Social Media Marketing Taken To The Extreme
End-of-the-year pressures can make people a little crazy. What else explains waking up at 3 a.m. to line up outside a Walmart to buy holiday presents?
But the fact is it’s not just consumers that go a little whacky during this season of giving. It’s the retailers that feed into it. And with social media marketing more mainstream than ever, there are some whacky promotions out there.
Flying Off Shelves
Take Framingham-based TJX Cos. They took to the extreme the age-old concept of the loss leader, where you sell an item at a loss in order to get people in the door.
On Nov. 18, word got out the TJ Maxx and Marshalls (both owned by TJX) were carrying iPads at discounted prices ($399 compared to the $499 base price at the Apple store). Soon, the TJ Maxx Twitter account was afire with people asking whether the rumors were true, what stores were carrying the iPads, and how long they would be in stock.
Of course, whoever is behind the tweets at TJ Maxx played coy, refusing to give details on specifics and replying with, “Our lips are sealed” and a smiley face emoticon :).
It all seemed like harmless fun until somehow the rumor grew via blogs that the iPads would be available on Black Friday. That prompted TJX to issue a press release explaining that only a small number stores had received a very limited quantity of the iPads and that “they sold out in one day.”
I’m guessing that store managers were getting nervous about hordes of wild Apple fanatics rioting in their stores on the morning of Black Friday after learning that there were no cheap iPads to be had. On the other hand, the press release could have been a calculated ploy on TJX’s behalf to further whip up some free publicity. I have to guess at their motivations because Sherry Lang, spokeswoman for TJX, declined to speak to me about the promotion and her staff offered only a canned statement that didn’t really illuminate much.
No matter what motivated the press release, TJX clearly came out a winner with this promotion. They got some Internet buzz, probably picked a few more Twitter followers and further enhanced the TJ Maxx and Marshalls brand reputation of offering shoppers a “treasure hunt experience.”
The only person who seems to have been irked by the whole thing is none other than Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. A blog at 9to5mac.com ran an item claiming that someone who got wind of the TJX iPad discount e-mailed Jobs asking if Apple would honor the price and whether TJ Maxx was an authorized reseller. His response, according to the blog, was a simple, “Nope. And Nope.”
The whole Steve Jobs angle could be made up. The blogger has a legitimate looking screenshot of the e-mail exchange, but those are easy enough to fake. And the number of iPads TJX sold at its stores was minimal — reportedly just 80 — so I don’t expect Jobs to hold a grudge if he even got wind of the affair in the first place.
The real question is whether these types of gimmicky offers and discounts, fueled by social media, really do any good. Are they a diversion, or do they produce a serious ROI? TJX isn’t alone in experimenting in this area. Most retailers, even local ones, are using Twitter and Facebook to get people in the doors of their stores.
Take Percy’s, an appliance and electronics store in Worcester. Owner Alan Lavine says his team has had success with various Facebook promotions. For example, Percy’s has offered new Facebook fans a chance to be entered into a drawing for a gift card to the store. The hope is that once a person becomes a fan on Facebook, they’ll become a customer. And of course, whoever wins the gift card is likely going to visit the store and maybe spend a little bit over and above the value of the card.
“I think all this stuff is fun, as long as you’re saying something intelligent, useful and non-malicious,” Lavine said.
But Lavine acknowledges that it’s too early to tell whether social media marketing is more than just fun.
The key, I suppose, is in carefully tracking your efforts to make sure whatever investment in time you make in an online promotion brings in a sufficient profit revenues.
Got news for our Digital Diva column? E-mail Christina H. Davis at cdavis@wbjournal.com.
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