Maersk Line

Maersk Line: B2B Social Media —“It’s Communication, Not Marketing”

Why do you think Maersk Line was so successful in social media? What do you think are Maersk Line’s key drivers of success? Evaluate how Maersk Line executed on its social media plan and platforms. How do you think Jonathan Wichmann calculated the 1,500 percent ROI on Facebook? Do you agree with his calculation? Why or why not? How do you think Maersk Line’s competitors will react to the company’s success in social media? What are the challenges facing Maersk Line in social media going forward? What should Maersk Line do next? What areas should the company focus on and why?

Case Discussion Questions

Launch of FB first • Winchmann recognizes that Facebook is a much more personal medium than the conventional large-scale alternative LinkedIn. • His objective is to target individuals as persons irrespective of whether they are employees, customers, or shipping experts/enthusiasts. Personal tone of the program • Content that heavily builds on people’s emotions and aesthetic sense. • Not necessarily a natural approach for an industrial firm (especially for Maersk that is a rather secretive private company).   • E.g . http://maersklinesocial.com/clara-maersk-and-the-rescue-of- 3628-vietnamese-refugees-in-1975/   Genuine authenticity of the content posted and shared. • Wichmann doesn’t shy away from reporting on embarrassing events, such as the Norwich whale incident for example, and manages to turn around the situation by his honest discussions, eventually gaining considerable support from the company’s critics. • The above three elements are largely responsible for the campaign’s success in terms of the rapid growth of fan numbers and, more importantly, engagement level.

Campaign Characteristics

Two additional factors which contributed to the success: • Power of images and video as opposed to using predominantly text. • Use of the corporate picture library to initiate the posting stream triggered easy following by fans. • Augmenting the impact on social media platforms other than Facebook. • Differentiating the platforms across the various audiences and targeting his messages/content appropriately. • Understanding that the success of the campaign critically depends on user- generated content.

Campaign Characteristics

Social Media Platforms Table TN-1: Differentiation Across Platforms Platform

Audience

Purpose

Content type

Facebook

Everyone

Brand Awareness

Best of all stories

Collect fans! Twitter

Professionals, Press

Share serious news

News stories

Customers

Listen/Respond

Links to stories

Employees LinkedIn

Google+

Few photos/videos

Shipping Experts

Connect to customers

Updates

Employees

Listen/Discuss

Local announcements

Professionals

Get ideas

Serious business news

Customers Innovators/Suppliers

Innovations

• Platforms are cross-referenced, which allows members to reach various types of content (such as albums, videos, and news). • Maersk Line social (the company website) serves as the ultimate repository, which allows people to dive deeper in stories, beyond the short posts on the various social sites.

Budget and ROI •

650K Facebook fans—very engaged and diverse

•

40K Twitter followers

•

23K LinkedIn followers

•

20K Instagram followers

Based on these figures (and the Facebook likes in particular) the case goes on to calculate a 1,500 percent ROI with the following arguments: •

Average value of a Facebook ‘like’ in B2B: $3.60 per year

•

Maersk’s estimate: $5 (for a customer) because – –

5 percent engagement rate (4 times higher than average B2B site) Not all fans see the posts (EdgeRank algorithm)

•

Only 22 percent of the 600K fans are customers (the rest are: 42 percent shipping experts, 11 percent employees, and 25 percent other)

•

Discount by 50 percent: $2.50 per fan

•

This means a total benefit of $1.5 million

•

Total costs: $100K

Other outcomes of the campaign 

Public exposure –

Prizes o o o o

–

2012 Social Media Campaign of the Year (Berlin) Community Presence Award, 2012 Suggested User List on Instagram Twitter account: ‘most influential online presence in shipping industry’

Broad Press coverage: (Lloyd’s List, Forbes, BloombergBusinessweek, Journal of commerce, TradeWinds, etc. ).



Huge employee engagement (better retention, employee satisfaction, and engagement)



Increased sales (additional leads, feedback to customer service)



Better customer service (reduced headcount, 100 percent increase in efficiency, increased customer satisfaction, etc.)

Organizational Issues Proposed Allocation of Requested Budget

Customer Service Social media lead (0.5 FTE)

Head of Social Media (4 FTE)

Sales Social media lead (0.5 FTE)

Community manager (“journalist”) Social Media planner (“analyst”) Collaboration agent (industrial PhD) (0.5) Content creation (country support) (0.5)

Proposed Organizational Structure for the Social Media Group



Great example of social media launch! – – – –



Results are fabulous! – – –



Small, Experimental, and Independent In-house, not outsourced Broad approach—many connected platforms Targeted content and authentic style

Measured ROI is “1000s percent” Large impact on the brand: – Relationship benefits – Process benefits Improved operations – Sales – Customer support

Scale-up was less successful – –

Poor budget and small dedicated staff Poor integration with other parts of the company

Summary