Encouraging Social Media Interaction: PowerCoco & Coca-Cola

Social media is all about customer interaction. Some really great social media marketing strategy are built around encouraging customer interaction. I’ve seen two really great explains over the past week. One comes from a blog favorite PowerCoco. They posted on their Facebook page about a contest. The contest, entitled “Thirsty Thursdays”, encourages people to interact with their product as well as share it online. PowerCoco posted this at about 1:15pm EST. The company is based in New York City. This might not have been the best time of day to post something like this, but I love the idea

The second great use of social media interaction was Coca-Cola. They posted on their main Facebook page. As you can see, Coca-Cola is encouraging people to comment on their post. This is a good strategy because it can translate into online word-of mouth because Facebook shows your friends what you say. In a way Coca-Cola is giving their fans ownership of the brand. If you check out some of the responese they are pretty funny. Some of my favorites were: “‎$1.89 at the gas station probably”, “my annoying brother”, and  ”a case of pepsi.”

As always… comments are welcome and email subscriptions are strongly encouraged. Also check out @AfterThePeriod and find us on Facebook.

PowerCoco: Talking with the President (@PowerCoco_Steve)

Today I received two phone calls and one voicemail from Steve Vasquez, President of PowerCoco. I’m not gonna lie.. it made me feel kinda important. We talked about the history of the brand, specific product features, market strategy, and the beverage industry. If you haven’t been following my PowerCoco post below are links so you can catch up.

PowerCoco’s Marketing: Social Media and eCommerce

PowerCoco’s Social Media

PowerCoco & DORCO Social Media Update

Our conversation was very normal. Its clear that PowerCoco wants to remain authentic by connecting with people and creating a grassroots movement. Social media is still their method of choice. PowerCoco is active on Facebook and Twitter. Overall, Steve is a great guy and seemed very knowledgeable about the beverage business. He thanked my for being a “fan of the brand” and was quick to correct me and give credit to Tyler Beuerlein for founding the company. Tyler and Steve are business partners who both want to give people a better sports drink. That’s the message they keep sending out. It’s important that PowerCoco makes product information readily available. If possible they should look to differentiate their SEO strategy between potential customers seeking information and customers that are closer to purchasing product.

PowerCoco might have hit the market at just the right time. Many a PowerCoco’s health benefits are inline with current food and beverage industry trends. 60 Minutes recently aired a report called “Is sugar toxic?”. In the report, Dr. Sanjay Gupta talked about new research showing that beyond weight gain, sugar can lead to conditions ranging from heart disease to cancer. PowerCoco is also gluten free. Gluten free food is a growing segment in groceries stores across America. This might be less of an advantage considering Gatorade is also gluten free. Regardless, stressing the health benefits of PowerCoco is a major selling point.

Steve gave me an inside scoop on a promotion deal PowerCoco will soon launch in the New York area. He could tell me all the details, but he did tell me that PowerCoco is teaming up with a New York NBA-star with 3 million twitter followers. There are only two NBA teams in the New York area. The New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets. I did some checking on twitter and here’s what I’ve come up with.

Not sure who it’s going to be, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they do next. If you’re interested in purchasing PowerCoco and you’re located outside the New York area, checkout their Amazon Storefront.

PowerCoco & DORCO Social Media Update

I’ve had a few social media interactions with PowerCoco and DORCO since blogging about these two companies. Overall this has been a really great experience to see how they have used social in the marketing strategies.

DORCO responded on twitter in a big way. They retweeted my initial comments from their Dorco Pace, Dorco Shai and Dorce USA accounts. It’s a pretty generic and repetitive response. It makes me think that sometimes less is more.

PowerCoco also responded in a big way. They replied to my initial post three months ago when I wrote the post (here). However recently @AfterThePeriod was mentioned on twitter by Steve Vasquez. Steve Vasquez is the President of PowerCoco. I replied asking him for more information about the company and his experience has a minor league baseball player. If he responds I plan on asking if PowerCoco has considered hiring exciting young marketing and finance students to help the company grow (wink wink).

I think these interaction goes to show how valuable social media really is to companies. Not all companies use twitter the same way, but the ones that do it well are the ones that are engaging customers. As always… comments are welcome and email subscriptions are strongly encouraged. Also check out @AfterThePeriod and find us on Facebook.

PowerCoco’s Social Media

I received a response from PowerCoco yesterday. It seems that they are picking up their social media activities. I’m excited to watch this company grow. If you don’t remember…I wrote a post about the marketing activities of a brand new sports drink company. Check it out.

PowerCoco’s Marketing: Social Media and eCommerce

PowerCoco is a real life company I recently discovered. PowerCoco markets and sells sports drinks made from coconut milk. Apparently PowerCoco’s formula has more electrolytes and no sugar. This company is very new. PowerCoco’s website says they got the idea in 2010, and I found an unofficial source that claims they filed for a patent on 4/25/2011. Needless to say they are very new. In this post… I’m interested in starting a discussion about marketing. Specifically, how PowerCoco is and should be trying to penetrate the sports drink market with a coconut-based beverage.

Ok, so how did I hear about PowerCoco? I clicked on a sponsored add on Facebook (I’m a sucker for those). The ad took me to a welcome tab on PowerCoco’s facebook page. Taking viewers to a welcome tab is great. You never want to take people directly to your wall. There are tons of facebook applications that allow you to send viewers to a customizable page. This allows you to promote you product and branding in a more controlled way. The use of tabs also adds some credibility to a brand. Besides, most Facebook page walls are just random links, comments and photos anyway. Walls usually lack a clear message.

The first thing I noticed on their page was that they had over 1,000 “likes.” For a very new brand that is very impressive. Now, many of them could be people associated with the company, other Facebook pages, and people, like me, that have never tried the product. For social media marketers “likes” are like gold. “Likes” allow to develop a relationship with that individual and it allows them to take ownership of your brand. One thing PowerCoco has not done that many companies do is give facebook fans access to exclusive information. Most likely, PowerCoco hasn’t done this yet because of size or the nature of their product. Nevertheless, offering fans access to exclusive information is a good way to encourage people to “like” your facebook page. Again, there are numerous applications that can do this too. Exclusive information could be online deals or coupons. It could also mean breaking the brand or company news on Facebook first.

PowerCoco also has a twitter account– kinda. They haven’t tweeted anything yet. Twitter is a unique phenomenon in social media. Many companies are using twitter in different ways. Some use twitter for advertising, others customer service, and others public relations. In my experience it is very industry specific. Really, its all about what you want your brand to be. In my opinion, PowerCoco needs to get on the ball. Having an active twitter account is worse that not having on at all. The link (here) has 50 tips for using twitter in business.

I mentioned earlier, this is a very young company. I couldn’t really find any other information about their marketing efforts. It’s interesting that such a young company is using social media as they primary means of advertising. Social media is usually a large company game. I like the fact that they are committed to social media on a small scale. This could be a sign for success later.

Let’s move on to place and price. As far as I can tell PowerCoco is not sold in any major retail locations at this time. It appears all PowerCoco’s sales are done through an Amazon storefront. Amazon storefronts are an easy way for to add ecommerce to a business. The downside to relying on Amazon is that they require a commission to be paid on all sales. Over time this could really cut into PowerCoco’s bottom line. Their goal should be to move into retail locations and host their own ecommerce their site.

PowerCoco has decided to use a premium pricing strategy. The goal of a premium pricing strategy is to keep your price higher than the competition in order to differentiate yourself. The hope is the differentiate leads to favorable perceptions about the product, based solely on price. A premium pricing strategy could be risky for PowerCoco if you consider how widely accepted their competition is, namely Gatorade and Powerade. PowerCoco sells 12 20 oz. bottles for $27.50. For comparison, at most stores Gatorade is sold in 20 oz. individual bottles for approximately $1.50 – $2, cases of 24 for approximately $22 – $24, or in powder form. That’s nearly twice as much. There are a couple possibility.. (1) PowerCoco is really using a percentage costing method and their cost of production is very high (2) PowerCoco has plans to enter the health food market which usually demand a higher price.

Overall I feel PowerCoco’s social media and ecommerce strategy is risky. A brand this young is fragile, and customers can be brutal online. $27.50 for a coconut based sports drink is a fairly risky purchase. I’ll hold off judgment for now, but I’d like to try some samples.