White Paper:
Victoria’s Secret is being successful with
its Facebook Strategy
Kelly Slama
IMC 619
Victoria’s Secret has successfully leveraged Facebook in ways that are
unique and eye catching. The brand is using Facebook as a tool to reach its
customers, and according to their fan numbers it is working. The company’s
strategy has been to promote not only the Victoria’s Secret brand but also its sub
brands like Victoria’s Secret Pink. Currently the company has a Victoria’s Secret
Fan Page and also a Victoria’s Secret Pink Fan Page. Both of the brand’s fan
pages have over one million fans (Victoria’s Secret has 2867,925 fans and
Victoria’s Secret Pink has 1,996,151 fans) 1.
Facebook is a permission-based marketing tool, where customers choose
to receive messages from a company. The Victoria’s Secret Facebook fan page
is targeted towards established lingerie customers and the Victoria’s Secret Pink
Facebook fan site targets a younger audience shopping for youth type products
and clothing. Customers opt-in to receive messages from both of the sites and
Facebook is successful at targeting both of Victoria’s Secret’s audiences.
Victoria’s Secret is unlike their competitors because they run and monitor
their Facebook fan pages. According to PageData, an independent Facebook
page metrics tool, only 4 of the top 25 fashion category Facebook pages are run
by the brand themselves6. Fashion competitors are staying out of the online
conversation while Victoria’s Secret is able to lead the online discussions. Online
Victoria’s Secret’s fan pages are ranked number 1 and number 4 out of all
fashion related pages6.
Victoria’s Secret is on-track with Facebook
The Victoria’s Secret Facebook pages are brand consistent, easy to
navigate, and is able to keep customers engaged with the sites. The Facebook
Fan pages allow fans to view videos, take quizzes, view product photos, and
(best of all) download coupons. These features keep fans coming back to the
brand sites for updates. The Fan Page content is action oriented and interactive.
It also has quite a bit of flash tools that allow the customer to choose their path
through some of the content. This is something that is not widely used throughout
Facebook Fan pages and the brand has applied the tools appropriately.
The Facebook pages are doing a good job of bringing people from
Facebook into the Victoria’s Secret websites. Most of the content on the
Facebook fan pages are linked to deeper content and this results in a richer
experience for the end customer. When the content is linked from Facebook into
the main Victoria’s Secret site, customers are able to follow the brand messages
deeper and could inevitable result in a sale.
Even though the Facebook pages are run by the brand, the pages seem
fairly personal. There are biographies of the Angles with personal information
about their likes and dislikes. The addition of the human elements resonate more
with fans and customers and make the content more relatable4. When content
comes solely from the company, customers can feel that they are being talked at
and not participating in a two-way conversation.
Victoria’s Secret is successful in retaining customer’s attention by creating
membership levels on their Fan Page. It has the basic fan level. The fan level
allows fans access to the brand site on Facebook. The second membership level
is Pink Nation. Pink Nation is an additional membership that provides more free
downloads, videos, and exclusive offers to members. The brand has created
hierarchy of membership levels that provide customers with different access
levels to promotions and information. If a customer chooses to become a
member of Pink Nation, the brand knows that these are not just casual
customers but that they are true page followers where they have granted
permission to the brand not once but twice.
Complimentary Social Media
Victoria’s Secret’s EVP of PR Monica Mitro has taken charge of the social
media strategy at the company. She has worked to coordinate many types brand
sponsored social media initiatives. Mitro said, “We saw there was so much VS
content out there (online) anyway because people would post things they saw3.”
After realizing that Victoria’s Secret needed to take control of the online
conversation and content it initiated Facebook Fan pages, mobile marketing,
twitter, and created a YouTube channel.
Victoria’s Secret has a fully a functioning mobile website that launched in
March of 2009. The company drives customers to the mobile site through
advertising on their internet pages and also through SMS campaigns to their
existing customer base. All text message offers include links to the mobile site to
drive customer traffic to the site2. The site allows customers to shop products and
purchase with the same site security as their fully functioning Victoria’s Secret ecommerce site. Mobile marketing and the mobile website complements the
Facebook efforts by keeping the customer connected to the brand wherever they
are.
The brand also leverages Twitter to communicate to customers. The
brand is able to tweet brief brand messages that go directly to the company’s
followers. Victoria’s Secret has been successful in integrating the twitter posts
into their Facebook Fan pages expanding the messages to more of their
customers.
Mitro recognized that the Victoria’s Secret’s copyrighted content was
being posted online without the permission of the company. This contributed to
the creation of the Victoria’s Secret YouTube channel. “With YouTube we could
control all that content,” Mitro explained.3 The YouTube channel allows the
company to post approved content where customers and fans can comment and
rate the content.
Victoria’s Secret is successful in integrating the different medias together.
Its Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, mobile media, and websites all integrate and
push customers from one media into another. The company keeps a consistent
personality throughout its social media sites. This allows for a consistent and
interactive brand experience throughout the web.4
What they are doing wrong or could be doing better?
Victoria’s Secret could be engaging more two-way conversations through
their social media sites. They have made an attempt with creating profiles of the
Victoria’s Secret Angles, but if they had more personal information on the sites,
they could create a connection not only to the company but to the humans that
write on the sites. This could be achieved by creating a personality that
represents the brand, or possibly by expanding the roles of the Angles on the
social media sites.
The brand has a following of both females and males and it has an
opportunity to expand their sales to the male audience by creating a sales
consultant type persona on the website or an area dedicated to men who are
shopping for women. Men are typically a little hesitant about going into a female
lingerie shop. Creating tools and providing assistance online to the male
audience could turn a browser into a buyer online.
Victoria’s Secret has been successful with their Facebook efforts thus far
and with continued updates and innovative posts, the brand should be able to
hold onto their top position in the fashion category on Facebook. Competitors of
Victoria’s Secret could learn from their comprehensive approach to managing
both their Facebook fan pages and their other social media communication tools.
Resources
1Facebook. Retrieved March 1, 2010 from
http://www.facebook.com/#!/search/?ref=search&q=victoria%20secret&init=quick
2Tsirulnik,
Giselle. Mobile Marketer. May, 2009. Victoria’s Secret enters mobile
commerce arena.
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/commerce/3313.html
3Backstage
with Victoria's Secret EVP of PR. PR Week. Retrieved March 1, 2010
from http://www.prweekus.com/backstage-with-victorias-secret-evp-ofpr/article/158237/.
4Kalehoff,
M. (2009, February, 13). Activating a brand on Twitter. Media Post.
Retrieved May 7, 2009, from:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=100285
5Evans,
S. (2009, February, 27). Social media for business: The dos and don’ts
of sharing. Mashable: The social media guide. Retrieved May 7, 2009, from:
http://mashable.com/2009/02/27/social-media-for-business-2/
6Page
Data. Retrieved March 1, 2010 from
http://pagedata.insidefacebook.com/leaderboard/?official=0&fanbase=0&cat_id=
26.
7Pink
Nation. Retrieved March 1, 2010 from
https://www.vspink.com/pink_nation/login.jsp?utm_source=facebook&utm_mediu
m=facebook_scoop&utm_campaign=021710_facebook_scoop_join_pink_nation
&referral_tag=join_pink_nation_scoop_021710
8Victoria’s
Secret Mobile Site. Retrieved March 1, 2010 from
http://mobile.victoriassecret.com/mt/www.victoriassecret.com.