Coca-Cola reaffirms social media marketing ‘crucial’ to sales

Published on March 21, 2013

by Brafton Editorial

At the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:think 2013 conference, Coca-Cola’s Eric Schmidt told attendees that online buzz – social chatter – only affected the company’s sales by approximately 0.01 percent. Schmidt said, “We didn’t see any statistically significant relationship between our buzz and our short-term sales.”

However, after a few days, a Coke-brand executive clarified how the company uses social media marketing to drive in-store transactions. Coca-Cola’s Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing Communications and Capabilities Wendy Clark wrote a response on the company’s website, saying that social media content is “crucial” to driving in-store purchases. Clark stated:

“None of our plans are simply social, or TV, or mobile or experimental. On the contrary, it’s the combination of owned, earned, shared and paid media connections – with social playing a crucial role at the heart of our activations – that creates marketplace impact, consumer engagement, brand love and brand value.”

Clark expands upon her statements by highlighting how the company uses Facebook to track closed-loop sales from site exposure to in-store purchases. She notes that the company experienced above average results from Facebook marketing initiatives, beating out returns Coke sees from other media.

Coca-Cola has more than 61.7 million Facebook Likes, 3.3 million YouTube video content views, 204,000 LinkedIn followers and 63,000 Twitter followers. In the past, Brafton has reported on Coke’s secrets to marketing success: The foundation, says Clark, is a great content that tells a story, and social spread is essential to building “exponential” reach. With such a wide reach, Coke continues to explore the relationship between social chatter and in-store transactions, and the brand tries to link online buzz to the rest of its internet marketing arsenal. While it might be tricky to measure the actual, total sales impact of social efforts, the broader picture determines that active social presences support all new-media marketing efforts for long and short-term results.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=656235160 Bex Lewis

Yes, I think social media is not about the quick fix/see what the returns are, but a long/sustained relationship, which is difficult to measure fully.
- TedKarczewski
  
  Hi Bex-
  
  It can be difficult to measure, yes, but social media analytics does provide a clear idea of how social users view brands currently. This allows marketers to gauge current customer motivations and incorporate insights into every other aspect of marketing. I think brands need to stop expecting Tweets to drive a significant percentage of sales alone and consider how positive engagement translate into long-term results.
  
  Thanks for reading!
  Ted
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=656235160 Bex Lewis
    
    Thanks for replying Ted. It’s interesting as I work particularly in the Christian sector (where some would say we’re not marketing, but we often look to see what the secular world is doing) – where there tends not to be the budget for analytics software- have to be a bit more creative with measuring? Bex
http://www.vemployee.com/hire-php-programmers.html jimmybrion

Yes Because Almost all Younger generation is active in Social media sites.So social media marketing is crucial for business.

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