Chaco Social Media Audit

Introduction

Chaco was founded in 1989 by Mark Paigen. From the beginning, Chaco sandals were manufactured to be a strong, durable sandal that could withstand the wear and tear of normal shoes. Although Paigen manufactured these sandals for whitewater rafting, he ensured that that they would be versatile for any outdoor activity. Although a new brand to shift to a social media lead business model, Chaco is doing all it can to catch up for lost time with its current social media strategy. Chaco emphasizes culture, content and customer compassion as the three C’s that encompass their goals as a global brand. A marketing specialist fo Chaco states, “Kelley went on to explain key points of social media strategy that are built on the foundation of the 3 C’s”(Kelly) Chaco manages to consistently interact with its audience all platforms, creating a strong brand loyalty that is evolving from traditional forms of retail to ecommerce and online sales.They have even looked to on the road events to grow their brand, “New consumers to our products and lifestyle, showcased new products, and shared the story of life on the road through social media.”(Gibson) Although Chaco can be worn by any age or demographic, Chaco’s target audience is 18-30 year old men or women who live an outdoor lifestyle and enjoy hiking, kayaking, whitewater rafting, etc. presumably living in North America. Chaco’s main product is the world famous luxury sandal that has rubber soles with straps that tighten and loosen to keep your foot secured.

Buyer Personas

Overall Summary of Social Media Use

Chaco’s social media use is one that definitely needs more time to see if the brand will be able to reap benefits. Chaco is below industry averages on many platforms and often misses the mark when it comes to KPIs analyzed on Fanpage Karma. Despite a relatable and simple approach to social media, Chaco fails to consistently utilize its reach and maximize on having such potential on certain platforms. Although Chaco has their niche audience marketing strategy perfected, creating enough brand awareness seems to be their biggest issue. One thing Chaco could do to fix this would be to conduct a social benchmarking analysis that compares their online performance to other brands within the industry. This lets you know where your numbers are and where they need to be, as well as, what social media aspects are benefitting your company and which are not. Although they are doing campaigns to help separate themselves from others and increase social media. On their website, “Show us where Chaco takes you. Tag your photo on Instagram or twitter #CHACONATION for a chance to be featured in our gallery.”(#ChacoNation)

Social Currency: According to the Vivaldi Partners Group, social currency can be defined as “the degree to which customers share a brand or information about a brand with others.” Chaco has a social currency that is adapting from a niched market audience to a more broad outdoor market. Chaco clearly has a high level of social currency due to the fact that they have been able to grow from being mainly a water shoe, to now being accepted to wear in many diverse outdoor activities. For example, The company sells sandal. It’s not a particularly interesting or exciting product, that is until you start to read and see the stories from people who have invested in a pair of Chacos.”(ecommerce)

Chaco spends $65,000 annually to grow their brand into a digital name that can be trusted for state of the arc products that can be used for outdoor activities all across the spectrum. In 2008, Chaco surpassed $20 billion in market share, before being acquired by Wolverine Outdoor Group in 2009.

Use of Each Social Media Platform

Twitter:One of the main leverage points Chaco is utilizing is the ability to share images on twitter. It is obvious that Chaco is trying to appeal to the outdoor hiking niche crowd with their professionally taken photos in natural outdoor environments. Chaco is also leveraging the ease of customer interaction on twitter. Often times, angry customers will tweet about their issues with their purchased footwear. Often times Chaco will reply with quick and easy solutions or point them in the right direction of a department that could better aid their needs. This is a prime example of a problem Chaco handled an issue that they were ill equipped to answer.

Chaco has large audience on twitter with 61.5k followers. This is in the middle of their two main competitors Teva (20.7k) and Keen (139k). However, with this large audience they struggle to have high levels of engagement with their posts. Often times having less than 50 likes on their posts and 0-5 retweets. This is a higher volume of engagement compared to Teva and Keen which is a surprise because Keen has nearly double the number of followers. All three of these customers are very reactive to customer complaints on twitter but both Teva and Keen are way more likely to retweet and post pictures from their audience through contests or organically.

Chaco’s most recently popular post featured above, came about when they mentioned that they were partnering with the National park foundation. On their WeThis is probably because this post gave their audience a reason to care about what was being posted instead of a random picture on the timeline. They published a blog article to bring to life thie partnership.

The main function of Chaco’s twitter platform is to influence desire and facilitate purchases. Whenever Chaco puts out a tweet with a beautiful picture there is always a link to the website. At the same time Chaco remains active in twitter treads with customers that are having issues with their products

Unfortunately, Chaco uses the same content across their Instagram and Twitter platforms. This seems a bit uninspired and lazy. The posts below shows two identical posts by Chaco on two different platforms. Chaco used a customers post on their instagram and gave credit to their customer. But when they posted this same picture on twitter they withheld that this was a post by a customer.