3. Goals
Additionally , they want to get closer to their customers, gain better press coverage, engage with
employees more and develop higher brand awareness.
4. Drivers of Success
According to social media expert Thomas Bigum, Maersk Line’s success is due to:
(1) Position as first movers
- Maersk line entered the world of social media in 2011, one of the first B2B companies to do so.
- Wichmann studied the successful story of Dell Computers
(2) Confidence
- Wichmann rejected the typical ‘top down approach’ to
social media, he wanted a more flexible approach.
(3) Story telling
- Allows consumers and employees to feel more involved
5. ‘Top down’ vs. ‘Bottom up’
Marketing strategy, top down vs. bottom up explained:
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqokUzmPkKs (1)
Top Down marketing strategy
- Consumer is the passive player, someone to be targeted (2)
- More common in the B2B world (3)
6. Comparison ‘bottom up approach’
In the bottom up approach the consumer is an active participant
● B2C, social media, social networking and social software have started to
impact how B2B software is sold, implemented and even built. (1)
● An early, successful, bottom up B2B player included General Electrics
http://www.gereports.com/ (2)
Of course the key to successful bottom up user acquisition is that it’s viral.
● STEPPS John Berger (3)
7. Maersk’s use of bottom up
“We did the opposite (to the top down approach). Management trusted me to handle social media. We’ve taken a more
explorative approach and focused on getting the culture and the organization onboard.” - Wichmann
How?
He focused on ‘Approachability and personality’ rather than marketing. In this way he allowed
consumers to feel involved in the company,
- “Social media is about communication, not marketing. It’s about engaging, not pushing.”
Results
Maersk’s engagement with consumers on social media was four times higher than
the average B2B brand.
8. Content strategy - Humanising Shipping
● Maersk’s contents strategy has been to humanise an otherwise, cold, and often seen as boring industry, and
typically exciting B2B marketing.
● Humanisation and viral impact through the ‘STEPPS’ frame work, engaging clients and followers from outside of
the industry - Using the ‘stories’ element.
● Used their huge database of photographs and stories to portray a company with a long prolific history
● Adds to the human element.
● Though detailing employees and their experiences within the company.
● Also engaged those who are shipping fanatics - Maersk hashtag.
Humanising companies through social media has been proven to be successful,
Innocent smoothies does this very well, although admittedly a more ‘fun’ business;
they have managed to achieve a 35% user engagement on twitter.
9. Content Strategy - Transparency
● Maersk Line have, as well as intermittent posts detailing the the company, been able to use their
social media platforms as a way to respond quickly to any shortcomings in the company.
● Maersk Norwich Whale Incident - When a whale got caught on the bow of one of their cargo ships,
Maersk Line were quick to respond with a release on social media;
● Avoiding a PR scandal
● A level of company transparency on social media is again proven to be an effective content
strategy, as in the case of;
SouthWest airlines - when one of their aircrafts made a nose dive landing, this was quickly reported on
the company Facebook, where they were commended for being the first to admit fault.
10. Content Strategy - Implementing ‘Big Ideas’
● Maersk’s twitter has the most regimented content strategy - between 3 - 5 tweets per day.
● Content strategy research - their followers on Twitter had higher incomes than those on Facebook
● Twitter post - hard hitting / serious / charitable awareness
Implementation Strategy + Content Strategy = Big Ideas
● Getting closer to customers - Maersk uses content to answer questions before they need to be asked.
● Better press coverage - Using Google+ ‘hangout to hold press events
● Gain higher employee engagement - Employee stories Tumblr blogs and Staff Facebook engagement
through sharing voyage journeys etc.
● Develop more brand awareness - through humanisation of their social media platforms;
- engagement with Cargo Ship fanatics,
- humanised level of business
- their stories of their history and their employee tales and anecdotes
12. Platform Channels
● Some channels communicate a more
corporate message than others.
○ For example, LinkedIn hosts experts
opinions while Instagram is often
used to share pictures with a story.
● Twitter is in the middle because it often
includes tweets from customers
13. Maersk Line Social
● Maersk’s own social media channel made up of all the news from the
various 10 other platforms.
● Additionally, uses platform to keep clients up to date, offer advice and opens
the communication
● Expert Blogs: Promote trust and boost SEO.
● Communities are a great way to promote
communication with customers.
○ SAP, Starbucks.
14. Global Competitor Landscape
Mearsk Line leads the field with a huge social media presence
1.1 million FB likes
115k twitter followers
11,000 FB likes
27,832 LinkedIn followers
4,100 FB likes
1,300 twitter followers
6,000 FB likes
69,000 FB likes
15. How will competitors react?
Short term
● Social Media is primarily for B2B companies
○ Competitors are likely to be unenthused by social media as they market themselves to
businesses and so any social media presence would be ‘boring’
Evergreen Shipping could do a
lot to increase their social media
presence
16. How will competitors react?
Long Term
Social media is not a ‘phase’ it is a growing culture and competitors will not sit
by and let Maersk Line take control of this whole area.
Potential game plan:
Establish Objectives
1. Get together a small,
strong team focussed
on a social media
strategy.
2. Establish goals and
motivations
Launch social media
1. Engage users on
targeted platforms
2. Showcase core goals
and achievements
3. Share industry news
and encourage debate
Measure the Results:
Measure response from social
media platforms and how this
relates to sales.
Reformulate objectives and
strategy accordingly
17. Challenges moving forward - Moving on from traditional
marketing
● The risk involved in moving from traditional advertising revenues to a marketing
campaign based majorly on Social Media
● only 22% of Maersk Line’s followers are customers - deemed overzealous.
● Are the social media efforts enough to decrease spending on traditional advertising
revenues?
● Maersk Line have already shown proficiency in ‘earned’ social media = lower risk.
● Predict a rise of 12.7 in global spending on digital marketing spending from 2014 to
2019,
● An estimated rise of 5% for traditional television marketing.
● This could show that increasing spending in social media marketing could be less
risky in terms of competitiveness that not increasing spending.
18. Challenges moving forward - Pay-offs.
● Pay offs in spending on social media spans more than just increased customers;
● customer satisfaction increased - when surveyed 67.1% of customers said social
media had raised their impression of the business = Big Ideas so I would say is a
definite measure of success .
● Increased employee engagement = Big Ideas.
● Maersk Lines’s Social Media strategy has payed, further investment would surely
develop this.
● Engaged workers are more productive workers
● ‘responding’ integral part of any company's social media strategy = customer
satisfaction increase
● Customers questions answered quickly or already.
19. Challenges moving forward - Taking advantage of poor
performance
● Decreasing financial performance in the company / globally
● The performance of shipping companies foreshadows the state of the economy
● they are currently pricing containers at well below the operating cost = 2008 crash.
● “Maersk owns the world’s largest container shipping company and is seen as a bellwether for
global trade, which it estimated grew just 0-1 per cent last year against double-digit growth before
the financial crisis.”
● Turning a weakness to a social media strength.
● Engaging professionals in streams of Social Media
(perhaps LinkedIn and Google+)
● E.g. economists, politicians, lawyers
● add a whole new dimension;providing in depth coverage
relating themselves to world trade and the world economy.
20. Where to go next?... Transparency and Open
Source
