Client Project Mimic Social Simulation

December 2021

  1. Project Overview
  • This semester, we worked on a social media marketing simulation program, Mimic Social. In this scenario, we were playing the role of the social media manager of Buhi Supply Co., an e-commerce and retail bag supplier. The company specializes in a variety of bags, such as backpacks, duffels, satchels, and purses with the aim of being functional bags that can please a wide array of individuals. Currently, BUHI’s estimated market share in retail bag sales is about 0.25% and the company’s gross revenue last year was $15 million. 
  1. Goals & Objectives
    • The overarching goal for BUHI is to end the year with $17 million with 0.3% market share
    • For my role as the social media manager, the primary goal is to increase the numbers of visitors on its website 
    • Some secondary goals that contributed to the main objective were:
      • Spending my entire budget of $5,000 a week wisely on production of content, promotion, and influencer marketing
      • Grow brand awareness via follower count, increasing BUHI’s reach on more people
      • Increase engagement with likes, comments, and shares
      • Increase sales through branding and a combination of brand awareness and engagement 
      • Outperform my peers that have also been given the same scenario and goals as myself
    • Some of the more specific goals for each round consisted of growing people’s awareness of us, figuring out which channel best fits BUHI’s needs, performing a content analysis to curate the best content for each platform, establish our influencer marketing strategy, and honing in on our targeted ads
  2. Target Audience
    • 90% of BUHI’s market is between the ages of 19 and 32. They broke down their demographic into (7) defined market segments/buyer personas to use:
      • Daypacker Tom (29% of market)
        1. “Looking for a multi-purpose bag for his next trip to his friend’s cabin”
        2. Interests: backpacking, hiking, work, travel, and daypack
      • Back-to-School Mindy (20%)
        1. “Going back to school and needs a unique look for the fall.”
        2. Interests: backpack, convenience, college, essentials, and style
      • Up-and-Comer Raj (16%)
        1. “Starting his new job at a law firm and is looking for something professional and stylish for his laptop and documents.”
        2. Interests: work, backpack, travel, business, and style
      • City-Hopper Sue (12%)
        1. “Planning a vacation to Thailand and needs fashionable but practical travel bags for her trip.”
        2. Interests: backpack, exploring, vacation, travel, and adventure
      • Energetic Jill (10%)
        1. “Has started teaching a Zumba class and needs something that looks good to carry her gear in.”
        2. Interests: duffel, sports, school, travel, and aerobics
      • Seaside Sally (8%)
        1. “Needs a new bag for the beach”
        2. Interests: outdoors, style, travel, camping, and sailing
      • Hipster Mommy Kami (5%)
        1. “Twin daughters are starting junior high and she wants some sturdy but trendy bags for school.”
        2. Interest: children, backpack, school, family, and girl
    • The main characteristics that stood out among BUHI’s market are backpack, travel, office, and outdoors. The primary interests can be broken down into a few categories such as, travel, school, office, kids, outdoor activities, and fitness. 
    • Although there are more female buyer personas than male, the five female segments add up to 50% of the market share and the two male buyer personas total to 50% of the market share, which I thought was interesting. 
  3. Campaign Strategies & Tactics
    • At the beginning of the simulation, I targeted multiple buyer personas and felt out all of BUHI’s platforms with guidance from the infographics provided by Mimic Social (what time to post for each platform, how many posts a day for each platform, the demographic breakdown for each platform, etc.) and found mixed results
      • I found that posting on all the platforms took a lot of time and effort, with positive and negative results
      • Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter were the promising platforms, while YouTube and LinkedIn were not so much 
      • However, as promisingly profitable Twitter and Pinterest were, it was too much to focus on all of them
    • For the following round, I chose to focus on Daypacker Tom as he was the majority of our market (29%) as well as hone in on Facebook and Instagram as those platforms were BUHI’s most prominent ones
      • I was still getting the hang of curating the captions and types of content for each platform, so there were still some misses
      • Overall, travel, the outdoors, backpacks, and being in the office/school resonated with a decent chunk of BUHI’s market, so even though I was targeting Daypacker Toms, other audiences also contributed to the engagement 
    • I found that I spent a decent amount of my budget going towards promotion. I followed Mimic Social’s advice to divide 25% of the budget for content and 75% towards promotions and at first I was skeptical, but it definitely worked in my favor majority of the time
      • However, I found that my top grossing posts were posts that encouraged engagement from our followers and the post with the most revenue wasn’t even promoted:
  • For the influencer round, I chose the micro influencers, the World Travelers, and paid them to be our brand ambassadors. I chose them because even though their audience is smaller than the macro or mega influencers, I prioritized engagement over impressions, as micro influencers have more influence and trust with their audiences than the others. Additionally, it was cheaper to pay them for more posts, rather than a few from the mega or macro influencers. The World Travelers were my choice because the main market I was targeting were the Daypacker Toms, who are into travel. I paid them for seven posts for $650 each, for a total of $4,550 of my $5,000 budget.  Although the World Travelers’s primary platforms were Twitter and Instagram, our Instagram platform is prominent enough to make up for our smaller presence on Twitter. 
  • I noticed that photos of people with BUHI outdoors did well on Facebook, while photos of product outdoors as well as photos of people with BUHI outdoors did well on Instagram
    • However, photos of just product didn’t do as well as it did on Facebook
  1. Outcomes
    • Report the key performance indicators as seen from your last round of simulation (two paragraphs or multiple bullet points);
    • At the end of the simulation and as of writing this reflection, I placed second in my class, which I was surprised by because when compared to my peers, my impressions, engagements, clicks, CTR, shares, and conversions were lower, but my new follower count and revenue amassed were higher than others. 
    • Despite ranking high based on revenue, I feel as though I need more work in the other categories, as revenue isn’t the only metric that matters 
  • Posts Metrics
    • Total Impressions — 13,050,059
    • Total Revenue —  $155,361
    • Average Engagement Per Post — 5,034.737
    • Average Shares Per Post — 1,165.096
    • Average Clicks Per Post — 615.816
  • Influencer Metrics
    • Total Impressions — 1,277,707
    • Total Revenue — $55,338
    • Average Engagement Per Post — 34,103.5
    • Average Shares Per Post — 3,542.5
    • Average Likes Per Post — 2,161.25
  • Overall Total Metrics
    • Total Impressions — 14,327,766 
    • Total Revenue — $210,696
  1. Key Insights
    • For future campaigns, I suggest leaning into being the perfect bag for casual office/school use, but also for the outdoors, all the while being stylish
    • To put it short, BUHI should drive home the message of being practical, while looking sleek/fashionable/stylish
    • Coming up with engaging captions that subtly promoted BUHI (i.e. “We hope your week went swimmingly! If you could pack your bag and live anywhere in the world, where would you go? #BUHI”) worked well and didn’t make me feel like an obnoxious brand yelling at their audience
    • On the other hand, when it came to promotions and advertisements, I was initially apprehensive about being blatant about it, but as the rounds went on, I ended up embracing promoting our sales, and curated the captions and photo to align with the holiday/day of the week (“Is your bank account looking spooky? We got you covered with our #Halloween sale! Have a spook-tacular day everyone!”)
    • However, on a more negative note, occasionally, posts would completely fail on Facebook and I wouldn’t understand why, so I suggest honing in on the Facebook audience
  2. Final Reflection
    • Overall I enjoyed Mimic Social and the BUHI simulation program, as it was the closest to a real-world application of what I’ve been learning in my courses
    • The $60 was a bit of a steep price to pay for, but I would recommend it to future classes, as you get a lot out of it
    • Likes
      • How immersive the simulation was (weekly memos with descriptions of my work life)
      • How much control I had over what to post, when to post, as well as how much to spend, and viewing the analytics was overwhelming at first, but it all fascinated me
      • The course ranking intimidated me, but it motivated me to work hard and I enjoyed the competitive aspect of it 
    • Dislikes
      • The customer service questions and the influencer marketing portions felt like they were tacked on? They didn’t feel as immersive as the posting aspect of the simulation, but I understood what Mimic Social was getting at
      • I wish there were more photos/content every round because it got redundant after a while

Rina Nguyen