Tiffany Brandon
Interactive Advertising
Social Media Analysis Assignment
Professor: Dr. Jeeyun Oh
Due: April 5, 2015
The social media outlet that I chose to analyze was the Victoria’s Secret Facebook page.
Victoria’s Secret is very active on social media; their Facebook page is the second most popular
retail store on Facebook with over 25.5 million fans (Scruggs, T., & Parsley, K., 2012).
According to Scruggs and Parsley, the Victoria’s Secret brand is currently operating under an
Omni integrated digital strategy. The company not only utilizes Facebook to reach their target
consumer, but they are also popular sites like Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. John Bowden,
Senior VP of Customer Care at Time Warner Cable describes Omni integrated marketing as:
“an operational view – how you allow the customer to complete transactions in each
channel. Omni-channel, however, is viewing the experience through the eyes of your
customer, orchestrating the customer experience across all channels so that it is seamless,
integrated, and consistent. Omni-channel anticipates that customers may start in one
channel and move to another as they progress to a resolution. Making these complex
‘hand-offs’ between channels must be fluid for the customer. Simply put, Omni-channel
is multi-channel done right!” (Stocker, 2014).
While I was researching information about Victoria’s Secret presence on social media, I
learned that even though Victoria’s Secret spends a lot of money on marketing, the brand has
been able to successfully boost their return on investment through their use of social media
marketing. By using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, Victoria’s Secret has been
able to redirect traffic to their main website – one of their strategies to encourage online
consumer behavior (Richard, 2014). According to Richard, Victoria’s Secret has also positioned
themselves well on social media and consistently drives traffic to their FB page through “social
points”. Customers with the VS credit card can gain “social points” by connecting their Angel
Cards with their social media accounts and sharing Victoria’s Secret News (Richard, 2014).
The target market Victoria’s Secret aims to engage is the middle class woman or a man
shopping for a middle class woman. While this is the main consumer the brand aims to target,
the Victoria’s Secret PINK line also attracts people slightly outside of that market, such as the
younger, college age woman (Scruggs, T., & Parsley, K., 2012). After analyzing the Victoria’s
Secret Facebook page, I personally think that the company is doing an average job at engaging
their target consumers. While the brand has over 25.5 million “likes” on their actual page, the
content that they are posting only gets between 5,000-10,000 “likes”, 100-500 “shares”, and
around 30-50 “comments” from consumers. For example, I have “liked” the Victoria’s Secret
Facebook page and I personally follow their page on a regular basis. However, I have never
engaged in the content or shared anything from the brand on my wall. As a result, I feel that
Victoria’s Secret could strengthen their social media marketing more to engage college-aged
women.
I think the most involved consumers on the Victoria’s Secret Facebook page are middleaged woman or middle-aged males. When I was looking through comments on the Victoria’s
Secret page, I decided to click on some of the profiles who were engaging in the content and this
is what I found:
When conducting my analysis, I noticed that many of the males who were commenting
on Victoria’s Secret content, like Mike Gonzales, were also tagging their girlfriend or wife in the
comment. Other consumers like Catherine Yacola, Susy Sierra, and Vladislav Rogov were
making comments on what they thought about the products being featured in the photographs by
saying things like “Very nice”, “Beautiful”, or “Sexy”. The majority of the comments on the
Victoria’s Secret page were mainly positive, but there were also some negative ones that I did
come across as well. When consumers made negative comments under a Victoria’s Secret’s FB
post, it seemed as though the company was more quick to respond to the consumer compared to
when an unhappy customer posted straight to the Victoria’s Secret Facebook page. I think this
could be because VS posts are constantly being viewed and shared on social media, so the
company wants to makes sure that the brand’s image is positively being represented in the
comments under the content. These are some of the negative comments posted to the site:
After analyzing how Victoria’s Secret was interacting with its consumers on their
Facebook page, I decided to take a look at some of the content Victoria’s Secret was posting on
their page and determine the content’s primary marketing purpose. One of the posts that stood
out to me the most was a picture of VS model, Jasmine Tookes, working out in the gym. I really
liked that Victoria’s Secret shared this picture on their page because I felt like it was helping to
humanize the brand. In our mid-term presentation we talked about how we would like to see
Victoria’s Secret do more humanizing like this, so I really liked this marketing strategy.
This type of content marketing could also create brand loyalty because the promotion
could encourage consumers to put on their Victoria’s Secret sports gear, snap a photo or video of
them working out, and then the consumer having a chance to win the contest. I think what made
this entry popular is that it made the model look like an average woman working out, so
Victoria’s Secret customers could relate to her. I think that this post does have some type of
content marketing involved. It is not an average Victoria’s Secret photo where the model is
posing in a bikini on a beach, but instead it’s delivering a photograph of a model working out in
VS gear in her own life. I think this type of content could attract and retain a clearly defined
audience.
The second social media entry that stood out to me was a post with the caption “Only the
sexiest lingerie for our best bombshells (that’s YOU!). I really liked this post as well because I
felt like it was trying to humanize the brand and boost a customer’s confidence. I rarely ever see
Victoria’s Secret post content with this type of wording, so I was actually surprised to see that
they were trying to uplift a woman’s spirit and self-esteem. I think by taking this approach that
this type of marketing could also facilitate purchase, by encouraging women to buy the product
so that they can truly feel like a bombshell.
I think what actually made this entry popular is that the lingerie was not incredibly
revealing like most Victoria’s Secret products. I feel like many women could have “liked” this
post because they could actually envision themselves wearing this product and feeling confident
in it because it doesn’t completely reveal the entire body or areas that most women would feel
self-conscious about. In terms of content marketing, I think this post is not shoving the
Victoria’s Secret brand in your face but instead it is displaying the opportunity for women to
benefit from the product by it bringing a sense of confidence, sexiness, and intimacy to their
lives.
After analyzing the Victoria’s Secret Facebook page, I believe that the brand is doing a
great job with their omni-channel strategy, posting updates frequently, and uploading images and
videos to capture people’s attention. The three areas that I think Victoria’s Secret could improve
upon with their social media page is engaging college-aged women through their content,
responding to complaints by customers who post on their wall more effectively, and posting
more content that humanizes the brand to get consumers interacting with their posts on a more
regular basis. I also think that Victoria’s Secret content marketing strategy could also improve a
bit. Many of the videos Victoria’s Secret posts are of models on a set of photo shoots who are
being interviewed about their experience or the product that they are modeling. I would like to
see more content marketing of Victoria’s Secret models performing daily activities like working
out, and them sporting the VS clothing line. I feel like this would engage and inspire more VS
consumers, as well as attract more college-aged women to their site.
Sources
Scruggs, T., & Parsley, K. (2012, July 3). Victoria's Secret Marketing Strategy. Retrieved April
5, 2015, from https://kaitlinparsley.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/victorias-secretmarketing-strategy/
Stocker, M. (2014, April 1). The Definition of Omni-Channel Marketing – Plus 7 Tips. Retrieved
April 5, 2015, from http://blog.marketo.com/2014/04/the-definition-of-omni-channelmarketing-plus-7-tips.html
Richard, M. (2014, April 29). SWOT Analysis of Victoria's Secret. Retrieved April 5, 2015, \
from https://mariacrichard.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/swot-analysis/
Victoria’s Secret Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/victoriassecret?fref=ts