Social Media helps find
businesses find potential clients by using users own shared information to
identify interest and their behavior. It proactively targets users even before
they begin their search. Whereas Paid Search is a great advertising medium for
driving users to a business based on user’s own intent. Social networks are
constantly gathering enormous amounts of user data allowing businesses to
target beyond the general demographic and geographic data. Social media’s
success can be contributed to advanced targeting options, reliable conversion
tracking, and a huge presence on mobile devices. These advanced targeting
options allow marketers to provide a level of personalization that wasn’t
possible before and can be broken down into four buckets:
Interest Targeting
Social media allows
marketers to understand audiences self-reported interests, activities and the
pages and users they have engaged in. It is offered by Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn and Pinterest.
It provides an
insight into the users behavioral patterns such as the purchasing behavior or
the preference of the device that they use. It is offered by Facebook, Twitter
and LinkedIn.
Marketers can also
reach an audience by uploading a list of email addresses, phone numbers, or
usernames and it serves really well when you have known group of business that
you would like to target. It is offered by Facebook and Twitter.
It is also
convenient to reach people who are similar to an audience you care about and
can serve as a great acquisition tool. It is offered by Facebook and LinkedIn.
Market Size:
Social media advertising spend in 2015 was approximately around $8Bn
and is expected to grow to $18Bn by 2019. Facebook and Twitter are still the
biggest players in the social media market with Facebook. Facebook desktop ads
have 8 times higher Click-through-rates (CTRs) whereas its mobile ads have 9
times higher CTRs. Whereas Twitter has shown average engagement rates of 1-3
percent. Both of these channels are producing results much higher than the
traditional banner ads. Social Media has become a real, tangible driver for
sales and marketing departments and even though the current spend for social
media advertising is around 1% of the overall marketing budget, it is expected
to go up to 5% in the next five years.
According to McKinsey & Co there are two reasons why social media
is still such a mystery for the executives. First because of its nebulous
nature since it’s so difficult to know how to really influence the customer and
secondly there is no measure of social media’s financial impact. It is
important to note that the impacts the consumer journey. But the fact that
social media can influence customer journey at every stage does not mean it
should. It entirely depends on the company and industry and some touch points
are more important that than others. Here are some of the ways social media
impacts the customer journey.
Impact on consumer decision
journey:
At the start of the journey the trigger that can help a consumer to
consider a brand product can come from a Facebook posting that a user bought.
Consumer can also evaluate a brand or a product based on a review or comment
that the other users posted on a blogs. Most companies are also enabling
e-commerce ability to buy directly from these platforms. Marketers are also
expanding the post purchase behaviors of the consumers through platforms that
talk about new uses and ways and sharing those and rating those. Marketers are
then using the closely bonded consumers and offering coupons and incentives to
enhance brand loyalty.
Monitor:
Companies are now able to monitor in a scientific way all the various
points in a consumer journey through conversations about the brand, ratings for
the brand. They can all be measured through sentiment trends over time, overall
mentions overtime and understanding the works associated with the brand and the
competitors or ideas for new products through user suggestions or complaints.
Tools are becoming easier to use and the problem is converting the ideas into products.
Tools are becoming easier to use and the problem is converting the ideas into products.
Respond:
It is important to get engaged and respond to those conversation to
address crisis where consumers are making claims that are inaccurate to
understand the root of the problem and getting a ahead of the that and then
engaging those parties to work through a solution to show them that you care in
public forum. This can mitigate damage that can spread very quickly. In
addition basic customer can also be achieved where people can post a question
and gather a response to enhance the service.
Amplify:
It can also be used to have consumer to pass along referrals or
recommendation to encourage others to do the same after they bought a product
by posting reviews or comments. Consumers can also help with being the advocate
for the brand by posting their feelings and likes about the brand. Fostering
communities where people can share their experiences can also help marketers
establish deeper connections.
Lead:
To pen consumer’s mind to new possibilities, ideas, brands that you
never looked at before can be done through social media. It can be done through
samples that can be shared with some consumers who can then talk about it and
can turn into a best recommendation. Being able to send targeted offers to
certain targeted consumers and can find people who are more likely to post and use
them for broader viral feed that can increase your consumer base. Interestingly
of all is soliciting consumers feedback to drive internal innovation, changes
in service model and packaging product. Social media also provide the consumers the
idea that there are people and communities behind these brands that consider
your feedback critical.
Designing a Social Media
campaign
Marketers should define a clear vision, determine the optimal required
returns, create a unique organization plan and develop a detailed
implementation road map that manages risks as well.
Strategy: Before starting a campaign, a marketer should clearly define
the required goals which make it easier to measure and analyze results. Some of
the most common goals could be brand awareness, drive more traffic, establish
loyalty and improve conversion rates.
Plan: The campaign should be tailored to the organization and should
be a good continuation of the brand’s existing social voice and style. To
initiate the plan, perform research of the existing social followers across
networks to identify areas for improvement. Then choose the best social network
that suits your needs as various networks serve different purposes.
Understanding where your target audience spends time and then research
different campaigns that worked in similar situation that you can leverage.
Once all these factors have been decided the next step is to allocate budget
and resources.
ROI: Marketers should bring the analytical rigor that moves beyond the
‘fans’ and the ‘follows’ to measure the business impact on the bottom line by
using performance metrics, benchmarks and tools
across the various social media channels.
Cross Channel Promotion: social media can be improved through other
marketing channles to achive the desired results as a result of the integrated
marketing campaign. There are two benefits from doing this: 1) consumers are
reminded about your brand or product through other channels; 2) those who are
not active on social media are also informed.
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