Introduction
Coca-Cola Company is a multinational organization, a leading manufacturer, distributor, and marketer of soft drinks and beverages. The firm has developed a digital marketing strategy that keeps its consumer engagement relevant and renewed. The company’s videos and the new corporate are mainly aimed at promoting and implement its 2020 vision for marketing. Currently, its marketing strategy is among the most successful regarding consumer interaction and engagement. Their approach is useful, inspiring, and compelling, with rich ideas that spread through any medium or channel. Therefore, the justification of this discussion is to examine the digital marketing strategy for the Coca-Cola brand.
Content Marketing Goals
The brand’s content marketing goal is to generate awareness and engagement. Their main vision is double the consumption of Coke brand worldwide by 2020 through earning consumer attention and trust (Busk 13). In fact, the major goal makes Coca-Cola come up with compelling videos in their content marketing strategy is to promote worldwide advertisement of the Coke brand. To promote authenticity and transparency to its audiences, Coca-Cola aims to inform, entertaining, and changing minds. According to Busk, the company has implemented practical elements of the brand idea that is dispersed systematically across all channels of advertisement with the aim of facilitating unity and cooperation in its brand experience (13).
Target Consumer Segments
The Coca-Cola Company maintains a “Multi-segment” strategy, which implies that the firm has more than a single, well-defined segment of consumers it targets across the globe. The company focuses on many consumer segments due to diversity in its products. Currently, Coca-Cola has more than 400 different product lines. Following the target consumer segments of the company, the focus is on people of different ages across the globe. For instance, most Coca-Cola products in their soft drink line are sold to various people across the world, regardless of their age, gender, or ethnic group. Additionally, the company has differentiated its products to target teens and adult aged between 20-30 years.
Demographic Segmentation. The company targets people aged between 15-20 years and above. In fact, the target is based on people from each gender with a variety of its drinks. The company’s segmentation also considers the income of the target consumers. For instance, the company has developed segments of different income levels, such as selling returnable glass bottles for low-income customers and selling coke in tins for the high-income level.
Psychographic Segmentation. Based on their efforts to differentiate products to meet customer needs, many consumers have become brand conscious and do not drink beverages from less known brands. The company has used digital content marketing as a strategy to convey messages so that consumers continue drinking Coca-Cola as a way of showing their status. The company’s ability to satisfy different customer needs has been promoted by the corporation’s design of its products to meet the needs of many customers from various target markets, including sexes, ethnic groups, and ages.
Content Marketing Channels
The company uses many marketing channels to deliver content to the audience. In this aspect, the company pays to provide content or uses its platforms to communicate to its target audiences. The Coca-Cola Company uses the following channels to pass information. First, there are the social media platform, which are the central channels employed by the company to deliver information to the audience. As such, it is a chain that comprises people from all backgrounds and market segments. The social media platform is currently revolutionizing the company’s marketing strategy, just like any other multinational corporation. Worth noting is that Coca-Cola owns its social marketing channels and audiences through its websites, blogs, catalogs, and newsletters.
The company also uses public social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to deliver content to the target audience. Secondly, the company advertises on TV to pass information to the target audiences, as asserted by Aaker (39). Besides being featured in their coverage, the Coca-Cola Company pays media stations to play digital content such as videos to pass valuable information. Sometimes, other than paying for delivery of information, the company earns exposure from reports and influencers, an aspect that promotes the passing of information to the audiences.
Categories of Coca Cola’s Marketing Channels
Although Coca-Cola markets its product through a sophisticated marketing and distributing channel, the firm mainly distributes through paid, earned, and owned marketing channels. First, the paid channels refer to all those channels that require Coca-Cola to pay to deliver content to an audience. They include advertisements made for TV or other social media networks and channels like the YouTube (Busk 14). On the other hand, the company has tried to earn coverage and exposure from reporters, a channel that is classified under conventional channels. Lastly, other channels, including websites, newsletters, and blogs, are classified under-owned since the company directly controls them. On the other hand, the social media channel is either classified as owned and earned. However, social media platforms are not classified as owned marketing channel since the company has no control over the experience and access to their fans. For instance, Facebook charges the company’s brands to reach followers and fans.
Relevance of Coca Cola’s Content to Its Consumers
The Coca-Cola Company has created an emotional bond content in its videos through its storytelling strategy. The videos are full of compelling stories that assist in promoting consumer engagement, earn attention, and build trust. For example, the company’s new digital magazines not only aim at providing the company’s information, but also offer relevant storytelling articles, which channel content in a relevant way. Therefore, it is the objective of the business to produce relevant content that customers will care about. Moreover, the company videos entertain people of different ages, making the content relevant, authentic, and practical.
Dimensions of Community and Context in Coca Cola’s Marketing Strategy
Coca-Cola has clearly established the dimensions of context and community in its marketing strategy through many ways, as reflected in its owned media strategies. The company has developed a brand community through its website that enables it to connect its customers with each other. Some community assists the company in building connections and its channels for delivering content to its audiences. Therefore, the company uses its viral brand communities to focus on the connections its customers have with each other (Aaker 39). On the other hand, Coca-Cola Company has established the context dimension in its content strategy by creating engagement platforms that not only push messages but also serve many purposes. Additionally, their strategy has created a context that captures data and creates value, thus establishing the context dimension.
Conclusion
As evident from the discussion, the Coca-Cola Company has set up an efficient marketing strategy promoting its brand positioning. The company has utilized content marketing channels, such as the social media, websites, blogs, and newsletters, which remain relevant and serve their purpose efficiently. The company has recognized its consumers’ needs and differentiated its products to satisfy the target customers.
Works Cited
Aaker, David. “Four ways digital works to build brands and relationships.” Journal of Brand Strategy, vol. 4 no.1, 2015, pp. 37-48.
Busk, Doug. “How Coca-Cola Journey transformed corporate communications.” Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, vol. 4, no.1, 2016, pp. 6-16.