Carmex: Leveraging Facebook for Marketing Research

Carmex: Leveraging Facebook for Marketing Research

Carmex is a company focused on producing lip balm since 1937. However, it wasn’t until recently when it has become increasingly competitive. Within the past five years, Carmex has achieved milestones such expanding into about 40 international markets and launching their first additional venture of skin care products. Thanks to social media, these expansions were made possible for Carmex to develop all of these initiatives.

Marketing Research

Carmex has taken on the idea to utilize social media as an important step in data mining. Recently, they have attempted to narrow the flavour choices from three to two through both an online survey of a cross-section of Internet households, and an online survey of Carmex Facebook likers.

Using the first choice of an audience comprising of selected Internet households would find a larger group of people. This increased amount of targeted reach could potentially reflect in a clearer market answer due to an adequate sample size. The data collection method is much quicker than traditional methods and it would also serve to increase the brand recognition and encourage new users to remember and use their products. However, the disadvantages are that the statistics wouldn’t be made up of mostly Carmex enthusiasts. This may not reflect the desires of the immediate customers and furthermore the households may not be in the same market that Carmex is targeting. There is also a chance that people will treat the online survey as a “spam” and the survey excludes those who don’t have internet while they may be an integral part of the market.

The benefit of an online survey of Carmex Facebooks likers would be the honest opinion from customers who are genuinely interested in Carmex. It would also promote interaction between Carmex and their consumers. The data collection through Facebook is also cheap, quick, and can increase audience reach to people of similar characteristics to their customers through “likes” and “engagement”. The limitation of Facebook is that the target market is smaller. The survey would not reflect the ideas of the customers who are not Facebook users and this small sample size may lead to bias. Furthermore, many Facebook users may not take surveys which further decreases the small audience size.

Facebook Engagement and Likes as Measurement

There are two key Facebook metrics of “likes” and “engagement”. “Likes” measure the number of Facebook audience for Carmex. In contrast, “engagement” measures how active its Facebook audience is with Carmex. When a liker posts a comment on the Carmex Facebook wall, likes its status, or replies to one of its posts, the engagement level increases. For Carmex, we believe “engagement” is more important because “engagement” better measures the consumer’s genuine interest in Carmex while the “likers” may not engage with Carmex at all.  

Evoking Engagement and Attracting Consumers

Engagement is important in establishing good customer relationships on Facebook. Engagement can be evoked by people posting, liking, replying, or sharing posts. Furthermore Carmex can create polls on Facebook page to evoke consumers’ “engagement”. When Carmex posts an open-ended question in its Facebook wall, it also creates an opportunity for “engagement” as customers can reply, agree, or disagree and create a conversation.

The main factor that attracts consumers to “like” a brand is having positive prior experiences with the brand or wanting to learn more about a brand. Great customer service plays a crucial role in this. Carmex can use other promotional strategies to attract and hopefully retain new customers and “likes”. For example, Carmex can announce special discounts exclusively on Facebook or introduce a contest where if consumers “like” Carmex on Facebook and share a comment, they will have a chance to win free products or coupons.  The contest will draw new consumers to the page, and the “likes” will increase dramatically.