Brand: Founded in 1966, The North Face is a an American outdoor apparel and equipment company based in Alameda, California. The company sells a variety of products for the intrepid adventurer, including outerwear, backpacks, tents, and other camping gear. The North Face is an advocate for nature conservation and prides itself in inspiring “a global movement of exploration.” Brand sentiment: Using the social media monitoring tool Social Mention, we get insight on how well The North Face is received by its audience by analyzing what is being said about the company on various social media channels, blogs, comments, news reports, etc. in real-time. According to Social Mention, The North Face has a positive to negative sentiment ratio of 5:1 (this ratio was recorded as of 8:05pm on November 7, 2018). This means that by and large, The North Face is experiencing mostly favorable attitudes from its customers. However most of the brand sentiment is neutral, perhaps due to the fact that many of the posts that tag The North Face are photographers who are simply wearing or using the company’s gear. Sprinklr Business Index reports slightly different sentiment analysis results. As of 8:51pm on November 7, 2018, The North Face received 183 positive mentions on social media since October 31 and 54 negative mentions over the same time period. Social campaign initiative: As part of its mission to inspire audiences to explore the nature around them, The North Face began utilizing the hashtag, #neverstopexploring, which also serves as the company’s mantra. The phrase “Never Stop Exploring” also refers to the company’s speaker series in which The North Face athletes host presentations in various cities. More than a social campaign initiative, #neverstopexploring is a way for The North Face’s followers and customers to both market the company’s gear and show off their adventures to their respective followers. The hashtag has a dual purpose: Images of young outdoorsy people kayaking, rock-climbing, hiking, and mountain biking make followers want to get out in the great outdoors. Additionally, it makes them want to do these activities while wearing The North Face products. Quantitative and Qualitative analysis: Sprinklr Business Index provides content and audience insights to determine how engaging a business’s content is and how well it is received by followers. Content-wise, The North Face enjoys a healthy average daily engagement (likes, comments, shares) of 17.3K, or 3.7K responses per post. The North Face on average generates about five posts every day. If you compare The North Face’s stats to similar brands like Athleta (which only posts twice a day and experiences less than a third of The North Face’s daily engagements), the company is in a healthy position. While The North Face’s performance insights do share numbers (the brand gets about 118K likes, 763 comments, and 160 shares per content type), the data also reveals more qualitative information, such as what sort of content proves to resonate the most with audiences. The North Face’s videos, judging by the below chart, enjoy the most engagement from viewers, followed closely by photos. In the “Avg Engagement Per Topic” section, we observe that content that revolve around photos/imagery and holiday gifts are gaining the most traction. Here is more quantitative information showing The North Face’s number of followers (7.3M), reach rate (11%), and engagement ratio (a little over 2%). But the qualitative analysis comes in when we think about how effective current digital marketing strategies are when trying to increase the number of reaches and engagement. Below, we see numerically how The North Face has grown over the last few days, but qualitatively, we may determine that this is due to the approach of the holidays and with it, holiday shopping. Again, brand sentiment numbers show us how much an audience likes a business as a certain point in time, but through qualitative analysis, a brand manager will think about the “whys” behind the numbers - Why are certain customers negatively responding to our posts? How does it compare to The North Face’s competitors, or the outdoor gear industry as a whole? On what platforms is The North Face receiving negative feedback? ROI: Lastly, the success of a brand/brand campaign can be determined by its return on investment, or ROI. Kim Lachance Shandrow writes in her article, “10 Questions to Ask When Measuring Your Social Media ROI” that the easiest numbers to defer to when tracking social media success is by looking at the number of conversions (which can be determined using the paid versions of tools like Sprinklr Business Index). But, she argues, being preoccupied over vanity metrics like number of followers and “likes” is a waste of time. However, it appears that The North Face has been able to keep its existing followers and increase its following, which indicates that the company is doing well to keep its loyal customer base engaged and likely to be able to convert current followers into paying customers. Shandrow writes, “The more you engage your followers, the more they’ll share your content, which will hopefully lead to more conversions and possibly sales.”
1 Comment
Maureen E Hughes
11/11/2018 02:47:53 pm
Interesting!
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