NORTON



Table of Contents

Executive Summary 3

Competitor Scanning & Review 4

5

Customer Chatter Scanning & Review 6

Target Customer Persona 7

8

Trends & Research 9

Conclusion 10

Endnotes………………………………………………………………………………..11

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Executive Summary

Norton Internet Security, developed and distributed by Symantec Corporation, provides malware prevention and removal during a subscription period. It uses signatures and heuristics to identify computer viruses and protect the computer from being hacked into by outside users. The purpose of this audit is to identify what marketing strategies Norton uses or should use to compete with its competitors, specifically in the area of social media.

Our team, from Abilene Christian University, has analyzed Norton’s competitors such as McAfee and Microsoft, to determine each company’s use of social media and its potential impact on sales. In addition, we have evaluated how they use social media to relate to customers’ needs and to help solve their problems. Customers should be able to access the sites quickly and efficiently with direct information from the company. We have also calculated the switching costs from traditional media to social media and how that will affect the company’s overall marketing budget.

Norton uses its social media already in a positive way, but we believe there may be some adjustments that can be made to benefit the company in even greater ways.

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|Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Analysis Pertaining to Online Presence |

|Social Media |Norton |McAfee |Microsoft |

|Do you have a Facebook? |Yes |Yes |Yes |

|Do you have a Twitter? |Yes |No |Yes |

|Do you utilize blogging? |Yes |No |No |

|Do you use YouTube? |Yes |Yes |Yes |

|Do you have a website? |Yes |Yes |Yes |

|Do you use LinkedIn? |Yes |Yes |Yes |

|Strengths |  |  |  |

|What are your business advantages? |Direct link to all social media |Can become a fan on Facebook |More word of mouth advertising |

| |sites on home page of website |directly from homepage | |

|Where are you making the most money?|Security |Security |Operating Systems and Applications |

|Core competencies? | | |(not security) |

|What are you doing well? |Easy to navigate website and find |"Become a fan on Facebook" on |Social media is put together well; |

| |company's links to social media |homepage; Many different social |Many different media sites |

| |sites; Strong brand |media accounts, with many followers | |

|Weaknesses |  |  |  |

|What areas are you avoiding? |Improving the reach of the companies|No Twitter account; Only focuses on |Doesn't use RSS feeds; No direct |

| |social media |Facebook |links to social media on homepage |

|Where do you lack resources? |Can always continue improving upon |Only advertise Facebook on website; |Doesn't advertise any social media |

| |each social media site/tool |do not use or advertise any other |on the website |

| | |social media sites | |

|What are you doing poorly? |Room for improvement with social |Fake websites; can't tell what one |Do not advertise social media sites |

| |media to build customer loyalty and |is the official site; Aren't making |at all; They don’t have news updates|

| |drive cross-selling |social media essential to the | |

| | |customer | |

|What needs improvement? |Make social media icons larger on |Quality of website |Access to social media |

| |website homepage | | |

|Opportunities |  |  |  |

|Any beneficial trends? |Increasing use of social media and |The website and use of social media |The creation of social media |

| |spending more advertising money on | | |

| |social media | | |

|Niches that competitors are missing?|Very specialized in computer |More of a broad computer security |Well-known name, also in many areas |

| |security | |of computers. Wide fan base |

|New technologies? |"Ubiquity" technology - a new |Has older types of technology |Many new technologies: cloud |

| |paradigm in security utilizing | |computing, windows live, business |

| |reputation based on "crowd-sourcing"| |security |

| |type concepts | | |

|New needs of customers? |Determining how to take advantage of|Needs to focus on a target consumer |Needs to spread the word about its |

| |cloud, mobile, and social | |security through its social media |

| |technologies | | |

|Threats |  |  |  |

|Obstacles to overcome? |Focus on social media more |Needs to create a Twitter account |Advertise about its securirty more |

| | | |through social media |

|Aggressive competitors? |EMC, McAfee/Intel, Microsoft, HP, |Norton, EMC, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, |EMC, McAfee/Intel, Norton, HP, |

| |Cisco, Oracle, CommVault, Trend |Oracle, CommVault, Trend Micro, |Cisco, Oracle, CommVault, Trend |

| |Micro, Sophos, Kaspersky, Autonomy, |Sophos, Kaspersky, Autonomy, |Micro, Sophos, Kaspersky, Autonomy, |

| |Google/Postini |Google/Postini |Google/Postini |

|Negative economic conditions? |Causing SMB and consumers to cut |" |" |

| |costs where possible, causing the | | |

| |consideration of "good enough" | | |

| |products | | |

|Changing business climate? |Always. At this point, |" |" |

| |virtualization, cloud, mobile | | |

| |devices, social media, global | | |

| |competition, changing customer | | |

| |needs, etc all present both | | |

| |opportunities and risks | | |

Soak it in.

This SWOT analysis speaks for itself. Norton is successful at many things but also needs to improve on certain areas:

-Improve reach of the company’s social media

-Improve social media to build customer loyalty and drive cross-selling

-Make social media icons larger on website homepage

You can also see that Norton is not the only company behind on social media, both of it’s competitors have quite a bit of work ahead of them, too. No one is at a sustainable competitive advantage.

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Customer Chatter Scanning and Review

We can keep up with the popularity of social media sites very easily, but the question is, will yours step on the competition?

Get customers actively participating with Norton’s social media more by improving these numbers:

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For YouTube and Blog visits you are ahead, but what are you going to do to maintain this competitive advantage?

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Nothing is more important for Norton than connecting with its customers. According to The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, the new rules of marketing are all about authenticity, not spin. Customers want participation, not propaganda. It is essential that marketers shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the Web.

At first thought, the pie charts without numbers in them seem vague, but the numbers don’t really matter. What needs to be done is increase the total amount of your section in the pie, by reaching more people through social media.

Target Persona

It is absolutely essential that marketers understand their customers. It is encouraged to be as specific as possible. Give your target persona a name, talk about his or her attitudes and habits, and think about where he or she hangs out online. The more thought that is put into this particular person, the more successful you will be in reaching them.

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The Norton Customer, Mark, pays a premium compared to free security solutions available in the marketplace.  He pays a premium because he realizes the critical importance of protecting his and his family’s digital information world. Other’s, like Mark, visit all of Norton’s sites, not just the website. Websites are old news. Don’t get me wrong, companies need them, but that is not the main platform people use to get the facts. They use blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. This is where the “Where does the customer hang out online?” falls into place. It is just as significant to keep up with the social media sites than it is your company’s own website. Mark, and others like him, will be visiting so wouldn’t you like to have a say in what they read?

Think About It…!

Consider focusing on the Early Adopters. They decrease uncertainty about a new idea by adopting it; they then convey a subjective evaluation of the innovation to near-peers by means of interpersonal networks. These are the individuals who risk trying a new product based on what it says it would do rather than from actual consumer feedback.

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Ideas on How to Get Early Adopters, Prospective Buyers, or Your Already Loyal Customers More Involved:

Facebook:

• Put a “Become a Fan of Norton” link directly on Symantec’s homepage

• Offer discounts

• Post videos of happy customers

Twitter:

• Hold a Tweet contest(winner gets free trial or subscription

• Collaborate and post customer reviews via tweets

Blogging

• Have both structured and unstructured blogs going

• Make some blogs about Norton, but also have some talk about how Norton protects families online

• Talk about past conventions

Website

• Have the social media links on the homepage

• List the conventions that Norton representatives will be speaking at

Trends and Research

It has been perceived that social media is just a “fad” of the recent years. However, what many companies are beginning to understand is that social media is showing no signs of disappearing. In 2009, there was a massive growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter grew 1,382% in February of 2009, and had a total of about 7 million new visitors in that same month. In the years to come, social media is assumed to grow exponentially.

The explosion of social media and the importance of a business to use social media is becoming commonly known. The majority of companies, 66.5%, have started using social media in the past 18 months, and only half of those companies have only been using social media for about a year. However, it is not just the fact of having social media, it’s how the company uses it. A great example of this is Best Buy’s, “Twelpforce.” Best Buy employees use their very Twitter and company ID to register for Twelpforce, which allows each individual employee to tweet separately displaying them in one single stream news feed on the same twitter page. This allows the employees to provide efficient customer support right onto twitter. By appealing to customer needs instead of just advertising the company, Best Buy is essentially “marketing without marketing.” Best Buy’s example pertains to Norton because they are both in the same area of expertise. If Norton was to create a system that uses twitter for customer service for their products, it would boost business just like it did for Best Buy.

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Conclusion

Social media can be used in many ways:

• To reach new customers that may not be familiar with Norton

• To reinforce the brand and value to existing customers

• To up-sell additional products and services to existing customers

• To build brand loyalty by a easy and delightful user experience – licensing, downloading, installing, updating, supporting, etc – in other words, the user experience can be enhanced by using social media such as blogs to help with these aspects of the user experience

Facebook is the best social media platform. It is estimated that Facebook has about 135.1 million monthly view in the U. S. alone. It actually has a lower clickthrough rate for it’s advertisements than other major websites for its banner ads. What this means is it is not as popular as the other major website ads, however on fan pages for products or brands, some companies have reported a clickthrough rate as high as 6.49% for Wall posts. This is a staggering statistic compared to the low click-through rate of .04% for the banner ads. Why is this? Facebook, like all social media sites, is about community. When someone logs onto Facebook, they are not looking to buy any thing directly from the page, but share information with one another. On the other hand, if Norton had a fantastic Facebook fan page that was linked to many profiles, they would experience exponentially more results.

• Compared to McAfee, Norton is lagging in the use of Facebook

• It is widely known that Facebook and Twitter are becoming necessary for a business. What some businesses forget is the smaller social media sites such as Flikr or YouTube

o Develop all kinds of social media

• ENGAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS!

Ask yourself these questions:

What would drive customers to our twitter site?

How can we help fix our customers problems easier and more efficiently?

How can we build community between the company and the customer?

“Social Media is a powerful communications tool that offers a real platform for innovation in both marketing communications and customer service!  Effective use of social media, therefore, can lead to a powerful combination of increasing customers and enhanced loyalty due to their overall customer experience across the evaluation, decision, purchase, and support process.”

--Brent Simon, VP West Region Sales

Endnotes

November, Am Monday. "Six Social Media Trends for 2010 - David Armano - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review." Business Management Ideas - Harvard Business Review Blogs. 2 Nov. 2009. Web. 02 Dec. 2010. .

Van Groove, Jennifer. "5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now." Social Media News and Web Tips – Mashable – The Social Media Guide. Web. 02 Dec. 2010. .

Nielsen | Home. Web. 02 Dec. 2010. . (Nielsen, 2010) (Groove, 2010)

Blog Central. Web. 02 Dec. 2010. .

Symantec - AntiVirus, Anti-Spyware, Endpoint Security, Backup, Storage Solutions. Web. 02 Dec. 2010. .

Scott, David E. The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Print.

 — Quantcast Audience Profile". . 2010-10-27. Retrieved 2010-11-07.

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NORTON

AntiVirus

Lindsey Phillips

2010 Social Marketing Audit

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