Business market their products everywhere, from TV adverts to sky-writing, wherever they can reach their target market. In recent years there has been a global shift in where business invest their money for marketing purposes. We have seen a decreasing rate of traditional advertising methods such as TV, Radio, and a massive increase in marketing using the internet and specifically social media. Indicating a future trend in marketing.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace all have hundreds of millions of active users who use the sites, daily, hourly and more recently constantly. The users also tell the providers of the social media what they like and do. This allows a form of data collection like no other, and thus allows a more extreme version of advertising.
Most business use a combination of various social media platforms to help engage with an audience, this is due to their specific market niche. Certain platforms have their own special way of communication, and their users use the platforms depending on their needs.
From the picture below you can see that certain platforms may focus on a certain type of media for example Youtube is made for sharing, Blogger for publishing and LinkedIn for networking. Using this knowledge business can tailor their content to each platform, and use a combination to create the best possible online marketing mix by targeting as many customers as possible.
A business advertising on Facebook can select potential customers using criteria such as; age, location, gender, relationship status, industry of work. Even hobbies and interests. This allows a message to be delivered to a specific audience, making this advertising one of the most effective.
Another reason as to why its so successful is business can engage with customers much easier using these social web tools. For example business can get customers involved, some of the best examples are from Zappos, Blendtec and Audi.
My favorite is Blendtecs 'Will it blend?' series hosted on Youtube.
Source: www.Blendtec.com
Tom Dixon, founder of Blendtec went viral when he showed the public his blenders in action. Creating over 294 million views on Youtube he has created one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time.
(Other good examples are; Audis #Progressis campaign, Nikes 'greatness' Pre Olympics videos, and Zappos' overall social media strategy.)
Customers are extremely susceptible to online marketing, reviews and opinions of online voices. 'Virtual communities with active members who provide evaluations and opinions on products and firms now provide a venue to tell the world and represent one of the fastest growing phenomena on the Web' (Armstrong and Hagel 1996). A great example of this is Ebay, where customer feedback is key, buyers look for good feedback and may only purchase items of sellers who have high degrees of reputability.
It seems that social media is the way froward for marketing, regardless of business size, industry and service offered. For small business it can facilitate the initial boost in customers and a cheap method of marketing products to a wide customer range. And for larger business to build reputation and increase market share. Customers enjoy entertaining content, almost regardless of industry. They also love sharing thoughts, experiences and giving advice. From a customers point of view one of the most important issues to cover when developing a social media marketing campaign is to make customers enjoy the experience, this will guarantee followers and boosts in brand interest.
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