Wal-Mart Seeks to Redefine Social CRM with New Local Strategy

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Though names like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s refer to brands with global reputations and vast online and multinational presences, to many actual customers, they represent a single store in a single town in a single state.

From a social media perspective, the implications are significant.

When a local restaurant attempts to engage customers via Twitter, Facebook or blogs, its message directly reaches the target audience.  Yes, even some localized small businesses have reputations that cross borders, but at the end of the day, most people who “like” a suburban New York City pizza joint or diner are going to be people who can, do and will actually frequent the establishments.

From a social marketing or CRM standpoint, that means there is little inherent wasted effort for small businesses.  As long as their message is attractive, it will be actionable.  There is no unnecessary conflation between the abstract “brand” and the actual retail point of purchase.

For the aforementioned mega-chains, however, the issue is not so simple.  When a global retailer or restaurant promotes and engages on social media, it is most notably acting on behalf of the entire brand.  Improving brand visibility is good for keeping the chain top-of-mind for customers (and for driving purchases on the e-commerce site), but without dialing customers into the actual storefront they know as “their Wal-Mart” or “their Olive Garden,” the connection it creates with customers is fairly weightless.

It is also somewhat crippling for the local franchises.  By creating social engagement on the global brand-level, the organizations minimize the ability of the individual stores to mobilize their customers.  Instead of speaking to the unique nuances of the local customer bases and developing loyalty to the specific pricing, promotions, staff, customer service and store layouts, the stores are banking entirely on how well the brand clicks as a social media concept.

Is it any wonder that businesses often struggle to trace social media activity to success at brick-and-mortar stores?

Thanks to a new partnership with Facebook, Wal-Mart is hoping to make the “social vs. local” problem a thing of the past.  The world’s biggest retailer this week integrated a “My Local Wal-Mart” function into its Facebook presence, which helps put the individual establishments—not just the overall brand—in the direct-line-of-sight of its 9.5 million Facebook fans.

More than just offering a “local” version of a national flyer, the new Facebook feature, which creates an announcement page for the thousands of individual stores, posts updates on “rollbacks, new product arrivals and special events” in the News Feeds of all who register.

“This allows us to make our stores relevant on a local level,” said Wal-Mart’s Stephen Quinn, executive vice president for the US division, during a media call. “This addresses our next-generation customers who are using a lot of social media.  A national message is often not as relevant.”

Facebook’s Carolyn Everson, who confirmed the social network is not yet working on this functionality with any other retailer, explains (via AdAge) that the feature is not simply to tout the awareness of a local store (ala a “locate my store” search) but to establish “fundamentally different business” and a “different relationship” at the local level.

By advertising specific products, specific promotions and specific in-store events, the “My Local Wal-Mart” service gives the individual locations their own personality and relevance with customers—they are not just the “nearest versions of the same, generic, multi-national retailer.”  As the endeavor continues, it will provide Wal-Mart with insight into how customers from individual markets are responding to specific promotions and the subsequent ability to create localized messages that seize on that insight.

In the very short-term, it is likely the feature will prove more symbolic of change than game-changing itself.  AdAge reports that many of the local strategies will be handled by corporate (with the local managers having an “override”), which questions how deeply-unique and customized the local offerings will prove.  Further, as the service will adhere to a low-profile two News feed updates per week, the level of visibility might be less than is needed to make a major impact.

Granted, even a “symbolic” change represents a significant step forward for social CRM.  Even if the announcements are not quite as custom and frequent as is ideal, the very idea that Wal-Mart will be framing its correspondence as “from the Mount Olive, NJ or Austin, TX Wal-Mart” will greatly enhance the engagement of its message.  Just like when a local restaurant posts its daily lunch special on Facebook, the local Wal-Mart announcements will have far more value as “calls to action.”

And the potential for improvement is enormous.  Wal-Mart, for instance, confirmed it will drive engagement for the in-store “Black Friday” specials by posting maps of the local stores ahead of the post-Thanksgiving deal rush.  Other less-certain but still-envisioned plans include customizing the local deals based on the types of products customers “Like” and develop integration with the site-to-store order/delivery system.

Though it appears only Wal-Mart presently has the privilege of a Facebook partnership in developing this sort of strategy, all major companies should be looking at the core lesson:  successful social media engagement stems not only from properly framing the brand for the customer, but from considering the proper avenue for turning “engagement” into “purchasing.”

For those global companies who wonder why they can have millions of Facebook and Twitter followers but little evidence of an impact on business, consider what it is you are asking fans to “like.”  Garnering support for a brand is nice, but if the core intent is to drive activity in local stores, dining in the local restaurant or use of local cleaning services, then the core of the social media should be promoting customer engagement with the promotions and services offered by the local establishments.

Contributor:   Brian Cantor

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Report Abuse   bcantor 10/14/2011 9:59:44 AM EDT Thanks for the comment, Jesus. Regarding your second point, note that this endeavor emerged due to a partnership specifically between Wal-Mart and Facebook. So, I don't think this is necessarily a sign of Wal-Mart ignoring other networks (though that may very well be true), just a sign that Facebook programmed a valuable feature for them. As for the first, I do agree that, in the purest sense, this is local advertising. The "social CRM" label is fair, however, because the local advertising is a tool to operationalize the relationship between customers and the global Wal-Mart brand and put actual substance behind the customer engagement. In many cases, the nature of a social relationship between a customer and a global retail organization can best be described as murky. Often, the only thing you are able to "like" is the brand, but you may have no connection to or interest in the brand itself. Your only concern might be establishing a relationship with the local store that you know as YOUR Wal-Mart, and this is a step towards giving the customer the social relationship they actually want. Referencing deals and cooking classes/special events at the local Wal-Mart makes a customer's affiliation to the Wal-Mart brand actually mean something (assuming this lives up to the potential and does not simply amount to Wal-Mart randomly rotating its "rollbacks" across the different stores) by linking customers to the personality behind each store. And, since it seems like Wal-Mart wants to evolve this feature based on specific customer insight, it should be able to organically and desirably situate Wal-Mart into the lives of its fans/followers, giving the company a more practical, realistic "face" for customers. From a cynical perspective, we also cannot ignore that many customers are only following brands to get deals/promotions. If we look at "deals" as the key driver between the customer-company relationship, then the "CRM" component would be figuring out ways to make the deals more engaging, actionable and preferable. This does that. Replies (0) Post a reply Sign in or Sign up to post a comment

Report Abuse   jrgrana 10/13/2011 1:12:15 PM EDT Just a couple of things 1. While I applaud the effort - this is localized retailing advertising (Not SCRM) 2. While it is the largest social network - having only facebook as the hub for SCRM database is incomplete - large amonnt of customers participate in the Mom blogs and forums - not on facebook Replies (0) Post a reply Sign in or Sign up to post a comment