Goals of Social Media Marketing

The goals of John Reed’s social media marketing on Instagram are illustrated in the light of CBBE.

Therefore, the expert interview revealed essential insights in terms of brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality and brand loyalty.

The expert interview with Martin Meyer reveals that John Reed pursues one key objective with its social media marketing as he explains: “It's all about the […] USP’s that set us apart from the competitors.

And this is definitely a major goal in our social media marketing”.

Therefore, it is crucial to communicate the brand accordingly to its values which the expert elaborates by saying: “[…] we always want to communicate a lot of brand values and of course we can communicate our brand values perfectly on social media.”. Also, in relation to the interaction with the John Reed community does social media and particularly Instagram represent an efficient customer relationship management tool. Apart from the communication between the brand and the customers it enables John Reed to react quickly to criticism and to appease people.

Even though Instagram is also used as a sales channel, its main function is to create brand awareness.

According to Martin Meyer, creating brand awareness is an overall desired goal and has an enormous relevance in the objectives of John Reed’s social media marketing. This is due to the opportunity to create brand awareness among potential customers who have never experienced the brand before. Therefore, John Reed uses the possibility to communicate their unique values by posting pictures, videos and stories.

Due to the Instagram story format, John Reed is able to create awareness by sharing stories of the own content such as live workouts, home workouts and club opening events but also to re-post stories shared by followers and customers. Martin explains that it is always considered: “What is cool, interesting content and how can we encourage people to engage with us, e.g. via hashtags or via reposts.”.

Therefore, re-posts, again, represent an efficient and relevant tool as they simultaneously increase the reach. Fitness influencers are also a vital tool in order to create brand awareness since they are often targeting different customer groups and are thus often used within the social media marketing strategy.

73 With respect to brand associations the interview reveals that the Instagram account of John Reed is mainly used to communicate the cool and urban attitude of the brand. Consequently, it is desired to create exactly these associations with the brand through Instagram. The communication of the John Reed values on Instagram is supposed to emphasize that John Reed is a “cool and aesthetic place” where the costumer can have fun together with the community. In line with this, the emotions and feelings of the consumers are supposedly addressed via social media. The expert explains: “For us it is more an emotional approach as opposed to the functional approach at McFit. […]. And we also try to appeal to the emotions and the heart in the same way. […] It’s about the John Reed feeling, i.e. the entire training experience should feel different”. John Reed wants to be associated with positive feelings and emotions by communicating the training atmosphere, the music, the design and, of course, the community on social media. Therefore, positive feelings and emotions such as fun, joy and pleasure towards the “cool and urban” John Reed brand are among the most valuable associations. However, Martin Meyer points out that it is crucial to stay approachable and humble because “coolness is only cool as long as people can understand it […]”.

Martin Meyer explains that it is not focused within the social media marketing strategy to create brand associations related to the gym’s price segment even though they “[…] have sales campaigns that also focus on price or certain price offers”. Thus, price offers are only advertised for new club openings. It is perceived to be more important to focus on the brand’s emotional values in order to make it admirable to customers. As this is best done on Instagram, marketing campaigns focused on price are implemented via other channels, such as the corporate website.

Consequently, the focus on social media is not placed on sales and it is not necessarily desired to create associations that are limited to the price. Instead, and as previously outlined, brand associations regarding the “cool”, “urban”, “aesthetic” and “unique” brand concept are intended. The brand association cloud in Figure 15 summarizes the desired brand associations.

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Figure 15: John Reed Brand Association Cloud. Source: Authors’ own Depiction.

Here the link to the third brand asset, namely the perceived quality can be traced. The expert notes that quality can be communicated on Instagram but that “We want to communicate our USPs. So high quality in terms of in terms of USPs”. Thus, the John Reed Instagram account is aimed to be perceived high-quality in terms of aesthetics. However, the brand wants to be perceived as a premium brand which is also supported by Martin Meyer saying, “We always speak a little affectionately of the premium discount segment”. Hence, John Reed is planning to open new clubs offering saunas and whirlpools which will then be in a higher price category (40-80€ monthly) which is why “the entire brand will also get a higher quality image”.

According to Martin Meyer, brand loyalty is also considered in the social media marketing of John Reed and represents another important factor. Attention is paid to loyalty of existing customers by creating

“campaigns for existing customers, which is also very important. This is also a main goal in any case, to bind people to us [through Instagram]”. Further, the expert views the John Reed Instagram account as a customer relationship management tool used to increase the customer loyalty. Events are important to increase brand loyalty why “[…] we also regularly hold various events, where we interact with the community via social media and try to involve them in some way through various measures”. However, even though binding the existing customers to the brand and strengthening the relationship through social

75 media is vital according to Martin Meyer, it is not the main objective within the social media marketing strategy.

Taking John Reed’s social media marketing strategy in the light of all four brand assets of CBBE into account, it can be concluded that the creation of brand awareness and brand associations are the most relevant dimensions. Thus, the key focus lies on creating brand awareness and communicating brand associations that are in accordance with the brand values. However, John Reed is aware of perceived quality and brand loyalty but does not consider them any further in their social media marketing strategy which is also reflected in Table 3.

Brand Awareness Brand Associations Perceived Quality Brand Loyalty

Pictures Cool Aesthetics Campaigns

Videos Urban High-Quality Customer Relationship

Management

Story-format Lifestyle Premium-Discount

Segment Events

Paid Campaigns Music Communication of

USP's Influencer Marketing Design

Events Community

Communication of USPs

Table 3: John Reed's Brand Assets based on Aaker (1991). Source: Authors’ own Depiction.

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