How Starbucks is using Inbound Marketing to Lower Customer Acquisition Costs
Starbucks finished 2011 with a bang. Posting a record quarter of $3.4 billion in revenue and the highest quarterly earnings in the company’s history, CEO Howard Schultz recently discussed how social media and inbound marketing helped the company earn these numbers. In what he termed a “seismic change” in consumer behavior following the “cataclysmic” recession, inbound marketing played a huge role to their financial success. How did they do it?
Let’s face it, having 40 million fans on Facebook and two million followers on Twitter doesn’t hurt. In the recent conference call with analysts, Schultz pointed to the success of the company’s social media efforts as a cost-effective way of engaging with customers.
“There probably (aren’t) very many companies in America that have created the capability and the discipline that we have with almost 40 million worldwide fans on Facebook, a leading company on Twitter and Foursquare,” he said. “And what that has done, it has given us the ability to lower our cost of customer acquisition in terms of traditional advertising and build a more enduring, emotional relationship with our customers.”
The very definition of what inbound marketing is.
Starbucks made big news when they brought in 29-year-old Clara Shih. Noted as a rising star in the field, Shih was brought to the board to help with those efforts. Shih, formerly the CEO of San Francisco-based Hearsay Social, reinforces the company’s commitment to inbound marketing.
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