PUMA: Leaping to the Forefront using Social Media Metrics

It’s safe to say that when German brothers Adolf and Rudolph Dassler first founded footwear and apparel giant PUMA in 1924 the world was a much different place. Computers, the Internet and social media were obviously not of concern whereas merely having reliable electricity to manufacture their shoes was. Fast-forward to nearly a century later and the game has changed in ways that would have once seemed unimaginable.

In order to compete in today’s global marketplace companies need to have an online presence. While initially it may have been adequate to just have a corporate website, it is now becoming increasingly necessary for companies be active on social media. But merely participating in social media does not ensure success. Companies need to be analyzing their social media traffic and taking advantage of the insights that it can provide in order to ensure that their time and effort is providing them the optimal return on investment.

Despite admittedly being somewhat of a late-comer in recognizing the marketing potential of social media, PUMA is now making up for lost time. After the above Valentine’s Day campaign produced by their ad agency went viral during the 2010 World Cup, PUMA realized that it was time to capitalize on this marketing juggernaut. PUMA is now active on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and Instagram as well as many more region-specific networks in the five global territories in which they operate.

Early on PUMA made the decision to focus their social media efforts on increasing customer engagement rather than as a means to promote online sales. To accomplish this PUMA limited the number of posts that it sent out globally preferring to target specific regions and languages instead. This method proved to be beneficial as it helped to increase the level of engagement on their accounts significantly. PUMA tracks the impressions, likes and shares of every post that is sent out and the data is fed back to the appropriate account managers. The managers then use the insights obtained to determine the type of content that performs best in each region, the times and days that are optimal for posting, and which posts garner the most engagement.

“We have become much more professional in measuring the success of our social media strategy in the last couple of years. We have hired agencies to analyze the effectiveness of our content, and we also ask platforms like Facebook and Twitter to send us very detailed statistics. It’s fairly sophisticated now, and we determine our KPIs based on this information.” Remi Carlios, Global Creative Director – Brand & Marketing – PUMA

Like with most companies, when PUMA does use their accounts for sales promotion it can be difficult to measure the true effect that their efforts are having on their bottom line. They will occasionally run promotions or send out links to e-commerce pages and in those instances their e-commerce team will track click-throughs and purchases attributed to those links.

PUMA has built a social media strategy that works for them and has helped to raise their social profile in recent years to over 1.3 million Twitter followers, over 15 million Facebook likes in addition to their close to 50 other social media accounts targeted at specific regions and product segments.

Lessons for Others

In 2015 there were nearly 2.1 billion people with active social media accounts and while the goal for each company may vary–to drive sales, to increase ‘likes’, to evoke engagement–the data that can be collected can help them in reaching that goal. Companies may choose to outsource their data analysis to a third party or keep it in-house using a tool like Google Analytics. Either way it has become an increasingly important tool to ensure you are reaching the right people at the right time with the right message. The following podcast elaborates on how companies can use Google Analytics to improve their social media marketing strategy.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

---

References