BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand Marketing Strategy Analysis & Solution

Marketing & Sales Case Study Analysis and Solution

At Fern Fort University, we use Harvard Business Review (HBR) marketing principles and framework to analyze BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand case study. BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand is a Harvard Business Review case study written by Jennifer L. Aaker, Debra Schifrinfor the students of Sales & Marketing. The case study also include other relevant topics and learning material on – Marketing, Social platforms

Strategic Marketing Analysis of BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand case study written by Jennifer L. Aaker, Debra Schifrin will comprise following sections –

BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand Case Description
Marketing Definition
Market Potential Analysis of BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand
Market Share Potential Analysis
Segmentation and Segment Attractiveness Analysis
Competition and Competitiveness Analysis of BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand
Customer Value Analysis of BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand case study

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BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand Marketing Case Description

Sales & Marketing Case Study | Authors :: Jennifer L. Aaker, Debra Schifrin

In 2012 BabyCenter was the largest parenting platform and parenting media company in the world. It provided expert advice to pregnant women and new mothers while connecting these women to each other online and in person. The company had 110 employees, with operations in 23 regions around the world in 14 languages. The case provides students with a practical, real world example of how to create and grow a social brand. It details how BabyCenter evolved as a social brand through implementing several mechanisms: cultivating employee innovation, creating customer communities, empowering influencers, and enabling great storytelling. BabyCenter cultivated employee innovation through its three-day "BabyCenter Innovation Days," held every six weeks. These days involved brainstorming sessions, breaking into cross-departmental and intra-departmental teams, and presenting innovative business ideas to the rest of the company. These ideas directly benefited the company, as 60 to 70 percent of them went to market. BabyCenter created customer community online through an interactive website, and in the real world through "BabyCenter Birth Clubs." Using the customer data it collected, the company connected women in the same stage of pregnancy to each other to form the clubs, which served as social organizations and support networks. Through its robust web analytics and surveys, BabyCenter identified its most active and trusted online users, the "influencers,'' and worked deliberately to cultivate its relationships with them. One way the company did this was through launching a social campaign highlighting several influencer moms who worked with charitable organizations. BabyCenter also understood and embraced the power of stories to create brand value, and it gave customers the opportunity to tell their own stories through the website and beyond.

Marketing, Social platforms

Marketing Definition

According to American Marketing Association – Marketing is a set of activities that a firm undertakes for creating, communicating, delivering, & exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Kotler explains - Marketing is a process by which organizations can create value for its potential and current customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value in return.

Market Potential Analysis of BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand

Market potential analysis comprises evaluating the overall market size of the related product that the firm is planning to launch. This will involve defining – Why the target market segment needs the product and how it will provide a solution to full its consumers’ needs. Market potential of BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand products various on factors such as –

Maturity of the market. In mature markets the profitability is often stable but the market potential is less as most of the players have already taken market share based on the segment they are serving. New players have to go for market share strategies in marketing.
Technological competence of the existing players and culture of innovation and development in the industry.
Untapped market sizes and barriers to both enter the market and serving the customers. Often companies can easily see the unfulfilled needs in the markets but they are difficult to serve as there are costly barriers.
Define the core need that your product is serving and list out all the direct and indirect competitors in the market place. This will help not only in positioning of the product but also in defining or creating a segment better.
Uncovering the current and untapped market sizes and barriers to serving the larger market. Analyze the areas that you need to sort out while launching the products to wider market and what are the challenges the firm will face in market place.
Estimate the current stage in product life cycle and its implications for marketing decisions for the product.

Market Share Potential Analysis

Understanding the buyer behavior model for BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brandindustry.
Identifying the market share drivers relevant to BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand market.
Segment Attractiveness Analysis – Our analysis will work out which are the most attractive segments and which are the one the firm should go ahead and target. We point out in great detail which segments will be most lucrative for the company to enter.
Understanding the different needs and relative value of your offering by segment.
Developing segment priorities and positioning the product based on the product need fit developed by the firm.

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Competition & Competitive Position Analysis

Uncovering customer-based competitive positions for key rivals and firm’s offering. This will not only help in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors but also help in defining and positioning of the product.
Developing a positioning and launching strategy. It will require not only distribution channel analysis but also promotion mix for the product.
Strategic Marketing Planning — the process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organization’s objectives and capabilities and the ever evolving marketing opportunities for its products.

BabyCenter: Creating a Social Brand - Customer Value Analysis

Capturing customer value is essential to marketing efforts as it results in higher return in the form of both current & future sales, greater market share, and higher profits. By creating superior customer value, the organization can create highly satisfied customers who stay loyal and buy more. This, in turn, means greater long-run returns for the firm.

The crucial role of customer perceived value in acquiring and retaining profitable customers. Product differentiation is often based on building on a value niche that a firm believes that is very important to the customer. This niche contributes to perceived value. If the perceived value is high then customer stay loyal to the product if not then she can switch to the competitor’s product.
Graphically displaying value differences for deeper understanding and better internal communication. This helps is building a narrative that a customer can identify with. The better the insight more are the chances of connecting with the potential customers.
Identifying and selecting actionable value creation options. This can help in increasing the customer lifetime value. Customer lifetime value is the value of the entire stream of purchases that the customer would make over a lifetime of patronage.