E commerce retailer eBay

 

    There are two choices that a company can utilize for its social media marketing, it can use one main platform for much of its posting/advertising, or it can use many of them and spread its social media participation and advertising across many platforms, using a combination of posts, pictures, and videos to attract interest. This author believes a case can be made for both. A local restaurant can reach many potential customers with likes, posts, and shares on Facebook alone since Facebook studies show 79% of all online adults use it.  This keeps social media management simple for a company with a small number of employees to manage, which is especially needed in a small company because nearly every employee has multiple responsibilities.  A large company with many products and a diverse customer base needs to utilize multiple social media platforms because the different platforms reach different demographics. A few years ago, global use of social media showed that 30% of those who bought a new car in the last year talked about vehicles online. The company chosen for this assignment is Honda, a company with an approximately 11% market share in the U.S. auto market and larger share worldwide. In 2019, Honda Motor Company spent 1.39 billion U.S. dollars on advertising in the United States (Honda Motor Company’s Advertising Spending in the United States from 2007 to 2019, 2019). Honda officially lists Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Tumblr (Honda News, 2021). This paper will document the many social media platforms Honda uses, why they use them, how they use them, and when they use them to cross promote either a current sales campaign or a particular vehicle or vehicle segment.

            The grouping of the different demographic segmentation of car buyers ranges from ethnicity, age, gender, income, religion, family makeup, and education. Psychographic market segmentation includes, values, attitudes, personality traits, lifestyles, interests. Examples of behavioral market segmentation are purchasing/spending habits and brand interaction (Virag, 2021). Age demographic groups are usually broken into Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y or Millennials, and Gen Z (Jacobson, 2019). Selling with social media requires knowledge of how each interact with it. For example, Millennials do not usually respond well to a hard sell. They are used to coming to the brands they decide to do business with. Building brand awareness is one of the best ways to stand out and get noticed. Blogging and being active on social media will allow you to educate your audience and engage with them (Market Segmentation: Marketing to Different Age Groups, 2020). All the many different segments mentioned use different social media platforms for variety of reasons, meaning a car company like Honda cannot reach them all using just a few platforms and a simplistic approach (competitors in the auto industry are using many platforms also). Honda’s social media followers are believed to be 63% female, giving them an excellent way to reach that demographic.

            Twitch is a live-streaming platform owned by Amazon. Twitch has more than 100 million unique users and 2.2 million broadcasters monthly. It also has about 15 million active daily users, which means they are either watching or broadcasting content. Twitch is a destination where younger, first-time car buyers spend a lot of their time, so when it came time for Honda to debut the prototype of its new 11th generation Honda Civic, the brand went all-in with on Twitch. Honda launched the new model exclusively on its branded Twitch gaming channel, Head2Head, which has been in existence since 2018 (Hultgren, 2020). Honda has released a new social media campaign titled “The Chase” for the 2021 Civic Type R, Honda’s high performance version of the model. Honda’s mission for the campaign was to demonstrate the sheer speed and handling of the new vehicle, using social media as the optimal platform to target the vehicle’s younger audience. While Twitch was the perfect social media platform for the Civic, they did share the campaign across their platforms.

            Honda has over 5,41400 followers on Facebook so posting any of their social media campaigns will be on that platform. Facebook has a mixture of mature adults to youth using it, but this platform is one that Honda utilizes to reach adults often. Honda feels that because cars are the second most expensive purchase most consumers will make, they are high profile and high on their agenda when talking about brands online and Facebook is a prime social media place for it.

            Over one million followers use Twitter to follow Honda. Twitter allows you to send and receive short posts called tweets. What makes Twitter different from other social media platforms, it doesn't charge you for exclusivity which means you can follow every person whether it is your friend or someone famous. There are 192 million daily active users on Twitter. 63 percent of all Twitter users worldwide are between 35 and 65. The ratio of female to male Twitter users is roughly one to two: 34 percent female and 66 percent male. This is a huge social media platform that has the reach Honda can use to reach the 35-65 age group.

            Another platform in social media Honda uses regularly is Instagram. How many downloads does Instagram have versus other social apps? According to data from Sensor Tower, Instagram was among the top five most-downloaded apps in both the App Store and via Google Play last year. Looking at some Instagram statistics that shed some light on who is using the platform. Recent social media demographics continue to point to a predominantly female (34.3%) user base that’s under the age of 34. Although there are still older users present, the platform is largely still dominated by Gen Z and Millennials (Honda News, 2021). Honda has over 4.2 million followers currently on Instagram.

2 other major social media platforms Honda uses are Tumblr and Pinterest. The Tumblr platform service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users' blogs. Honda has over 515k followers on this site. Honda also has over 40k users on Pinterest.

Utilized properly, influencers can be sources of unique content creation, and efficient organic reach. Honda has utilized influencers for model launches to tap into people who represent their target audiences, or an audience of people they want to reach. Honda has also used it to create content that aligns with the core use cases for our products or a hot button of a target audience.