Social Media is become an integral part of our lives be it personal or professional. The impact is equal if not greater in the marketing world, with consumer brands seeking enormous benefits and changes.
How and why does social media marketing gain an advantage over traditional marketing practices? The advantages of social media marketing are numerous.
The biggest ones being:
Cost Effective: It’s cheaper. A lot cheaper. You can reach 1,000 people for a fraction of the cost using social media than you can through television, billboards or even email
Personal and Interactive: Social media is the only marketing platform that allows you to engage and interact with your consumers – it’s a two-way relationship, which can be hugely lucrative for brands
CPM: Cost per thousand impressions is an advertising metric that measures how many advertising dollars you must spend to reach 1,000 people. The goal of any advertising should be to reach as many relevant people as possible at the lowest cost.
In a recent cross channel media costs comparison, the CPM of various media channels were measured and social media is the cheapest by far.
Some staggering stats:
- People want to be in control of the content they receive:
- 86% of people skip TV commercials
- 44% of direct mail is never opened.
- 91% of people have unsubscribed from company emails they previously opted into
- 72% of marketers think branded content is more effective than advertising in a magazine; 69% say it is superior to direct mail and PR.
- 71% of companies planned to increase their digital marketing budgets this year, by an average of 27%
- 61% of global Internet users research products online
- The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The higher up you go on the search listings page, the more content each web page has
- 67 percent of marketers say increasing sales directly attributable to digital marketing campaigns is a top priority this year
- The number of avenues to use social media or online as a marketing tools are endless and continue to grow, right from the basic social media platform Facebook to now Snapchat.
The way brands are using these platforms for business is amazing to see and something to learn from. The way things are going it seems social media marketing marketing is the way forward and will take precedence over traditional marketing practices in the coming years.
References: Traditional Media vs. Social Media Advertising, Retrieved from: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/traditional-media-versus-social-media/
Marketing 101 – Social Media vs Traditional Media, Retrieved from: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/social-vs-traditional-media-marketing/466873
104 Fascinating Social Media and Marketing Statistics for 2014 (and 2015), Retrieved from: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/104-fascinating-social-media-marketing-statistics-2014-2015-01084935
THE ULTIMATE LIST OF MARKETING STATISTICS, Retrieved from: http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics
Marketing Management Blog 
thank you for your interesting blog,I think that social media are a strategic activity but not all brands are yet using them in this way. They draw strength from the inner need of people to connect with others, something that was not possible until Web 2.0 developed. Sound reasons exist for organisations to develop social media strategies, and the power of social media is undeniable. Not only must organisations engage via social media but they must do it correctly or suffer at the hands of empowered consumers.
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Social media has the big advantage that it a easy and cheap way to get a lot of people involved. The down side is that, due to the free access points it also attracts non-wanted. Therefore corporate brands are hesitate to make full use of the activity, given the risk in having to manage the large information flow, some of which could be harmful.
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Social media is a powerful tool that can be used in marketing. When I see my friends are eating a particular food or posting a particular clothing style frequently on their recent posts, I got attracted and then curious – wanting to know why they did that. An example would be a new street food has entered into the market. I may not know who or when it was launched, but soon after I saw more than five friends posing photos of this street food, it made me want to try it. And when I try it, I will put a post of the food photo too. When my friends saw my post, it could signal that this is a popular item on the market right now, we better not to miss it. Soon, when we log into the social media website, we are seeing the same food on everyone’s post. It’s like an old worth of mouth strategy, but we are doing it in the modern way. I found that this kind of trend usually comes fast goes fast, yet it is an effective way to get a quick attention from potential customers.
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Thank for interesting post! Althought social medie brings a lot of benefit for marketer, negative effect of social media should not be ignored. The same social networks that serve to spread good consumer reviews and marketing copy can also serve to make information that we don’t want to reach customers to go viral. Including everything from negative reviews and comments about company to unauthorized or inappropriate posts on account, these pieces of content can do serious damage to small business’ reputation. The informal, conversational tone of social media makes it more likely that even well-intentioned comments on account can be misinterpreted, and once they’re out with a negative spin, there’s no taking them back.
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I completely agree with your views on this blog. As a part of this digital age, traditional methods of marketing goods and services are getting weaker by the day. With a host of players in the same marketplace, consumers have a wide variety to choose from. With the facts mentioned in the blog clearly writing off old methods like TV commercials and direct mails, marketeers are under constant pressure of being innovative in order to attract customers.
Say for example, the HP – Bend the Rules campaign did exceedingly well in the year 2014. They were successful in creating content around their product using Vine artists which revibrated through social media. The concept was to give various vine artists a chance to use the new HP Laptop and do something eye catchy and creative, that too within 6 seconds. The Going Epic – Bend the Rules campaign surpassed expectations on Vine, Twitter, Television and other forms of social media.
Reasons as to why this campaign was successful were cited as using vines (six second short videos) and using influencers (popular vine – stars) to do the influencing for the product.
The idea of the campaign was to attract the younger demographic by revamping the brand. I think they did pretty well and got their message across. With minimal spends, no celebrity endorser and a whole lot of fun!
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I considered the conclusion of this post: social media marketing has gained an advantage over traditional marketing. I partially agree with this. Consider the following extract from Stephen and Galak (2012, p 636), ‘Traditional earned media has a per-event effect on sales that is much larger than the corresponding per-event effects of social earned media. This is not surprising, given that TMOs (Traditional Media Outlets) typically have greater reach than SMOs (Social Media Outlets).’ In summary, traditional media is just as important as any other form of media. I think what is required is the ability, market research, marketing strategy, plans, understanding current trends etc to be able to design a clever and successful IMC strategy, employing the use of traditional and social media combinations. Optimising this approach provides the right strategy in maximising our marketing campaign to the right segment and targeted audience; with a focus of maximising reach and frequency also.
So has social media marketing overtaken traditional marketing methods; no. The marketer just needs to use whatever the most effective means are for their target audience. For some products/services it’s social media centric marketing that is necessary. For others it’s traditional. Furthermore, for the remainder it’s a mix that produces the best effect.
Stephen, T. S, Galak, J 2012, ‘The Effects of Traditional and Social Earned Media on Sales: A Study of a Microlending Marketplace’, Journal of Marketing Research Vol 49 ( 5) , pp. 624- 639.
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Social media and networks have a growing role in marketing, which has important implications for how consumers, channels, and companies perform. In social media settings, consumers provide feedback about products, and this feedback is visible to other agents, including other consumers, channel partners, competitors, and investors. There are different social media marketing trends that will definitely affect the way digital marketers will undertake their search engine optimization campaign to boost their lead generation process.
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