interested in building TV programming around grammar topics to make known their product and consequently increasing sales.

Conclusion

 The Seamus company should engage the use of e-commerce to do its business operators and they will be able to reduce massively the cost of operation and increase a lot the profit.

References

Kirtiş, A. K., & Karahan, F. (2011). To be or not to be in social media arena as the most cost-efficient marketing strategy after the global recession. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 24, 260-268.

Whiting, A., & Williams, D. (2013). Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16(4), 362-369.