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Bosch Professional Power Tools supplies various professional trades including the electrical, wood working and building industries with European market-leading professional power tools, covering forty countries within Europe. Due to the diversity across its target market, Bosch Professional Power Tools runs various social media services within its CRM programme, intended to reach all trades and demographics.
Bosch Professional Power Tools provides a social media service - the ‘Bob Community’ - which is accessible from its website. Towards the end of 2011 the social media service had attracted 460,000 visitors with 35,000 registrations. In late 2010, Bosch Professional Power Tools introduced its Facebook page and after a month in operation, it had attracted 4,000 fans.
Brief
Bosch Professional Power Tools needed to ascertain whether its investment in Facebook was reaching the desired demographic, and to measure the value of its Facebook fans compared to that of Bob Community users. This information would lead to the appropriate allocation of Bosch Professional Power Tools marketing resources and a focused social media CRM programme.
Bosch Professional Power Tools also highlighted the need to build relationships with key customers who, it felt, would significantly influence the purchasing behavior of other Facebook fans and visitors to the fan page. The challenge was to foster a relationship with these ‘brand advocates’, and to continue to facilitate positive interaction amongst the community, through an increasingly focused social media programme.
Strategy & Execution
Bosch Professional Power Tools implemented a software tool that enabled a comprehensive analysis of the audience interacting with its social media services. The software needed to generate a greater insight into its consumer profiles, and a clearer understanding of the reception to its new products and brand initiatives. After analysing the Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) market, Bosch Professional Power Tools selected the Social Insight tool by Globalpark, a QuestBack company, the European industry leader in EFM.
The Social Insight software collects and analyses both qualitative and quantative information to help Bosch Professional Power Tools better understand its social media audience interaction, as well as the professional trade that most frequently makes use of particular social media services. Bosch Professional Power Tools utilised the Social Insight software to continuously monitor audience participation and influence future audience interaction, brand strategy and product development.
Consumer feedback, opinion and recommendations have proven integral in furthering sales of Bosch Professional Power Tools products. Understanding the demographics of the audience using social media to broadcast its opinions to other potential customers enables Bosch Professional Power Tools to better serve professional trades with large social media communities. Ivar Kroghrud, CEO of QuestBack comments that “social media plays an increasing role in today’s communication between brands and customers. Facebook is an amazing channel for building brand awareness and represents a way for people to directly connect with the brands and products they care about. However, organisations are yet to leverage the full potential of this meeting place”.
Social CRM software fully integrates into the Facebook fan page, collating Facebook users’ profile data and direct feedback from their interactions with the page, creating a comprehensive profile of the individual consumer. This provided Bosch Professional Power Tools with statistical data from its social media CRM programmes through a fully integrated system, constantly analysing the profiles of users.
Results
Bosch Professional Power Tools needed to determine which audience demographic and professional trade was using its Facebook page and whether this audience differed from that utilising the Bob Community. By dividing the professional industries into separate trades, Bosch Professional Power Tools was able to quantitatively assess which trade used which social media service.
The results highlighted that, in particular, the wood working trade had a significant online audience utilising the Facebook fan page, enabling Bosch Professional Power Tools to create a bespoke social media focus within its CRM programme. This targeted the wood working trade with relevant Bosch Power Tools products, through the appropriate social media.
Bosch Professional Power Tools contended that only 11 per cent of its social media audience used both the Bob Community and Facebook, meaning it had to determine whether the demographics of the Facebook audience were, as it had intended, younger than that of the Bob Community. The analysis that followed revealed that the Facebook page attracted an over proportional number of younger users, including approximately six hundred apprentices in vocational schools, a market that Bosch Professional Power Tools had been aiming to target. Using this insight, it was then able to develop more targeted content and campaign activity that would be of interest to apprentices.
This analysis affirmed the importance of both the Facebook fan page and the Bob community to ensure that all of Bosch Professional Power Tools target markets were covered through a bespoke and focused social media programme. It has thus been able to analyse each individual user, to enable the generation of new initiatives for future and current customers.
Next steps
To continue its current success at reaching all segments of its intended market, Bosch Professional Power Tools needs to continue to tailor its CRM programme around the audience that is most likely to offer positive feedback with regards to the Bosch Professional Power Tools brand and to proactively respond to customers that feel alienated. The ability to interact with fans and access feedback on new products allows it to identify and interact with its customers and tailor social media to their requirements; thus Bosch Professional Power Tools can put the consumer at the heart of its business.
By monitoring feedback to its products, Bosch Professional Power Tools can get to know its fans and create real value through its social media in a CRM programme for both itself and its consumers. The ability to actively tailor media interaction with its audience enables Bosch Professional Power Tools to build valuable customer dialogues through the analysis of social media user data.
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