Nike Digital Content and Social Media Platforms

Nike Digital Content and Social Media Platforms

Executive Summary

The report focuses on the attempts by Nike to improve its marketing practices by widening its ability to market products through digital platforms. The company continues to improve the functionality of its digital marketing by investing in superior and costly software and hardware that support the latest technology. The company aspires to distinguish itself in the way it markets through digital platforms, which puts it ahead of its competitors. Nike must find ways of benefiting from its strengths and opportunities in the application of digital marketing and overcome the weaknesses and threats that could derail its attempts to achieve the desired outcome. The current CRM strategies at Nike are effective, particularly over the social media avenues, but the company would be more responsive by using AI to react to the millions of messages and responses the company handles each day.

Background Research

Nike is a leading manufacturer, marketer, and seller of a broad range of products such as clothing and shoes. The company is now enhancing its marketing practices through digital media with the motive of building its brand image and value, as well as to widen its target market (Mahdi et al., 2015). Nike is committed to protect its brand image that uses the Swoosh logo to represent the company and all its products. The company acknowledges branding as one of the most essential elements that forms and defines an organization’s identity (Mahdi et al., 2015). Nike takes a series of measures to build the brand image, value, and visibility, and to make its products desirable to buyers, and one of these is through marketing. The American multinational corporation explores various market platforms the brand to allow buyers to identify with the company and the company and its products. Nike, for example, tries to make it brand more familiar and appealing to buyers by using celebrities such as Michael Jordan to sell its brand (Nike, 2020). The firm believes that strengthening the familiarity of its brand across consumers will boost its brand value and overall business practices. Nike strives to enhance its brand image with the motive of satisfying its target market that can be termed as broad. The manufacturer tries to reach out to a broad target market base with the motive of increasing its revenue and strengthening the brand image to the consumers and societies where the company operates or sells.

Analysis of the Organization

Nike acknowledges the importance of marketing its products through multiple channels because it is through such promotional activities that it appeals to more consumers and fortifies its brand image. The organization seem to understand that a powerful portrayal of the brand encourages customer loyalty from buyers across the globe, and that is why it is now exploiting digital marketing to supplement the traditional approaches such as the use of billboards, salespeople, and adverts on print media such as newspapers and magazines, TV, and radio stations that do no longer satisfy a multinational company’s marketing desires (Ayungga, 2018). Nike’s application of content marketing, however, depends on a number of factors in the external and internal marketing environments.

External Marketing Environment

Penetrating the market and emerging as the best in the 21^st century requires a company to invest in superior digital marketing strategies. Yellow (2018) shows that digital marketing play crucial roles in the retail fashion sector with technological changes rendering the old marketing styles ineffective. Rathnayaka (2018) who performs a qualitative study with the objective of finding the influence of digital marketing in consumer behavior with special focus on the retail fashion sector reveals that sellers are nowadays using strategies that encourage buyer-seller interaction such as social media avenues and websites. Nike has no option but to widen its capacity to market and sell via digital platforms. The firm takes advantage of the transformations in the sector to improve the features of its website as well as to engage buyer through social media platforms.

Many firms are nowadays embracing marketing techniques that would lower time to market as well as the costs associated with marketing. Consequently, such companies, including Nike, apply the concept of product life cycle management (PLM) to cut the costs of marketing and to identify new markets and opportunities. Nike is in the forefront in applying PLM because the company appreciates how it helps to manage the costs of marketing and how it integrates people and the business systems (Johnson, 2015). Nike feels that exploiting social media avenues and its website will lower the time it takes customers to learn about a new product as well as regulate the resources that would go towards the convectional sensitization methods. 

The marketing designs companies use today are highly competitive, which requires a company to pay considerable attention to how it competes with rivals in the sector as well as across other areas. The VRIO framework offers a suitable structure to understand how Nike competes against other companies in using digital marketing platforms. The company tries to embrace approaches that are of value and likely to neutralize the threats from other companies. Nike, for example, invests in expensive and quality hardware to facilitate the functioning of the various programs. Furthermore, the company continues to widen its marketing budget to stay ahead of other operators in the sector (Nike, 2020). The group strives to apply rare resources in its marketing to compete with close rivals such as Puma and Adidas that are equally improving their use of digital media platforms to market. Nike, for instance, tries to hire qualified IT workers who are conversant with how to use social media and the company’s website to reach out to more buyers. Nike tries to achieve imitability such that it is difficult for other companies to imitate its online marketing strategies (Nike, 2020). Nike achieves imitability by responding to the more than one million incoming online messages very fast. The company manages react to the multiple messages by assigning enough employees to assess and react to the inquiries by customers and other stakeholders. Nike tries to be more competitive in its application of digital media sources by allowing the organizational leadership and structures to influence the application of digital media marketing avenues. The attempts to be unique in the use of content marketing put Nike ahead of its competitors and may attribute the uniqueness to its excellent performance.

Internal Marketing Environment

Several strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats influence Nike’s presence on online marketing platforms. Nike exhibits several strengths in the way it performs marketing through digital platforms. Nike’s strength in increasing its brand visibility comes from the fact that the company invests so much in this area with the company using about $980 million on marketing, promotion, and advertising in 2018 (Nike, 2020). The company invests so much on marketing and promotion because maintaining its brand image is essential to enhancing future revenues. The company provides a suitable example to other firms on how to develop and enhance brand visibility because other than redefining the power of brand image making the company to be one of the best represented, Nike manages to develop an image that is culturally accepted and symbolic across the world and in the area of sports. The company, however, appears to be active only on some platforms and inactive in others (Nike, 2020). The firm, for example, exploits social media avenues such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, but does not feature predominantly in some platforms such as LinkedIn and Pinterest. The company needs to exploit the numerous social media channels, which present the chance to reach out to more people. The group should utilize the opportunities presented by the growth in technology to improve its use of digital sources to market the products (Balan, 2017). One factor that could threaten Nike’s online presence is some workers may not have advanced training on content marketing. The workers may lack enough knowledge on how technological innovations such as virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) work, which could limit their ability to achieve the best outcome from their marketing practices. Nike should improve on its strengths and utilize the available opportunities as well as overcome the weaknesses and threats to achieve the best results from the online marketing practices.

Buyer Analysis

Nike applies the concept of market segmentation while attracting buyers via its website and social media avenues. The company is unique in the way it has a general target market, but that does not mean that Nike does not segment its buyers as it tries to market through digital platforms (Park & Kincade, 2010). The online marketer consider demographic variables such as the buyers’ age gender and occupation by informing buyers on its website and social media avenues whether the product target male or female consumers, or young or older consumers (Park & Kincade, 2010). The company targets buyers from all regions, and the emergence of social media now makes it easier to reach out to more buyers over a wider region.

Social CRM Strategies

Nike applies various customer relationship management (CRM) strategies while interacting with its buyers and other stakeholders through digital platforms. The company interacts with buyers through various communication channels, which make it possible to reach out to more buyers who apply different electronic forms of communication. Nike, for example, interacts with its buyers through emails and live chats that are available on the company’s website (Nike, 2020). The social media avenues present appropriate avenues to interact with buyers across the globe, but people can also call specific offices to receive help. Nike posts items on social media and its website after every few hours to make its interactive avenues engaging and always appealing to buyers (Balan, 2017). The posts always reflect the brand image because all products and information are accompanied by the Swoosh logo. The managers try to maintain the interactive platforms in consistency with the brand image to erase doubts that buyers might have regarding the products’ authenticity. Buyers and other stakeholders who interact with Nike on its social media avenues are welcome to like and comment as well as give other expressions through the use of images and emojis, which the entire marketing practices more interesting.

Proposal

The improved structure will work in such a way that the input from customers’ messages are interpreted using an AI system before buyers receive feedback. Using AI to offer feedback to customers’ message sent via the website or social media sites will allow the company to cut the cost of hiring manpower, and will increase the speed at which buyers get feedback. More fundamentally, using AI to interpret and give feedback shall eradicate the emotional reactions that workers may have when responding to questions from buyers.

Conclusion

The study illustrates how Nike focuses on improving its content marketing practices by trying to be unique in the way it uses its website and social media avenues. The changes in the global marketing practices compel Nike to install mechanisms that make it different from other operators in the sector. The firm while marketing its products through its website and social media avenues tries to install valuable hardware and software, and attempts to be different by hiring qualified personnel. The company tries to achieve imitability by increasing its response to customers’ messages and inquiries. The company shows competence in the way it invests so much on digital marketing, but must continue training its staff about developing technologies. Nike must focus on how internal factors within the company and buyer analysis structures influence the company’s digital marketing practices to achieve better outcome. Nike sets a good example in the way it executes its social CRM strategies by engaging buyers through live chats and encouraging them to react to the online posts and interactions.

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