For Walmart, interactions with customers on social media have proven to be a pivotal of their marketing efforts. The company recently announced impressive stats when it comes to return on investment. Speaking at the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference, Walmart marketing chief Stephen Quinn put it this way, “It’s very staggering. It is so intense on Black Friday. It’s almost like a mission control center for Walmart at that point.”
A year ago, Walmart completed an audience audit, taking a deeper look at those who interact with Walmart and influencers. From this, they formulated a winning strategy to make social an effective marketing and brand reputation vehicle.
Walmart has enjoyed 60,000 daily interactions on social media across 7 dedicated social handles and claims a stunning 10x ROI. With 31 million Facebook fans, more than any other brand on the network, it is no surprise that on Black Friday last year, Walmart received comments at a rate of 42 per minute.
“We have ROI that’s really strong. And, it’s transforming our organization. This level of engagement we now have with customers is changing a whole bunch of other aspects of our marketing,” said Quinn.
So who is handling Walmart’s social and what makes them so effective? Behind every great retail brand is one equally great marketing team. Walmart’s 20 person marketing team handles the main @Walmart account, using it as a vehicle to push out promotions. By splitting the main Walmart account from sub-accounts, they have effectively created a reputation barrier, a great tactic for large brands with multiple departments. In addition to the marketing team, there are 4 other people who operate the feeds to respond to issues and general reputation management.
Whether or not the people who interact with Walmart read them or not, the company has a page on their site listing their social media guidelines. The page clearly outlines what Walmart will and won’t interact with and their goals for responding to users and creating a dialogue.
Compared to other brands, Walmart tends to see a slightly lower amount of positive sentiment, but an amount of negative sentiment that is in league with competitors like Target and Sears.
“As is true with any segment of life or brand, no matter what we do, there are those who will never like us. It can stem from our business model to anything else we do, and that’s where your size and scale works against you. You can do 99 percent of your job right, but that one experience can lead a person to not like a brand. We’re trying to look for those conversations where we can insert ourselves and set the record straight,” said Chat Mitchell, Walmart’s senior director of digital communications, in speaking to Digiday.
Walmart is very straightforward about their methods in responding to criticism on social media. As it is impossible to handle a volume of 60,000 interactions daily and respond to each, they have utilised data to benefit them, filtering through these missives to identify important ones to reach. The social team responds selectively, pinpointing the tweets where they will most likely make a difference by responding.
“Best case scenario, we’re able to engage, share some content and change hearts and minds,” said Mitchell. “Worst case, we’re able to have an open dialogue and then move on, agreeing to disagree.”
Source: Digiday
