Topmobishops: Analyzing a Successful Social Media Campaign

Topic: Social Media Words: 1489 Pages: 6

TopShop is a major player in the UK’s fashion industry. The company has recorded tremendous changes in its sales and physical distribution networks. With more than 300 outlets across Europe and millions of customers returning daily, TopShop is a formidable competitor in the “affordable luxury” and “competitive price” segments of Europe’s Fashion industry. TopShop’s major competitors include Zara, H&M, French Connection and GAP, and TopShop’s weakness against these competitors is its lack of an online presence. To eliminate this weakness, TopShop must become more proactive in social media and e-retailing services. The goal of the social media campaign is to ensure a purposeful and organized use of TopShop’s media pages and to introduce a mobile internet-shopping app, TopMobiShop.

TopShop’s major target consumers are women between 18 and 30 years of age. The demographics suit people that are attracted to social media, especially entertainment media. TopShop can attract its target consumers by integrating the campaign for its new mobile shopping app into different social media platforms. TopShop must not do this at the expense of the already built consumer base. The company should introduce its existing customers to its social media platforms by printing its handles and page titles for the respective social media platforms. Also, TopShop will offer online shopping coupons to customers shopping in the physical outlets should encourage them to download and experience its online shopping app.

TopShop will promote its products through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. With over 200m Twitter users (Tam 1), 1,310,000,000 (Craig Smith 3), and 645,750,000 (Cooper Smith 2), TopShop has a limitless number of current and potential consumers to reach. Social media is an important source for celebrity and fashion discussions. TopShop’s major target consumers are attracted to these celebrity and fashion news and this makes the selected social media platforms viable choices for increasing TopShop’s online presence. TopShop will also use the TopMobiShop application to increase its online presence. The application allows consumers to shop from their mobile devices and allow them to leave reviews about their shopping and product experience.

The table below provides details of TopShop’s monthly activities for the next year concerning its online presence.

12 Month Plan

Month	Facebook Activity	Twitter Activity	Instagram Activity	TopMobiShop Activity
July 2014	Open TopShop official fan page.	Register TopShop’s official Twitter handle.	Register TopShop’s official Instagram page.	Commence development of TopMobiShop app.
August 2014	Share instagram pictures.	Share instagram pictures.	Post photos of shopping experience TopMobiShops.	Complete development of TopMobiShop.
September 2014	Commence promo and countdown for TopMobiShop.	Commence promo and countdown for TopMobiShop.	Post photos of shopping experience TopMobiShop.	Test run TopMobiShop app.
October 2014	Share instagram pictures.	Continue countdown for TopMobiShop. Allow user comments by creating twitter hash stag for TopMobiShop.	Post photos of new TopShop outlets. Post photos for countdown to TopMobiShop.	Launch beta version for only staff of TopMobiShop.
November 2014	Creating an official page for TopMobiShop.	Share instagram pictures.	Post photos of the beta version of TopMobiShop.	Launch TopMobiShop.
December 2014	Share instagram pictures.	Share instagram pictures.	Post photos of TopMobiShop. Post photos of Christmas auction promotion.	Commence Christmas auction sales restricted to TopMobiShop.
January 2015	Post picture of TopMobiShop’s customer of 2014.	Post picture of TopMobiShop’s customer of 2014.	Post picture of TopMobiShop’s customer of 2014.	Select TopMobiShop’s customer of 2014.
February 2015	Promote TopMobiShop’s valentine auction sales.	Promote TopMobiShop’s valentine auction sales.	Promote TopMobiShop’s valentine auction sales by posting pictures of auction items.	Launch valentine auction sales restricted to TopMobiShop’s registered users.
March 2015	Post picture of all group members of most active group	Same as Facebook activity.	Same as Facebook activity.	Select TopMobiShop’s most active group of February and give a $100 shopping coupon reward to each group member.
April 2015	Same as above	Same as above	Same as above	Select TopMobiShop’s most active group of March and give a $100 shopping coupon reward to each group member.
May 2015	Same as above.	Same as above.	Same as above.	Select TopMobiShop’s most active group of April and give a $100 shopping coupon reward to each group member.
June 2015	Same as above.	Same as above.	Same as above.	Select TopMobiShop’s most active group of May and give a $100 shopping coupon reward to each group member.

TopMobiShop

Description

TopShop’s TopMobiShop is an online shopping app developed by the technical and communications department of TopShop. The app integrates online shopping and social networking, allowing people to shop and express their shopping and product experience. TopMobiShop also embeds collective bargaining for specific products that are placed on promotion and this allows people to participate in real-time mobile auction sales while exchanging messages and media with each other.

Stages/Interaction

User friendliness is an important attribute of mobile apps. The following table is just an outline of the different stages of interaction within the TopMobiShop app interphase.

Develop an outline of the different stages/interactions

s/n	Activity	Process	Purpose
1	Commence user registration:	Users will fill a short form that includes fields such as email, address, date of birth, gender, interests, country, the preferred payment option, payment details, and shipping address.	The reason for this activity is to encourage security by ensuring that each user has a unique login. The details of the registration process will provide data that enables TopShop’s marketing team understand the buying habits of diverse consumers of the products. The payment and shipping details will provide data for TopShop’s logistics department to ease product delivery.
2	Introduce the Collective Buyers’ Club:	This automated process uses the demographics data from the registration stage, to group registered users into different collective buying groups. Registered users will receive email messages informing them of auctions for products under their shared preferences.	TopShop will use the Collective Buyers’ Club activity to integrate social networking with shopping. Social media platforms are trending online and this is making it necessary for any sustainable organization to integrate social media activities to increase its online presence.
3	Join/Decline Auction:	Users accept or decline to join an auction when they receive automated invitations.	This would allow users to participate in the auctions. The marketing team can use statistics of auction opportunities that users repeatedly decline to judge the users
4	Bid:	Customers will place their bids for the products auctioned on TopMobiShop’s platform.	Admin can monitor the prices the average customer is willing to pay for different product categories. This can serve as data for TopShop to price products based to suit customer perceptions of the products’ prices.
5	Add to Cart:	Customers will add products they intend to buy to their carts.	The collection of products in a cart is also important for the marketing team because TopShop will be able to identify products that consumer-driven chain products.
6	Submit Payment:	The “Submit Payment” activity allows customers to effect payment.	This is an important activity because it allows the management of TopShop to ensure secured payment from customers. A secured payment platform increases customers’ confidence and eventually encourages more consumers to use TopMobiShop.
7	Review product:	This allows consumers to post messages under the product to discuss the product and service quality. Other consumers start discussions with experienced consumers by clicking the “Start Chat” button next to the reviewer’s username.	Consumers’ reviews provide data for TopShop’s quality control department to use for improving service quality and increasing TopShop’s online presence.
8	Review Shopping Experience:	Consumers will post messages under the product to discuss the product and service quality. Other consumers can engage in discussion with experienced consumers by clicking the “start chat” button next to the reviewer’s username.	Consumers’ reviews provide data for TopShop’s quality control department to use for improving quality and improve TopShop’s online presence.
9	Logout:	This activity allows users to logout from TopMobiShop.	The logout activity is important because it helps TopShop’s management identify the number of active users online and record the rate of TopShop’s online presence.

Consumers will benefit from the TopMobiShop app because it provides them a platform to simultaneously shop and engage in dialogue with other users with similar interests. By integrating social networking with shopping, shoppers will experience fun while shopping. TopMobiShop also integrates collective bargaining and this enables clients to set the prices for the products they intend to buy. Customers that have installed the TopMobiShop app will also be the first to be informed of products discounts and promotions and this means they will spend less than consumers shopping in TopShop’s physical outlets.

TopMobiShop app will not be successful if TopShop’s management team not is able to promote it. The app will be promoted through the social media platforms used by major target consumers, which include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Promotions on these social media platforms will target potential consumers. TopShop will inform existing customers of the TopMobiShop by providing the download link on the cash out slips in the shops. Every TopShop outlet will have flyers at the respective points of payment and each flyer will have an online shopping coupon code.

Works Cited

Smith, Cooper. “7 Statistics about Facebook Users that Reveal why it’s such a Powerful Marketing Platform.” Businessinsider.com. Business Insider Inc., 2013.

Smith, Craig. “How Many People Use 500+ of the Top Social Media, Apps and Tools?” Expandedramblings.com. Digital Marketing Ramblings, 2014. Web.

Tam, Donna. “Instagram passes 200M active users: The photo-sharing network’s latest number shows a steady growth.” CNet.com. CNET, 2014.