Marketing Audit The purpose of this project is to critically evaluate the market
ID: 348426 • Letter: M
Question
Marketing Audit The purpose of this project is to critically evaluate the marketing strategies of a specific company. You should draw from the course material: books, handouts, and class discussions for your information. Additionally, you must learn all you can about the company and the industry through published sources and through conversations with knowledgeable representatives of the company. The completed paper should be eight to ten pages of content (not including cover page, references, or appendices). It should also include any relevant material in the appendices (e.g. interview dialogue), and a complete reference list. You must use at least four sources not including your textbooks. All sources must be properly cited in-text and on the reference page. The content of the paper should include all of these sub-titled sections: The Company and Product: Company history (up to one page) Describe the markets and products for this firm. Describe the features and benefits of the products/services offered. External and Internal Environment Single out two trends in the environment that represent an opportunity and two trends that represent a threat to this specific company. Under each opportunity, suggest a positive action. For each threat, suggest a defensive action. Identify and compare the strengths and weaknesses of your company with its major competitors. Target Market Identify the target customers. Is there more than one type of target customer? What segmentation basis does the company use to identify its customers? Pricing and Distribution What pricing strategy is the company using? What is the form of the company’s channel of distribution? Are there any ecommerce relationships? What does the company do to build relations with their customers and their suppliers and/or other channel members? How do they measure and track these relationships? Promotional Strategy What is the company’s integrated marketing communications strategy? What medium does it use to advertise? How effective is the advertising? How do they use social marketing or websites to promote themselves? Does the company attend trade shows? Evaluate their effectiveness. Are personal selling and public relations important to this company? Describe and evaluate the appropriateness of personal selling and public relations. Suggest any promotional strategies that may help your company. Conclusions What have you learned from this company? Overall, what is the performance level of this company? What are the important factors concerning marketing that have contributed to the success or failure of this specific company? What (if anything) would you do differently? What would you suggest to your company for a future action plan concerning its strategic marketing?
Explanation / Answer
I am analyzing a company named Simply Measured. It is a private company located in Seattle, Washington. Simply Measured was founded in 2010 and it now has 140 employees. Simply measured is backed by venture capitalist and private equity funding. In the recently concluded year, the revenue generated by the company was $12.6m.
Simply Measured is a social analytics company which provides qualitative data to its customers. The company falls under software industry and is the world's best social analytics platform designed to help marketers improve results by measuring the full funnel so they can gain the insight needed to increase results for their marketing efforts. Over 100,000 marketers and 50 percent of the Interbrand 100 companies use Simply Measured daily to identify new opportunities, plan their social campaigns, optimize activities for better results, and report on their programs to prove the value of social. Simply Measured is the only solution formally certified by both Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to provide marketers useful insights from the world's most popular social platforms. With integrations that include more than a dozen other social networks and data enrichments, Simply Measured provides the most comprehensive analytics solution designed specifically for marketers. Simply Measured was just named No. 365 on Inc.’s prestigious list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. The list is based on percentage revenue growth, and with 1.295% revenue growth, Simply Measured was one of seven Washington State companies to receive the honor. Five Seattle companies in all made the top 500, and Simply Measured was #3 among them.
Simply Measured currently offers 4 main products to its customers- Listening, Social analytics, Content share tracking and Conversion tracking. ‘Listening’ helps to identify influencers, understand target audience, and analyze emerging topics of conversation to strategically drive brand awareness. It helps the customers to learn who is talking about their brands, what they are saying and where they are saying it. ‘Social analytics’ discovers insights to plan and execute social strategy which helps in benchmarking performance against competitors, across channels. It also creates effective and efficient reports for stakeholders. ‘Content share tracking’ helps to understand which content resonates with target audience by observing which URLs they share on social, both publicly and privately and which content is consumed most from social media based on page views, time-on-site, bounce rate etc. ‘Conversion tracking’ helps in tracking social content all the way to the point of conversion.
The organization has a ‘flat’ corporate structure in which all employees are equal across the organization. It has 5 distinct divisions: Sales, Account management, Client services, Development and Operations. Each division within the organization has a Director leading the division, and there are 3 founders of the company and 2 of them occupy CTO and President roles. Geographically, the employees are located in Seattle, WA and only the employees from recently acquired Datarank Inc. are located in Fayetteville, AR. The organization has both US and international customer base. The organization is diversified strategically by acquiring Inside Social and DataRank Inc. Inside Social Inside Social is the leading solution for connecting the value of social to key business metrics like revenue, loyalty, and Lifetime Value (LTV). DataRank is a leading social intelligence platform bringing the world's online conversations to brands both big and small.
I am writing this report from the perspective of Client Services Manager. My primary responsibility related to this role includes providing clients with detailed and actionable insights with our reporting capabilities, helping them to measure anything on social using Simply Measured analytics tool, attribute revenue, increase social conversions and making them understand why brands must use outcomes to prove and improve social success. I would also work with cross-functional teams to help them achieve retention of existing clients, expansion of usage of our social analytics tool within our customer base and increase in sales with our reporting offerings.
The article What is Strategy by Michael Porter (Porter, What is Strategy) discusses that a company can follow three different types of positioning strategy:
Simply Measured follows the variety based positioning strategy. It does so by offering specific sets of products. Its competitors such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Brandwatch or Buffer provides marketing analytics in terms of quantitative analysis. However, Simply Measured creates unique value by providing qualitative analysis of the same data. With its comprehensive dashboard and competitive pricing, Simply Measured provides customers with a platform that can be used to meet a variety of business needs, from launching a brand marketing campaign, to managing multiple brands as an agency. Also, with patent-pending technology, the firm helps marketers prove and improve their social ROI by identifying the content, channels, and audiences that drive real value.
Simply Measured creates value to its customers by giving them a tool to perform competitive analysis with social listening and social analytics tool. The tool helps to identify influencers, understand target audience, analyze emerging topics of conversation to strategically drive brand awareness, identify competitors in online conversation and benchmark performance against competitors across channels. Thus, the firm helps businesses to better understand the marketing tactics of their competitors so they can better position their own brand in the marketplace and learn what their own consumers like and dislike about competitor products or services.
I believe that unique value is delivered due to the fit of the product/service offerings that Simply Measured provides. The offerings go beyond simply a first-order fit in which they are consistent to one another, and achieve second-order fit due to their reinforcing nature. Combining the Simply Measured offerings creates a cycle of value for the firm and its customers. For example, an unconvinced client who has never used this tool may want to figure out the opportunities that the dashboard can provide to them. Therefore, instead of subscribing and setting up actual topics by themselves, Simply Measured can offer them the service of its professional reporting team. The report not only answers the business questions they were curious about, but also shows them what they could create on their own if their company subscribed to the data on a regular basis. This convinces them to purchase a subscription in which they learn how to use the dashboard to evaluate the data on their own or within their own company teams. The more these clients use the firm’s platform the more insightful and granular information they discover. Over time other teams from the client company also subscribe to the firm as well. This leads to higher turnover and lower churn rates for Simply Measured. This is how the value model of Simply Measured works.
I would also like to use the framework of the value chain to identify the sources of strategic value within the company. There are two specific support activities; Human Resources and Technology and one primary activity, Service that give Simply Measured a competitive advantage over competitors.
I think taking a resource based view (Montgomery) of the firm will provide a solid framework for evaluating a firm’s competitive advantage, and help in analyzing if the firm will be able to sustain that advantage in future. Evaluating a firm’s resources into tangible assets, intangible assets and capabilities allows the investors to realize which resources are truly valuable.
Tangible assets of Simply Measured include data centers, hardware such as high-end servers and hard drives, and software systems. I think all these assets are imitable and can be purchased and modified by anyone who has the financial capability. Hence these tangible assets do not provide any substantial support to the overall sustainability of the firm.
Simply Measured’s intangible assets include human resources, company culture, intellectual property and brand. A firm’s success is very much dependent on the people who are employed there and Simply Measured has hired some of the best minds in the technology industry. Thus, human resource is an important asset for technology company like Simply Measured. As technology continues to outpace education, and new skills become critical overnight, the true “talent” will be the people who stay hungry, stay curious and never stop learning. The most successful organizations will be the ones who identify, hire and retain these special talents.
Simply Measured has a big employee base of former Amazonians and Googlers. Simply Measured’s company culture provides value to the firm by creating a work culture where employees can work with more freedom and autonomy and by allowing its employees to work remotely from anywhere, dress casually, valuing innovative ideas etc. This results in keeping employees happy and reducing turnover rates. The intellectual property makes Simply Measured shine over its competitors. Computer programs are basically bits and bytes and are intangible in nature. The level of success for a technology company depends on the software programs and algorithms that the company innovate and sell. Only the company owns these programs and algorithms. Thus, I think intellectual property of Simply measured is its most important asset which gives it the competitive edge. Innovations such as social measurement API and social ROI measurement are keeping Simply Measured ahead of its competitors. Social measurement API’s data feeds are offered as structured and standardized data, instead of just raw info. For instance, a tweet is categorized as a “share,” so a marketer can compare shares across platforms, apples to apples. The marketer can also drill down to the actual post. The main differentiator for this API is that it is designed with marketers in mind, rather than intended primarily for use by developers and data scientists. Simply Measured is the first analytics platform to truly connect the dots from social activity to the buyer’s journey and helps its clients to measure their social ROI. These innovations are unrivalled and cannot be copied by competitors and give the competitive edge to Simply Measured over its competitors. Another important intangible asset of Simply Measured is its brand. A brand represents a set of promises. It implies trust, consistency, and a defined set of expectations. The strongest brands own a positioning in the consumer’s mind that is unique to that brand. The positive brand effect of Simply Measured on its customers is certainly an important asset for the company.
Capabilities of the firm include reporting, client services and product innovation. The firm is very efficient at using the information provided to the customer to generate insightful reports. This report generation has become a source of revenue for the firm and helped in maintaining and establishing relationships with the existing and new clients. Client service is also a pillar of the company culture. Priority is given to any customer related issue and employees work tirelessly to ensure customer satisfaction. Innovation also plays an important role in this firm. Continuous upgradation of product offerings through R&D keeps the firm competitive in this fast-changing technology industry.
According to the resource based view, the firm resources have to be inimitable, non-substitutable, durable and valuable. After evaluating the firm’s resources above I would say that the resources that are currently leading to the competitive advantage of the firm are intellectual property, brand and reporting services provided by the firm’s in-house specialized team. These three resources make the firm unique and are likely to serve as a basis for a sustainable competitive advantage. Competitive advantage ultimately can be attributed to the ownership of a valuable resource that enables the company to perform activities better or more cheaply than competitors and these three resources qualify as the basis of effective strategy.
In order to analyze the threats and opportunities, I am going to do Porter’s five forces (Porter M. E.)analysis. Presently Simply Measured collects data directly from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Suppliers have a lot of power in social analytics industry because if there happen drastic switches in the privacy policies of the data providers then it will severely impact the collection of raw data which will impact the reporting capabilities of the firm. Currently, Simply Measured’s customers have high buying power because the costs of switching products is relatively low (this is just the nature of SAAS, Software as a Service industry). The rivalry among existing competitors is not too fierce. Relatively fewer firms are specialized in the kind of products that Simply Measured offers to its customers and each firm’s capabilities differ slightly. Without indulging in price war, the firms are more focused in demonstrating to potential customers how their bundle of products/ services will suit to the needs of the customers. The threat of substitution for social analytics service is relatively low as it is tough to collect and combine information from these data sources. On top of that, removing the noise from the data set takes time and without proper screening of the noise, the data set cannot be used for analysis. The SAAS (Software as a Service) industry has democratized software and hence there will always be threats of mushroom company growing every now and then making the threat of new entry high, so staying innovative is the key.
The above analysis also shows where the opportunities for the firm are. Simply Measured can do a better job implementing switching costs so that the customers get locked-in into its products and services. For instance, more subscriptions in the firm’s products make for higher switching costs as there will be too much time consumption to train all the users who have previously used a different tool. Opportunity also lies to take over the industry and become the leader as there is no dominant firm in the industry currently. Simply Measured should continue to invest more into creating innovative solution leading to more added value to its clients. This will keep the products desirable in the market and help the firm distinguish itself from its competitors.
Simply Measured current strategy is to translate globally but till now there has been minimum internationalization of the firm. The firm has the benefits of global expansion with minimal costs due to the nature and structure of its product offerings. The types of data that the firm is currently providing to its domestic clients are similar to what clients from other parts of the world would want. The biggest barriers associated to global expansion are language translation and data sources.
I think, analyzing the options for Simply Measured’s globalization from the viewpoint of Pankaj Ghemawat’s “AAA” (Ghemawat) will help us identify the correct path the company should choose. Basic software does not require a radical change in order to accommodate the firm’s globalization pursuit, because of the reason mentioned above. However, each country has unique social media platforms and ecommerce sites that are popular in particular areas, and each country prioritizes how important information is based in the usage of said platforms. For example, in China QZone is the top social network, with 632 million active users and in Russian territories VKontakte and Odnoklassniki are preferred over Facebook. Also, a reliable translation tool will make it a premium service in a way that international clients can accurately and reliably draw insights from the results. Because of these two reasons, I think adaptation is the most important globalization strategy for Simply Measured. As described by Ghemawat and discussed in class, there are serious constraints on the ability of any one organization to use all three A’s. But, it is very much possible to focus on two A’s and that is why I think Simply Measured should ultimately look to the arbitrage strategy for further global success. Since Simply Measured is primarily a technology firm so I think it makes sense for the firm outsource its work to countries like India where the labor is cheap but the quality is competent with that of western labor market. Because these employees are usually not interacting with clients, their physical location can be anywhere. Hence economic arbitrage strategy is a good fit for the firm in its international endeavor. Using these two globalization strategies I believe that there are opportunities for the firm to be pursued globally and the firm could well become a market leader in this segment serving global marketing business needs that is underserved currently. As smartphone adoption increases across the globe, the IOT continues to take effect, and more opportunities arise for people to exist in a digital space and hence the need for services that Simply Measured provides will only grow. Thus, by expanding globally and harnessing all these untapped opportunities, Simply Measured can signal the value that it could provide its existing clients and to its potential global clients.
I would say there are there are places where the strategy excels and other places where the strategy falls short. The strategy is implemented effectively related to company structure, company culture, intellectual property, client services, human resources resulting in creating a competitive edge over its competitors. The flat structure of the company and the work culture that allows employee to perform their activities with freedom have raised the employee morale and reduced the employee turnover. The company also follows the strategy of appreciating employee’s innovative ideas and takes into consideration individual opinions while making decision for a new project. The strategy of creating competitive advantage through vertical integration bodes well for the company. But the biggest shortfalls I see with the strategy are in innovation, investment in R&D and potential for additional sales and marketing. The SAAS industry changes very quickly, and those who do not adapt get left behind. Although Simply Measured has created a competitive edge over its competitors by acquiring Inside Social and DataRank Inc and adopting their best practices and products, it should invest more in innovation and R&D to upgrade its current product offerings. This will make its products more desirable in the market resulting in more sales. With more customers subscribing to its products, Simply Measured can create a network effect. A concentrated focus on sales and pricing strategy can ensure that more and more user from a particular organization is locked-in to the system which will make them harder to switch. The more users Simply Measured can attract the more valuable it becomes. The decision involved with these types of strategic changes are much more involved than the way I have explained above, but I believe these are the areas in which there is the most to gain.
Simply Measured is diversified strategically (Collis) (al.)over the last two years. As of now the firm has chosen to expand related to Value chain and Product/Customer dimensions. Simply Measured started as a firm which analyzes the social activity of individuals and provides insightful reports. At the beginning the focus of the firm was in technology. As the technology started to mature, it has expanded its product offerings to social listening, content share tracking and conversion tracking. Once the product is fully up scaled, the firm started to develop a full ecosystem of developers and partners. The firm has partnered with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat for data collection. In 2015, the firm acquired Inside Social and DataRank Inc to further increase its product/service offerings and onboard expert developers. This diversification strategy has created competitive advantage for the firm as it can now help its clients to measure social API, social ROI. The firm is now able to provide geo-related analysis to its clients, help the clients to gain access to the demographics, psychographics, and location of unique people who talk about their brand. This new dimension of product offerings has helped the firm to create a unique position for itself in the market.
In analyzing the competitive landscape there are not many firms that have diversified beyond just the social listening industry. So Simply Measured has already put the first step to become a market leader by being the first mover to provide full-funnel social analytics. Full-Funnel analytics help the marketers to create, connect and convert the target customer by understanding the social media audience’s interests, influence, interactions and intent. Obviously following this diversification strategy could lead to a pitfall if there were a shift on the way people share their views in the future. But it is much unlikely that something like that is imminent soon. Also, if the management is aware of the internal barriers to response (Collis & Rivkin) and know when to respond, the company will do well. The way I would judge if the strategy of the company is a success or not is also by looking at its flexibility to react to the market demand. If the company is proactive and can smoothly and efficiently focus its energy in trying to understand how people using their tool, then success is the only way for the company.
If the firm were to further diversify I would suggest it to be mindful of its core competencies. There are times when firms try to compete and defeat each other out in a way that they shift and loose focus from their competencies and that could result in catastrophe (Dyer). Simply Measured can potentially partner with firms that specializes in indexed search, qualitative forecasting, language translation depending on how clients want to use it. I am hopeful if the firm follows the right path together with the industry’s shared knowledge and resources, it could make a successful diversification strategy which will help the firm to move further ahead of its competitors.
Till now Simply Measured has not created much of a social value other than the value it creates through essential economic activities. But it is making considerable efforts to benefit the society through its activities (Kramer). The firm has not grown into a big enough scale to bring on a change in the society. However, there are instances which show that the firm is trying to benefit the society through its actions. Recently Simply Measured has mentored 32 girls from Techbridge showing them the ins and outs of what it’s like to work at a startup tech company and is guiding them to learn skills to excel in this industry. Techbridge is an organization which inspires girls to discover a passion for technology, science and engineering and gives them hands-on learning. The company also works closely with other startups in the area to bolster its strategy of improving startup culture in the place of its operations. Much like Walmart’s case (although on a smaller scale) the public relation associated with this is favorable. By providing mentorship, the firm is not only helping the community but also making itself accessible to the new bright minds which may help it to grow more in future. Also, every year the firm runs several different events in a social week to raise funds and awareness for various charitable organizations that the firm cares about. As the firm grows in larger size, there will be more opportunities to impact the society in a positive way.
The market research that the firm provide to clients is needed by organizations around the world including non-profits, NGOs and academia. I would love to see partnerships with some of these organizations and give them access to data to help with specific projects and provide consultation to them to solve certain problems these organizations are facing.
As discussed in the earlier part of this paper, in the Porter’s value chain model, my responsibilities as a client services manager lies in the primary activities such as services, sales and marketing. Responsibilities such as training new client, supporting a project and provide consultation fall under the services but other responsibilities such as assisting the marketing team with research, helping in customer onboarding and providing feedback to the sales team’s queries fall under the marketing & sales side of the value chain.
As was outlined in the competitive advantage of this paper, customer service is a value adding activity to Simply Measured and it is something that we are very good at. This was more out of necessity than anything else, because it is relatively easy for a customer in a technology industry to switch. Essentially our customers have extremely high buying power. Therefore, it is very much essential for a tech company like Simply Measured to make sure that the service our customers receive is above and beyond what they initially expected. This is also the core belief of the company. The emergence of SAAS industry has democratized the software industry and customer service is becoming a true differentiator to keep customers loyal to the service/product offerings. Since the competition is high and the switching costs are low, it is not a high risk for a buyer to switch between SAAS tools. Thus, reaping the benefits of early movers is getting harder for the initial companies. Thus, we have started concentrating on other sources of competitive expertise and this is where the customer services team is excelling to distinguish the company as a service in the social analytics SAAS tools.
In the short run, I don’t see any change in my role but my responsibilities are certainly going to change in the long run. I can’t discuss enough the importance of returning revenue when a company is trying to grow so I believe that customer retention and reducing churn rate should remain a strategic effort of directors. This requires a strategic manager in my opinion because the need of each customer is different and must be managed efficiently to make the relationship successful. There are responsibilities that aren’t part of my role now that could add value to the company. For example, referral programs that embed an analyst into the client’s office and the formulation of strategic partnerships with new developers and clients. In this way, the company can utilize my position to create value in the organization and justify its existence in the first place.
It is the responsibility of each employee in a company to create value to the organization so that they don’t become a candidate for outsourcing or obsolescence. Being a superior manager and keep adding value to whatever you are doing will be the key. I believe that one of the best ways to future proof a career is through becoming a strategic partner of the customer/other firm. That way one can always add value to the other firm by managing the relationship that drives revenue. Strategic partners share resources to help each other develop their employees, and to assist each other in developing an edge in the marketplace. In this way, you can become too valuable for the employing firm to replace you.
Networks are necessary in the same way that power and politics are unavoidable in organizations. Power and politics will also keep an employee from getting replaced or becoming obsolete. Pfeffer (Pfeffer)indicated that by developing bases of power – whether that is through a network, charisma or control of resources – an employee is more in control of their own fate and has the strategic advantages in which he/she can influence the other party to rule in his/her favor. But an employee should also consider the reputation of the company while making any decision. Hence, with the right competitive and ethical spirit, I will do whatever it takes to be at the top of the power pyramid.
Bibliography
al., D. e. (n.d.). When to Ally and When To Acquire. HBR.
Collis, D. J. (n.d.). The Scope of the Corporation. HBR.
Ghemawat, P. (n.d.). Managing Differences: The Central Challenge of Global Strategy. HBR.
Kramer, M. R. (n.d.). Creating Shared Value. HBR.
Montgomery, C. &. (n.d.). Competing on resources. HBR.
Pfeffer, J. (n.d.). Power Play. HBR.
Porter, M. E. (n.d.). Five Competititve Forces That Shape Strategy. HBR.
Porter, M. E. (n.d.). What is Strategy. HBR.
http://simplymeasured.com/#sm.00001igt2nehinef7wdwiars4kj8y
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/simply-measured-acquires-social-intelligence-technology-leader-datarank-solidifies-position-2063308.htm
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/simply-measured-acquires-marketing-analytics-company-inside-social-help-marketers-prove-2051924.htm
http://www.techbridgegirls.org/
http://simplymeasured.com/blog/simply-measured-is-one-of-inc-5000s-fastest-growing-private-companies/#sm.00001igt2nehinef7wdwiars4kj8y