Rise of Social Media Marketing
Marketing on the internet has been here for a long time; however marketing on the social networking sites such as twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. is relatively a new addition to marketing plans of organizations. This type of marketing is popularly known as Social Media Marketing.
Internet has slowly become a necessity for us. A large portion is part of one social networking site or another to keep up with the daily life of people close to them and share their own. The organizations have now explored this space and have advertised their products on a personal level. When a consumer likes a product, they share it with their friends, it gets good response as it is coming from someone they know and can trust thus increasing the brand awareness. In some cases, it has been found to help improving customer service as it provides instant and direct dialogue between company and consumer on grievances and scope of improvement.
How it works? The organizations join the social websites; they create their page or profile and allow the users to directly contact them. This gives customers the feeling of getting personal attention thus helping in relation building. They post news, videos, information on their products which gets viewed and shared by a large number of people. All this happens in time as customers get informed instantly.
It’s not only the big organizations that profit, also small or local businesses profit from it. With not much capital, this type of marketing is financially friendly for them. They mainly depend on their regular customers to spread the news. Some of them give special offers to those who do so. The word spreads, the old customers get offers, the new ones have another option for a produce or service and the business has new customers, a win-win situation for all.
SMS alerts on mobiles have benefitted the advertisers. With social networking sites providing alerts for free at time has allowed the companies to contact and update the users about any new product or its uses or benefits of it and all such information that boosts their market value. Advertisements too become a part of it, mainly on twitter.
Not only the companies benefit, this medium was used in the 2008 Presidential Election as well. President Barack Obama updated constantly on Facebook and Twitter along with interacting with the people, discussing topics and making announcements as a part of their campaign. The pages are still in place and working.
The internet has already taken over television as the largest advertising medium. Television ads have already started to ask viewers to visit their website or Facebook page for more information. The print ads have started to include bar codes and QR codes which direct them to their websites. Hence, one can say Social Media Marketing will only expand in the coming years. Direct consumer interaction and low costs along with other aforementioned qualities one can assume that in coming years it might very well become the leading medium for marketing.
