Maersk Case

Maersk Line: B2B Social Media - “It’s Communication, Not Marketing”

Q2

Maersk chose to be in most of social media platforms each with diverse target segments and different goals.

Facebook:

● Goal: Establish a communication line with the End User

● Segment: NGOs, Maersk Employees, potential employees, competition, suppliers, regulatory bodies and shipping enthusiasts/fans.

Twitter :

● Goal: Share news to influence the industry and interact with stakeholders

● Segment: Shipping Industry that contained trade press, shipping professionals, customers and employees. - Average Income of Twitter Follower = 2x of the Facebook User.

LinkedIn :

● Goal: Interact with customers in groups and forums to improve services. “Tie customers closer to us”

● Segment: Shipping experts from around the world (10x more influential than Facebook users)

Google+

● Goal: Get ideas and feedback mostly in Innovation, Leadership and Business

● Segment: Shipping professionals, experts and customers.

Maersk achieved credibility through Facebook by posting positive and negative stories keeping a human touch behind their posts. It reached different segments and copied B2C models to attract followers. These achievements are represented in numbers as today they have over 1 million fans in their Facebook page. In Twitter they had a different approach sending more serious industry news but with the goal of humanizing the brand. In 2013 they had 81,000 followers and today in 2017 they have 123,000 followers. As part of the main strategy Twitter complemented the gap between softer news stories from Facebook, to news stories that were of interest to industry leaders and shipping enthusiasts broadening the overall reach. The element that LinkedIn added to the campaign was the open conversation between customers/shipping experts. They had 48,000 followers and most were customers. In Google+ similarly to LinkedIn was used to get input from shipping professionals but more focus in innovation rather than industry