Introduction

SmartCube is an educational center for children of school age. It was established in the end of
2018 like teaching center of cubik-rubik, as soon as the center started being popular, all
competitors also launched such course. Hence, to stand out through a tough competition social
media strategy and promotions will play crucial role, as nearly all customers are attracted
through social media.

1. Company background and objectives

SmartCube (hereafter Center) is an educational center for school-age children, situated in the
capital of Kazakhstan, Nur-Sultan city. The first office was established in the end of 2018 in
old town with cubic-rubik classes offered to pupils. Later on, math and English classes were
also offered for those who want to advance their knowledge beyond school program or want
to catch up with school program. Today there are four offices with 12 teachers. As an
additional attraction, twice a month game days are organized for children for free in order to
build the connection and team spirit between all students who study in groups and
individually. As SmartCube’s target audience are students in age from 5 until 16, advertising
through social media is the primary way to communicate with new and existing students.

Business objectives

Social media campaign is expected to build trust and brand recognition within our customers
and all potential clients. The popularity of the account and Center must be well-known to an
extend that when any Kazakhstani citizen sees cubik-rubik they associate it with Cubic center
instantly.

The social media will be the main instrument that will communicate the vision of the
company to the masses. Not only the courses themselves will be useful to customers, but also
the social media accounts should bring value to all account visitors and customers in terms of
entertainment and development of the logical thinking. Social media accounts must also
generate word of the mouth amount population and make leads to become loyal customers
and account followers.

The first short-term goal is to increase by 30% loyal customers in 2 months using different
content in social media accounts. Since recently, social media platforms, such as Instagram,
started to hide the amount of likes, followers cannot be biased anymore by the total number of
likes a post has. However, to the goal of 30% increase in followers and loyal customers, can
be added an increase in the number of comments and in reposts and shares. Therefore, the
goal is to increase the number of comments with 5% per post and with 10% the number of
reposts. The audience is highly likely to repost posts that they like and commented about.

Audience persona

End users of the Center are children, however, the customers of the social accounts are
children and their parents as well. Ideal customers are represented by the families with higher
than average income, where both parents and children are interested in development and
learning new skills and gaining new friends.
For all customers, including the ideal ones it is very important that promises from accounts
and advertisements will be kept. Campaign promises that children will be able to solve rubik’s
cube in 3-4 lessons and other courses like English and math also will be thought by good
teachers. The other important factor that concerns parents is the safety. Offices must be
located in safe areas, contact to teachers should be also available for parents. Social media
image should transmit the trust through accounts and the friendly atmosphere.

Customers and all potential business partners must see that the center is truly motivates
students for further development in all spheres of life. All the staff must be friendly kind and
understanding not only of children but also of parents.

Social Media Audit

For the moment there are 3 social media accounts are in use in center: Instagram account,
website and Facebook account. Facebook is the least active platform that is used only once
per month due to the fact that Facebook is not that popular in Kazakhstan. No posts or other
activities apart advertisements run in Facebook.

There are three ways advertising is done: Instagram, Facebook and flyers. Instagram adverts
run mostly 2-3 times per week, Facebook ads run 1 day once per month. Paper flyers are
distributed in neighborhood buildings and amoung existing students when promotions are
done. Website exists just as a support to gain trust of people who followed adverts and serves
as a complimentary tool to strengthen the image of the company. As a result of advisement
campaigns 93% of customers come from Instagram, 2% from FB, and 5% word of mouth and
flyers.

Instagram account started to be used actively just 2 weeks ago. Today around 3 posts are
published every 2 weeks. Since the account started to be used actively posts started to receive
98 likes on 1 post in comparison to 10 likes two weeks ago. 2 weeks ago account had 2000
followers and now it has more than 7000 followers. Stories are used just to show how lessons
are organized and what other activities are available in Center. No proper campaign was
developed to increase response and engagement rate, current engagement rate is 22.4. Usually
customers react mostly to contests, puzzles, photos and videos of lessons and game days.

The design of posts and content are tailored to catch attention of the target audience.
However, the posts and stories serve mostly informative purpose and to gain trust that the
Cubic is real and effective educational center. Hence mostly photos of classes and stories with
participation of students are published.

Customers are very satisfied with their experience with us, 60% of the customers buy other
courses and recommend the Center to friends.

Photos and videos of lessons, interactive games and puzzles is the content that resonates the
most with an audience. The website traffic mostly comes from advertisements, when visitors
of Instagram account want to check validity of the company.

Competition

Competition is high as more than 100 educational centers exists in the city. All the
educational centers that offer logic development are considered as direct competitors: chess,
music classes, robot technics, other Rubik’s cube classes. Also 4 biggest competitors also
launched Rubik’s cube classes. However, even though competition is tough, currently 2 out of
10 customers come from competitors, as clients were not satisfied with the quality of the
teaching and the range of the courses offered. The main advantages of the competitors are
loyal clients, established business, and higher available budget.

Competitors are also have only Instagram accounts as primary communication tool. Even
though they have established businesses and have been working for more than 3-5 years, they
just have twice more followers and similar amount of likes. The content posted is mostly
similar to the SmartCube’s content, apart of some additional topics like useful tips for
parenting, photos with student’s achievements in school exams and city competitions, prizes
posted, movies lists, motivating slogans and tips. What is worse in competitors is that their
content is a bit chaotic and not always aligned with style of the page in terms of design and
texts are longer, which does not suit with the habit of quick glance only habit of teenagers.