Marketing and New Technology - Essay Example

? Contents 3 Introduction 4 Literature Review 5 Social Media and Social Media Marketing 5 Social Media Technology and Marketing 7 Common Social Media marketing Technologies or Strategies 9 Blogging 9 Social Networking 10 Microblogging 10 Viral Marketing 10 Data and Methods 11 Analysis and Discussion 11 References 13 Abstract Marketing has taken a new shift and traditional marketing is no more as valuable as it was earlier. Social media revolution has added a whole new dimension to marketing and advertising. Social media marketing has opened up two communication channels wherein consumers now play a more active role and have great control over the content than the marketers. Social media allows people to connect with each other and at the same time share information. The relationship between marketer and consumer is a lot more interactive. Consumers are free to express their views and opinions about products and services, and hence marketers get customer feedback which would not have been possible in traditional media. There are various advantages or benefits that social media technologies offer that make it more attractive to marketers. Marketers are able to track and trace consumer behaviours, track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, target specific consumers, create communication channels for consumers to interact with each other, and many more. There are numerous forms of social media forms or technologies that companies can use to market their products and services. Most popular ones are social networks, blogs, microblogs, social bookmarking and voting, media-sharing sites, review sites, forums and viral marketing. Qualitative research has been employed and secondary data has been used in constructing this paper. There are some issues that need to be considered such as unethical practices and misuse social media technologies safeguard of customer information, etc. The future of marketing and advertising is social media marketing and companies must realise this sooner than later. Introduction Marketing has taken a whole new direction. Traditional advertisements do not work anymore, or at least not the way it used to earlier. Consumers are no more passive onlookers or bystanders of advertisement technologies but have now become an integral active participant in the whole advertisement process. Marketing communication is not anymore targeted to individual customers but communities and groups of individuals who share a common interest or ideology. Communication channels are such that conversation can now be out in front of millions of people with a lot less time and money. Many believed or saw the above mentioned development as death of advertising but it is far from the truth. All the changes mentioned above are a result of advent of internet and World Wide Web, and in turn the emergence of social media as a platform for marketing. Social media revolution is a result of new technologies and innovations that have been developed in the last decade or so, that has completely redefined marketing and has resulted in the rebirth of advertising. Social media revolution has brought a whole new dimension to marketing. There is no need to outspend your competitors if you can outsmart them. Technologies like twitter has made it possible to get the market pulse at your finger tips instead of having to spend thousands on focus groups. Technologies and services like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc are at the forefront of social revolution. Facebook has around 250 million users while Twitter has 14 million users. YouTube attracts 100 million viewers per month while blogs have 346 million people (Zarrella, 2009). There is no bigger platform than social media platform for companies to market their products and services. This paper is a literature review and critical discussion on how new technologies of social media has revolutionised marketing. Going forward social media will account for majority of marketing of business worldwide. Consumers are starting to play an increased role in influencing each other and sharing opinionated views and as a result promoting products and brands on the internet. Sooner or later, all companies will be forced to rethink their communication and marketing strategies. Hence this topic is very relevant and important when looking into marketing and new technologies. This literature review will critically discuss whether the technologies of social media will be applicable and relevant to long term business philosophies and marketing principles. Literature Review The importance of social media was best put forward by mark Zuckerberg: “Once every hundred years media changes. The last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the next hundred years information won’t be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change. You will need to get into these connections.” (Davis, 2012) Social Media and Social Media Marketing Social media is best defined by Solis and Breakenridge (2009) as “the democratization of content and the shift in the role people play in the process of reading and disseminating information (and thus creating and sharing content)”. In simple words, social media allows the consumer to actively take part in content creation, criticise and comment on the content, access to wide range of information, facilitates communication and formation of communities, provides links to other websites, articles, posts, etc (forming a web or a network). That is, it allows people (in business sense consumers) to be connected and exchange content with each other online (Evans & McKee, 2010). Social media marketing can be best defined as an interaction from a marketing perspective with use of a set of social online media conversations. Conversations can span across media and technologies (Jaokar et al., 2009). The most important aspect of social media that has resulted in such success in a short time is that the technologies allow people to connect on a mass scale and facilitates information sharing. This reduces the opportunity for exploitation of the marketplace by businesses. The marketer-consumer relationship in social media is a lot different to that in the traditional media (Anderson, 2010). The relationship between marketer and consumer in social media can be best understood by comparing it with traditional media. Traditional media such as magazines, newspapers, television, radio, etc are a one way communication channel. Advertisers pay heavily for their content to be distributed across traditional media and consumers are at receiving end of this content. Through this medium it is very difficult for advertisers to target the specific consumers. On the other hand, consumers do not have much choice to express their opinions or views about commercials. This is not the case with social media. New web technologies have made it possible for the advertisers to create their own content and distribute it to millions of users and more importantly target their advertisements to specific audience. Another important feature that new web technologies have made it possible is to track the exposure that an advertisement gets in the real world. With respect to consumer interaction, consumers can share their views and opinions on the products and brands (Zarrella, 2009). This results in feedback for the advertisers to determine the efficiency of their marketing activities. Social Media Technology and Marketing There are various marketing objectives that can be achieved by use of social media technology such as building brand awareness, improve communication channels, improve customer relations, increase awareness about products and campaigns, boost sales and in turn revenue, increase ROI (return on investment), etc (Webber, 2007). The characteristics of social media technologies differs it from traditional marketing and offers an advantage to marketers. It is the democratic nature of social media that promises to deliver favourable results as compared to the traditional media. Following are the characteristics of social media that differentiates it from traditional one-way communication strategies of the traditional mass media: Social media technologies allow marketers to segment the market based on interests and attitudes of the consumers which is very difficult to achieve in traditional marketing. Traditional segmentation techniques such as age, gender, geographical can still be applied in social media marketing. This is possible because through socil media technologies consumers tend to form groups and communities based on their interest and attitudes. This is increases the efficiency of marketing strategies due to accurate targeting through segmentation (Webber, 2007). Social media technologies such as Twitter allow businesses to have a dialogue with the consumers and establish long term relationships with both potential and current customers (Webber, 2007). This makes it possible for the companies to get feedback from customers not only the advertisements but also on the products and services that they offer. Customer feedback campaigns which would cost the companies huge money are now done with no effort. This interactive characteristic of social media is what promises and motivating the companies to movie to social media marketing. Social media platforms not only allow the customers to communicate with the corporations but also communicate among themselves. This customer to customer interaction can help promote the company or its products and services in a great way and results in increased awareness among consumers. This hybrid quality of social media is very attractive from a business’s point of view (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). Word of mouth marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools and at the same time most difficult to take advantage of. Word of mouth marketing on a global scale was not possible using traditional marketing. Social media has opened up this channel and now word of mouth marketing can be used effectively for global products and services. Social media connects people from different parts of the world and allows them to share their opinions and views. Word of mouse as it is known in the internet has resulted in some of the greatest marketing successes of the last two decades - Google. Google became global phenomenon just by this word of mouth marketing and so did Facebook (MacNamara, 2010). A recommendation from a trusted friend adds more value to a consumer than a celebrity promoting a product on mass media. Social media has lead to democratization of information and media. This is very important as it moves the control of the content on the internet to consumers. The companies that put out the content do not have much control over how it is shared and used as compared to the consumers. Greater the control over the content, greater is the engagement of the consumers. This means that the companies cannot use marketing as a way to bluff customers and if it does, it will soon attract negative response from the consumers. Consumers can take active part in online forums, broadcast audios and videos, share content, and even boycott brands. This improves the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the marketing process. Social media technologies allow businesses to track and trace consumer behaviour. This lets them understand the consumer’s online behaviour and in turn their preferences or choice of products and services. That is, a consumers profile can be built and advertisements can be targeted to specific consumers (Tuten, 2008). For businesses, this is great tool to have is they can not only track the consumers viewing their ads but also reach only the target audience. This is also turns out to be economical as companies will be only paying for ads that reach the customers. Social media technologies such as SMO (Social Media Optimisation) and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) allows companies to use innovative ways to reach their target customers. SEO deals with using key words that will increase the probability of being found on search engines such as Google, while SMO focuses on increasing the number of visits per site by using techniques such as bookmarking and linkability. Overall these technologies give the marketers greater opportunity to reach a wider target audience than traditional media. Common Social Media marketing Technologies or Strategies There are many forms social media but the following are the most popular and some of them will be discussed: 1. Social networks (Facebook, Linkedin, Orkut, Google+, etc) 2. Blogs 3. Microblogs (Twitter) 4. Social bookmarking and voting (Reddit, Digg) 5. Media-sharing sites (Flickr, Youtube) 6. Review sites (Yelp) 7. Forums 8. Viral marketing (Zarrella, 2009) Blogging The potential of blogging is immense and the companies have realised this, and starting to increasingly use blogging in marketing activities. It allows companies to not only establish communications with the customers, but also allows publishing its own content without the assistance of any other marketing companies/agents (Weil, 2006). Companies can use this technology to increase awareness about their products and services, and at the same time get feedback from the consumers. Blogging can also be a source for new ideas, enhance customer relations, low cost marketing, reach target audience, branding, etc. Social Networking Social networking sites are driven by consumers. It is a social media platform that allows the consumers to connect and network. These websites offer consumes high level of control over content. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Linkedin can give companies access to millions of consumers. The ‘Like’ economy as it is known is an effective way to increase the product or services’ credibility. Through these websites, corporations can enhance their relationships with their consumers and also build company pages or communities that can be used to continuously broadcast updates and promotional campaigns about the company. Companies must actively use these sites to interact with consumers and not just use it as a corporate website. The more active the consumers are in participating in the community the greater to exposure to the company (Weber, 2007). Microblogging Microblogging sites like Twitter is an effective tool that businesses can use to market their products and services. This again offers the same benefits and advantages as other social media technologies. Microblogging sites allow companies to track their competitors and stay updates about current market trends. Viral Marketing Viral marketing is any online strategy that results in consumers sharing the content or message of the marketers in such a way that it achieves exponential growth in terms of exposure and influence of the marketing message. Viral marketing strategy uses word of mouse technique to create awareness of the product or service. In order for a marketing campaign to go viral, the content must be designed in such a way that it encourages the consumer to share it (Weber, 2007). Data and Methods Qualitative research methodology has been used and secondary data has been used. Qualitative research methodology has a more natural and interpreting approach and focuses mainly on theory. Views, perceptions and opinions are used to understand a phenomenon (Thomas, 2003). Secondary data is the data that is collected for the works of other researcher and scholars in the field (Kumar, 2005). There has been field work done to assist in this research. Some of the secondary data sources used for this paper are academic books and journals along with websites and online databases. Analysis and Discussion The literature review has focused on how social media technologies have contributed to the improvement and added a new dimension to marketing. There are various advantages of using social media marketing technologies that are not present or available in traditional marketing technologies. Social media technology is still in evolutionary phase and soon new developments and technologies will be introduced that will add to its attractiveness. The technologies and tools of social media allow businesses to target specific customer segments and also have the privilege of tracking the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. The technologies also make it possible to track and create a profile of the consumers and their buying behaviour. It is a cheap medium with respect to costs when compared to traditional media. From the analysis of the literature review, it can be said that there are numerous issues and concerns that are associated with social media marketing. All said and done it takes a lot of effort and expertise for companies to take full advantage of the benefits that social media marketing technologies has to offer. Issues with respect to privacy and security of the consumer’s information and false or unethical use of these technologies can be a threat to the businesses. Also it is a challenge for businesses to engage the consumers in a two way interaction without which social media marketing will not be of much value to the businesses. The content that is put in front of the consumers needs to be creative, innovative and engaging. A lot of effort needs to go in designing of social media marketing campaigns. There is no questioning the argument that social media marketing is the future of marketing. It has redefined marketing and advertising in the 21st century. It has included the consumer into the whole process as an active participant and has given more control to the consumers. At the same time it has opened up new two way communication channels for the business and has added a new dimension to the marketer-consumer relationship. It is high time that all business understands the importance of social media marketing and make it a part of their marketing strategy. References Anderson, E. (2010). Social Media Marketing: Game Theory and the Emergence of Collaboration. NY: Springer. Davis, J. (2012). “Facebook: Changing Advertising Forever”. Capture Commerce. [Online]. Available at: http://www.capturecommerce.com/facebook-advertising.php. Accessed on 13 Apr, 2012. Evans, D. & McKee, J. (2010). Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement. IN: Wiley Publishing. Kumar, R. (2010). Research Methodology: A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Ltd. 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