Social Media Marketing

Introduction

In this lecture, Aldo Gnocchi from Gnocchi Digital Marketing was lecturing on Social Media Marketing. If not cited differently the content in chapter is based on the presentation of the lecturer or the accompanying slides (Gnocchi, 2017).

To explain on what this blog post will focus on, it is important to clarify upfront, what social media platforms actually are. The explanation of Aldo Gnocchi was that social media offers a platform to users to create and share content with people. The specialty of Social Media is the fact that everyone is able to use it, no software engineering skills are needed and the platforms are applicable for everyone. However, even though it is applicable for everyone not everyone understands how to apply it in a commercial way

Information Sources

In order to understand the role of Social Media in Advertising it is crucial to identify the most trusted information sources. According to a study the most trusted source is still the recommendations from people one knows (W.O.M) Second most trusted source, and interesting in this context, are consumer opinions posted online. Social Media platforms are a marketplace for exchanging recommendations, either among people you know or just people who purchased a product prior to you and share their opinion online. In Europe, classical advertising methods such as TV Spots, radio advertising or advertisement in print media are witnessing declining significance as a market, but not because people trust those kinds of advertisements less, but more because people rarely watch normal TV, listens to radio or buy print media. Whereas in other areas like Asia and Africa these traditional advertisement methods are still very popular and efficient. Ads on Social Media are hitherto considered as a rather untrustworthy information source, especially in Europe only 32%  trust advertisement on Social Media, this is expected to change in the future since marketers gain experience on how to target the right people and how to approach them (Nielsen, 2015).  Also, text ads on mobile devices do not convey a lot of trust. Gnocchi points out that a lot of people feel uncomfortable and hurt in their privacy when they get advertisement via sms.

Why and How Social Media

For every company, it is crucial to be present on Social Media, because no chance to increase visibility and inform your customers should be missed. Studies have shown that people consider Social Media also as her top choice for Customer Care (Jackson, 2017). However, as a Social Media manager it is important to stay realistic: People on Social Media are interested to follow their families, friends and persons of interest, and certainly not companies. Nevertheless, it is important to be present on Social Media, since some people go, during their decision-making process (information search), on Social Media to check out different companies. Especially people who made a purchase and are happy with the product or service, tend to like/follow companies on Social Media. Other reasons for people following companies are:

People are interested in the product/service (73.4%) – People are interested in Promotions (58.8%) – Sites are entertaining (51.3%) – People are offered an incentive (42.2%) (The Q3 2016 Sprout Social Index, 2016).

After convincing users to follow a page, some rules have to be considered in order to keep the followers interested. Users not only share the reasons for following pages but also for quitting their subscription. Some examples are: Too Many Promotional Messages (46%) – Information is not relevant (41.1%) – They Tweet too much (34.9%) (The Q3 2016 Sprout Social Index, 2016).

Social Media in the Customer Decisions Journey

Social Media Channels can be used in every step of the Customer Decisions Journey, in the information search phase it is important to provide an insightful site which replies all the answers of the customer and convinces him of the product/service. But also, in aftersales Social Media is ubiquitous. People can share their experience or can stay in contact with the company. If a company can manage it to bind a customer after his first purchase, it is very likely that he will come back without taking other companies into consideration.

Requirements for Social Media Marketing

In order to pursue a successful Social Media Strategy some important key facts have to be defined.

First, clear goals must be defined. The company has to know what they want to reach with their social media presence. In order to measure the success, each goal has to have a clear KPI (key performance indicator). If a company`s goal is for example to raise their awareness, a possible KPI could be the amount of new followers they get in a certain time period. Furthermore, it is essential to know the target audience to choose adequate content and provide it on the right channel. Another very important point is the formats and frequency of the provided information. According to Schwenk, providing information in video form is getting more and more popular (2017). The reason is that people tend to be lazy and often do not have time and motivation to read long texts. Another factor which has a strong influence on the strategy are the resources that are required to maintain the different channels. It is crucial to think about how much time, money and effort one wants to spend on social media. Companies often think that the content of their posts must match the corporate design and they do not know how to use emojis and stories. That is the reason why social media accounts of enterprises are frequently managed by trainees and interns as they are familiar with this new way of communication.

Having good content is important. But providing it to the right persons at the right place and time is crucial!

Therefore, a successful social media strategy always requires an editorial plan which is a detailed description about all the social media activities in a certain time period.

According to a study of the irish communication and marketing firm Edelman, 50% of the interviewed companies consider social media as important for their business. Nevertheless, it is surprising to see, that 90% of them mentioned that they do not use their social media channels and content efficiently due to a lack of knowhow (Fürsicht, 2015).

This fact points out that social media is still not treated equally to classic marketing activities.

Strategic Approaches

Social Media can fulfill many different purposes and speak to many different target groups. Some of the strategic approaches will be discussed in detail in the following part.

Lead Generation

Many people think of Social Media more as a tool for brand awareness and less of as a tool for direct customer acquisition. However, Social Media Channels can be effective sources for lead generations. Companies can convince users to give them information with use of incentives.

Customer Retention/Loyalty

On Social Media Customers can be reminded of a product and they can also share their experience. New or additional Products can be shown to the Customer in order to turn them into regular customers. 

Support

Social Media Platforms can be used as C2C support platform. Swisscom for example calls it “From clients for clients”. They also answer questions by themselves (B2C). In order to interact on a private basis with the customer it is advisable to do a channel break and answer publicly asked questions via private message. By doing so it can be avoided to spread negative reactions.

Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is a word combination of crowd and outsourcing. It is defined as an organisation that requests specific resources from a group of people (crowd). Crowdsourcing is used for raising money, finding new ideas, promoting or consolidating information. Companies use the knowledge of customers in order to engage with them in a broader spectrum. Crowdsourcing can give access to a wider set of expertise at a faster pace and at lower costs compared to the knowledge of employees, suppliers or other traditional sources of expertise. On the contrary, it is not guaranteed that the reached crowd has the right expertise (Rouse, 2017). Since Migros was a pioneer in social media marketing it is a good example for crowdsourcing, they use the knowledge of its customers and asks them what kind of products they want to have in the assortment or what products or packages could be improved. The community helps Migros to provide better products.

Changing Facebook Algorithm

Facebook is continuously adapting its algorithms. The goal of Facebook is that the algorithm should provide more quality content in the newsfeed. Facebook decides according to three variables which content is going to appear on the newsfeed. Firstly, the affinity plays an important role, if a user interacts more with contents of a certain person or company contents of these people and companies will be displayed more often in the future. Moreover, the weight of interaction is also vital. If a user only likes a content it is a light weight interaction, if the user comments something it is considered as a middle weight interaction, whereas a heavy weight interaction is for example a shared content. Additionally, new or fresh content is more relevant and therefore shown more often and on a higher rank than older content. However, if a company wants to have a high reach they have to invest money otherwise the content will not be seen by the community.

Figure 1: Facebook Algorithm

Social Media Trends

Social Hubs

A trend in social media marketing is to create a social hub. A company builds its own social or content hub and uses different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram to generate traffic on their own website and media hub. The goal is to not send the customers away from the company website but to keep them on the page and animate them to engage on the social hub. The overall goal is to have all interactions on the own website to increase the conversion rate on the company website and not on the separate social media platforms.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is also considered as a big trend in social media marketing, according to Forbes (2017) in 2017, 84% of marketers plan to do an influencer campaign. Influencer marketing is mostly done by an individual that has an influence over potential buyers, these influencers carry out marketing activities for companies in order to influence the potential customers. The reason for using this type of marketing is that consumers look at other consumer to inform about their purchasing decisions. Currently, there is a trend towards micro influencers that have less followers but more impact on the potential customers. The number of followers of the influencers is not the most important criteria when choosing an influencer. The influencer should be able to reach your target group and provide relevant content for the specific target group.

A problem that occurs with influencer marketing is, that the influencers can lose their credibility, they get paid for the content they deliver and often it is not their own opinion about the product anymore but simply a marketing measure of the company. To reverse this effect a company should aspire influencer relations. Companies and influencers should create campaigns together and not only buy them. These campaigns should fit to the desired target group.

Conclusion

Even tough that Social Media established itself as very efficient tool to reach a lot of people and spread a message without high expenses it is still not treated equally to other marketing measurement.

The statistics show that people do not longer trust in classical media such as TV and print advertisement. New forms of marketing are needed. People wish to get true information from real people. A lot of companies have recognised this trend and pay influencers to advertise their products. It is important that the story behind is true and authentic.

In order to use social media as a successful marketing tool it is crucial to have a good strategy with clear goals and KPI`s. Furthermore, the channel managers have to know in which content the audience is interested in and how to communicate with them.

Martina, Julia and Andreas

References

Forbes. (2017). Why Influencer Marketing will explode in 2017. Retrieved from www.forbes.com/sites/ajagrawal/2016/12/27/why-influencer-marketing-will-explode-in-2017/#5fc9a5a620a9

Fürsicht, P. (2015). Über 50% der Unternehmen erachten Social Media als wichtig. Retrieved from:

www.social-media-autohaus.de/ueber-50-der-unternehmen-erachten-social-media-als-wichtig/

Gnocchi, A. (2017). Lecture: Social Media Marketing

Rouse, M. (2017). Crowdsourcing. Retrieved from www.searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/crowdsourcing

Schwenk, M. (2017). Erklärvideos statt Text: So erzielen Sie mehr Werbewirkung. Retrieved from:

www.bwlzweinull.de/2017/02/16/erklaervideos-statt-text-werbewirkung/

Ilustration

Figure 1: Facebook Algorithm, retrieved from www.blog.bufferapp.com/understanding-facebook-news-feed-algorithm