Social Media Marketing is perfect for communicating with customers

УДК 659.4

 

Bayekenova A.M. Sailybayev A.M.

 

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IS PERFECT FOR COMMUNICATING WITH CUSTOMERS.

 

 Бұл жұмыста әлеуметтік-ақпараттық маркетинг, потенциалды тұтынушылармен тығыз 
қарым қатынаста болуды көздеу ретінде қарастырылды. Қазіргі уақытта, бүкіл әлем ақпараттық технологияға көшіп жатқанда, маркетингтің бұл түрі кәсіпкерлер мен тұтынушылар арасында болатын екі жақты келісімде, кәсіпкерлер үшін өзекті әрі өте тиімді. Және кәсіпкерлер үшін әлеуметтік ақпараттық маркетинг потенциалды тұтынушылардың нені қалауы жөнінде ақпарат алуға мүмкіндік береді.

 

В данной статье рассмотрен социально-информационный маркетинг, как средство общения с потенциальными покупателями. В наше время, где весь мир переходит на информационные технологии, данный вид маркетинга очень актуален и эффективен для  предпринимателей, где  идет двусторонняя связь между предпринимателем и  покупателем. Данный вид маркетинга позволяет именно предпринимателям узнавать больше о предпочтениях  потенциальных потребителей.

 

      Before going deeper into discussion of social media being the modern business-to-customer communication tool it is important to clearly define the term Social Media Marketing. Social Media marketing is an umbrella term and its definition may vary depending on sources, but popular definition states that it is « the methodical use of marketing with other technological concepts and techniques to achieve specific goals for a company». [1] In other words social media marketing is about gaining attention from internet users through viral marketing, online videos, online «word-of-mouth» communication, web logs and social networks for business purposes.

         In the context of the statement «Social Media marketing is perfect for communicating with customers», communicating with customers involves: delivering the promotion to the appropriate market; getting response from customers in terms of feedbacks, statistical data (number of website visits for instance); customer retention (for example through technical support or messages about new offers).

        Social media marketing term was barely used about three years ago. In the light of its rapidly increasing popularity today, large organizations invest in their social media related future by entering that sphere and trying to gain competitive advantage from it. This creates a big number of innovations each year and stimulates the raise of such giants like Google, Facebook, Tweeter, YouTube and many others social networks and interactive websites.

         Let's consider the arguments supporting the statement that social media marketing is perfect for communicating with customers.

         Firstly, social media gives access to thousands of millions users around the world, thus meaning that almost all the markets (especially retail ones that require a lot of promotion) can be reached to some extent by social media marketing.

         For large organizations, there are three main opportunities:

      1) Due to the scale of the organization, for management it may be too difficult to identify the weaknesses of the service or product. Most people don't like to spend time filling questionnaires, writing complaints and suggestions on the spot. For such cases the best solution may be short and convenient feedback, like «rate this hotel's service by giving 5 stars for excellent and 1 star for poor service». Moreover, most people are more likely to leave comments about the organization online and tend to be more critical and honest about it. Today, on most web pages of medium and large organizations we can find the ability to recommend posted news and videos to friends in Facebook, Google+ or followers on Tweeter, share those videos on YouTube. There are often the options to leave commentaries, which are then posted to user's profile wall on social network. This is extra promotion that is unlikely to be excessive.

     2) Using Tweeter, Facebook pages businesses can see what kind of customers or potential customers they have by tracking age, gender, and location. The group participants on Facebook fan pages, Tweeter followers help to provide some of such information. To make it easier for customers or potential customers to track news of the company, most businesses place «follow us» buttons of Facebook and Tweeter on their web page. Many of them also provide «like» buttons in order to assess the posted news and to let followers recommend it to their friends in social networks. The number of followers may be a good indicator of web reputation and recognition in comparison with competitors.

     3) If the company implements a big change, then social media is probably one of the best ways to inform those who may concern. At first, expanding to another location like city or even country can be supported by creating buzz in local social networks for example.

     Secondly, opening a new branch, store or restaurant can be mentioned in Tweeter, news section of the Facebook page or in funny commercial video posted to YouTube.

     As for small businesses, the main opportunity of social media marketing is the opportunity to tell customers about their existence, to improve recognition. Why is this an opportunity for a small business? Because it is cheap and in this case cheap does not necessarily mean not so effective. It mostly depends on creativity of marketing department, IT skills and product/service differentiation they promote. So, economies of scale don't play a big role in social media marketing.  In many cases it is easier for businesses to find the appropriate niche market and communicate with it using social media. Moreover, businesses don't have to invent the ways to find and reach those niche markets because they are already invented, operating and cheap.

      Continuing with the benefits of social media in marketing, one of the most popular method is to conduct SEO (search engine optimization) by using key words or phrases on businesses' web pages that would initiate the search. Being on the first page of results means that user's input words are most relevant to the words used on web page of organization and this is very important in competitive markets. The largest search engines like Google, MSN Search and Yahoo are developing and improving in this new direction. It is also becoming very popular to use Pay-per-click searches, when every click on the company's web page URL from searching engine is paid.

 

       Now it is essential to discuss at which points the social media marketing may not meet the criteria of perfect communication with customer. Starting with targeting the right market, social media is totally unlikely to be a perfect tool to communicate with the market of the elderly. Social media marketing is cheap, but it also  time consuming, so operating in area with almost no potential customers in it is waste of expensive time, which could be used in approaching the next better alternative (Opportunity Cost).

 

Regarding statistical response and feedback, the businesses may be misleaded by biased feedbacks, negative commentaries of competitors from fake profile accounts with the purpose of undermining the reputation.

 

       Concerning customer retention, as soon as the companies become popular on web pages, on social networks and forums they are being narrowly researched more by customers, competitors and many other web users, especially ones who search for sensational news and stories. Such attention can be risky, because any socially irresponsible or unethical activity, even not really significant one made by this company threats its reputation much more than it used to (when it was not so popular on web pages), firstly because much more people including pressure groups would be aware of that and secondly because news in the internet can be modified in favor of competitors, pressure groups for example, or presented in the way the publisher wants, by focusing readers' attention on particular phrases/words, claims. So, sometimes the companies that are initially not environment friendly may not find the social media marketing as a good communicating tool with customers, because it may cause much more trouble in terms of negative promotion, buzz than advantage.

 

     Despite the fact that social media is rapidly developing today, there are still big proportions of most markets that require alternative ways of communication between customers and businesses. Depending on industry, it may vary. Discussing luxury fission industry, although it moving towards promotion in the internet by online catalogues, web sites most customers still tend to rely on luxury magazines and personally visiting stores on high streets. Traditional media is still more significant in most industries, markets as the world has only been using the modern social media for less than a decade. Traditional media involves: print media including books, magazines, newspapers, direct mails; TV; Radio; CDs; DVDs.

      All of those approach only one way of interaction, from organization to consumer, without consumer being able to give such feedback like on Tweeter or Facebook page. This is the main reason why social media marketing is better in communicating with customer than traditional, because it includes most businesses' principle, which is about selling what the customer wants to buy, and here I mean not only the type of product/service, but also its quality and the way it is delivered.

       However, I don’t agree with the statement saying that social media marketing is perfect for communicating with customers. There are some reasons for that. One of them is that it depends on the industry we are talking about, market, marketing mix, whether it is B2B (Business-to-Business) trading. As soon as we consider technology related retailing business in London where social media marketing fitting with business marketing mix, then I would say yes, social media marketing is perfect for communicating. However, if we would be talking about less developed countries or B2B wholesale trading that according to marketing mix does not need any advertising in any social networks, then I would say that there are better ways to communicate with customers.

       The majority of population in both developing and developed countries around the world is developing towards highest proportion of technology used in every day life to complete any tasks from planning individual's weekends to planning huge expansion of particular organization. In my view, in near future people and information systems around them will be much more integrated. Just to see how rapidly the world has been moving to the use of internet, let's see the statistical data. Since 2000 the number of internet users around the world has risen by 584.7% (from 361 mln to 2.1 bln) [3]

       I believe that quite soon social media will be the perfect tool for communication between customers and businesses without exceptions. As Marc Schiller said that “the reason is that global network is becoming more «connected» each day, and if today some industries, markets (like elderly people) seem to be disconnected from social media, tomorrow you will be able to target and communicate with them through that social media”. [2]

        Nowadays I would recommend the most businesses to approach social media marketing. All the businesses have to do in order to succeed is to be creative in designing web pages, conduct intelligently search engine optimization (SEO).

        Sometimes it may be helpful to release some fun or interesting videos on YouTube, conduct a web log, or how it's usually called blog, for fans, this would create buzz in social networks, forums, which in its turn builds up the business recognition on the web. Here is an example, BMW's 30 minutes documentary fake video about Rampenfest in fake village in Germany. A big joke about launching a new series of BMW from Germany to the US through a huge ramp to create buzz in the internet to launch the latest car to the US market. The video had more than ten million views. It may be very important to release the appropriate video that would be watched by audience, which would provoke its fast distribution to million viewers. As marketing guru Marc Schiller said “to reach nine million passionate music lovers, you actually only needed to market to the 1,300 that had been building these networks and put themselves at the center”. [2]

        Potential customers need to know about your business existence, which is the problem in highly competitive industries, markets, but even this is not enough to attract customer, you need to get the customer know about your USP in the way he/she wants it. Firstly, business should be easily found on searching engines, this can be achieved through SEO; also, in most cases business needs to provide as much description as it can fit into convenient, interactive and simple facebook page or website. The reason for that is the fact that most people in urban civilization today tend to do plan and research everything at home or at work because technology, competitive environment and many other factors allow them to do it, and they simply want to save their time.

 

 

 

Bibliography.

 

 

1. Brick Marketing, LLC. (2012, February 5) What is Social Media Marketing? Boston: Brick Marketing. Retrieved April 15, 2013 from: http://www.brickmarketing.com/what-is-social-marketing.htm

 

2. Bhasin, K. (2011). Marketing Guru Marc Schiller Reveals The Secrets Of Social Media Marketing. Business Insider. Retrieved April 15, 2013 from: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-12-05/strategy/30476945_1_technologies-social-networks-chat

 

      3. Internet now active with 2.1 billion users. (2012, January 12). Retrieved April 19, 2013 from http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57360925-93/internet-now-active-with-2.1-billion-users/

 

4. Fill, C. (2009). Marketing Communications. Interactive marketing communications. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, p.772-779.

 

5. iContact. (2010). What is Social Media?Morrisville: iContact Corporation. Retrieved April 16, 2013 from: http://blog.icontact.com/blog/what-is-social-media/

 

6. Lake, L. (2011). Understanding the Role of Social Media in Marketing. Retrieved April 14, 2013 from: http://marketing.about.com/od/strategytutorials/a/socialmediamktg.htm

 

7. Miniwatts Marketing Group. 2011. Internet World Stats. Bogota: Miniwatts Marketing Group. Retrieved April 18, 2013 from: http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

Сведения об авторах:

 

Баекенова А. М. – студентка 2 курса, специальность «Менеджмент».

Сайлыбаев А.М. - Научное звание, научная степень.

Казахстанско-Британский Технический  Университет.