How “Dell” has implemented SMM

In my last blog I discussed the main idea of Social Media Marketing (SMM). I mentioned the key point of entering into a dialogue or a relation with the target group. In this blog I’m going to explain this a bit more by giving an example of a company who has implemented SMM. But first I’m going to elaborate on an action plan in order to have a good SMM strategy, which is crucial and forms the basis of your campaign, like I mentioned in my previous blog.

Action plan
First of all, you have to define a mission. Try to come up with a few goals and convert these goals into success factors. Next, make sure to have a nice budget and employees who want to go for it and who believe in your idea. Important to keep in mind is that SMM is not something you do “in a week”. A good SMM campaign requires time. Do some research and determine where your target group is and which social media they are using the most. Then start online with reputation management. First, you need to find out what your target group is saying about you or your products and services on the internet. Subsequently, participate in conversations, convince “opponents” and help, inform and interact with (current) customers. Develop blogs, forums and unique content to increase brand awareness. Try to stay innovative and keep interacting with “your people”. Evaluate new things you tried earlier and measure the effects. Important is to improve weaker points and optimize your results. Companies want to see the difference as fast as possible and they are a bit impatient, but it is important to be patient and to evaluate and improve if necessary.

Dell
In 2009, Dell implemented SMM in their organization. Dell started its own community site, where the customers have access to twelve blogs, dozens of forums, media galleries and the successful “Dell IdeaStorm”. The Dell IdeaStorm is a digital place where (potential) customers can drop their ideas about current products or just “wild ideas”. It is Dells intention to react on all comments and ideas, whether it is positive or negative, but just to give a signal to the people that Dell stands for customer loyalty and that they want to help out customers with problems.

Tons of useful ideas were send in and a few were actually used to improve their assortment and to listen to their customers. This is very smart, because those customers think that they are “a part of the organization”. This is how you create commitment. Next time, customers who feel that they are taken very seriously by Dell are definitely coming back to Dell. If you have already read my previous blog, you know that customer retention is much cheaper and easier than attracting new customers. Conclusively, Social Media Marketing can be very advantageous and profitable, but make sure to have a good strategy and try to be patient!

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”.