Social Media Marketing

Nowadays, people come in contact with dozens of forms of advertisement. People’s minds work in a way that only a few very striking and interesting advertisements get their attention. In general, people can remind the brand or the advertisement itself from only one or two of these striking advertising expressions. So why would a company spend tons of money to advertisements which, in the worst case, wouldn’t be recalled by anybody. This is a different way of evaluating advertisements, but in the busy society where people live in these days it is a lot more profitable to reach the target group by using social media. Since the social media revolution is emerging these days it is easier and probably cheaper to get the attention of the people by using social media marketing (SMM).

In this blog I’m going to discuss social media marketing.
The main idea of SMM is the entering into a dialogue or a relation with the target group instead of overwhelming them with lots of advertisements. This can be done by using online communities, forums, blogs or other types of social network to get in touch with “your” people.

The first advantage is that participating or registering in social networks is free. Compared to spending money on advertisements which are only recalled by some people, participating in social networks is advantageous. As mentioned in the beginning of this blog, there is a so called “social media revolution” going on at the internet. Subsequently, the amount of visitors on sites as Facebook, LinkdIn and Twitter is rising in unprecedented quantities. This means that companies can generate brand awareness to (potential) customers all over the internet, only by a “little” time investment. This doesn’t mean that SMM is “just something extra” on companies’ to-do-list. Before starting with the actual SMM-campaign it is essential to create a clear strategy. Identify what the organization needs to achieve with SMM. An example of a strategy is mentioned before in this blog, such as generating more brand awareness or creating better relationships with your customers. These are just some examples of strategies, but there are lots of more to imagine. In order to achieve the goals it is important to do research about the target group. Important questions can be: “Which social network is commonly used by the target group?” and “Which style is the best to approach the target group?”. After doing research companies can actually start with their SMM campaign.

Key point in approaching the target group is to treat them as individual customers. Obviously, important customers are more important than smaller customers. Get to know your customers better in the beginning and try to interact with each other. Significant detail is that the customers want to be understood and they want to get the feeling that the organization is helpful. Customers will respect this and probably/hopefully this results in loyalty. And never forget this thumb rule: “It is better and cheaper to keep your current customers satisfied and loyal, than attracting/finding new customers”.