Case Study: Market Research, Social Media (B2B)

Situation: As part of Rice University’s Action Leadership Project, a semester-long program in which a group of Rice MBA students act as consultants to area businesses, I was given the opportunity to work with a Fortune 500 company on their social media strategy. This oil services company was interested in exploring the viability of social media for their flagship software product. Although the oil industry is notoriously old-fashioned and secretive, top leaders recognize that the younger generation is more comfortable in the online environment.

Task: My team was asked to research the social media landscape specifically related to oil field services. This required an understanding of the industry, the company, the competitive landscape, the customer and the many stakeholders. Furthermore, if we felt social media was indeed viable, we needed to prepare a strategy for using the social media space to augment the company’s existing online presence. I served as the group research lead, client liaison and primary report writer.

Action: The team conducted a thorough social media audit (in which we analyzed the company’s presence across the social media space), a thorough competitive analysis and a detailed exploration of relevant social media outlets. We also conducted a survey among the company’s core customers, as well as customers of the company’s software product. Lastly, we interviewed key employee groups including Marketing, Corporate Communications and Sales.

Results: The customer survey revealed some very powerful findings:

• Large age gap between the company’s general customer base (majority over 50) and its software customers (majority under 40)
• Majority of software customers consider themselves active in social media space
• Majority of customers want region-specific information in a native language; something social media can provide

Additionally, although the company worried about “losing control” by engaging in social media, research in the social media environment revealed the opposite – that the company needed to get involved in order to regain control; they already had over two hundred unofficial Facebook pages alone.

The team’s research showed that social media could be used effectively in a closed environment to augment the online strategy. This research led the company to create a full-time position to explore the issue further.