One of the brands that I truly admire and select their products frequently is M&M’s owned by Mars Inc. In my opinion, this brand manages to simultaneously lead a successful advertising strategy and earn the trust of buyers. This is achieved by providing them with an extended range of tasty, high-quality products like candies, biscuits, chocolate eggs, ice cream, and other sweets. These products are popularized and promoted with the help of both social media platforms and traditional marketing channels.
Overall, M&M’s has several social network accounts, including Instagram (@mmschocolate), Twitter (@mmschocolate), and YouTube (M&M’S Chocolate); all three are used quite frequently. M&M’s Instagram page has 1.2 million followers, while Twitter and YouTube pages have a lot fewer subscribers: 192,937 and approximately 177,000 followers, respectively. This can be explained by the fact that Instagram is more convenient for many users. It does not require a video to be long and does not limit the number of characters in a post, allowing M&M’s to post more generalized content.
Further, one may notice that the brand does not often leverage the use of influencers to promote its products. Thus, in their Instagram account, there is only integration with an American rapper Lil Nas X (@lilnasx – 12.4 million followers) and Adidas: several posts are devoted to this collaboration. The posts on Twitter are the same, and it is difficult to find collaboration with influencers in M&M’s YouTube videos.
The brand also has successful TV advertising and a website where all important information is updated. If I had to decide what percentage of $1 million should be spent on social media and other digital marketing platforms, I would invest 30% in social networks. While TV, email, and other traditional advertisements are bright and still effective, they are more costly (Lyfe marketing, n.d.). At the same time, more and more people prefer social media platforms as their source of information, but reaching out to millions of users is quite cheap (Lyfe Marketing, n.d.). Consequently, a smaller part of the budget should be spent on accounts’ development.
Reference
Lyfe Marketing. (n.d.). Traditional media vs. social media advertising. Web.