Evaluation of Social Media Marketing Campaigns - Research Paper Example

Evaluation of social media marketing campaigns Marketing is one of the vital facets of business and organizational development, and managers should ensure that good and reliable marketing strategies are in place to realize success. What is marketing? According to Hornby (2000), “it is the activity of presenting, advertising and selling a company’s products in the best possible way.” Marketing is an organizational function that strives to promote it in order to boost its image, products and services. In a business, the fundamental aim of marketing is to realize increased sales geared towards the profitability. It is a fact that one of the core objectives of a business is profit maximization, and businesses have various marketing strategies to realize this important objective. The conventional means of marketing in company or an organization involved strategies like: advertisement, branding, discounts, after sale services and free samples among others. These strategies majorly utilized print media, televisions and radios as a medium of communication. However, the contemporary society has witnessed immense technological advancements evidenced, for example by the invention and adoption of computers and internet technology. This technology has necessitated the development and use of social media where individuals and organizations can interact online. At this juncture, it is necessary for us to understand the term, ‘social media’ in order to tackle the topic effectively. According to About.com (2012), social media is an instrument of communication through a website that enables people all over the world to access information and to interact with one another. The distinctive feature of social media from other instruments of communication is the fact that, apart from accessing the information, people are able to give their views online. Information on the social media is relayed to a large mass of people in real time and at affordable costs due to the internet technology. Due to these factors, together with its interactive nature, many companies have opted to using it to enhance their marketing campaigns. There are varied types of social media sites. Suraj (2010), documents that there are three main categories of social media sites, social bookmarking, social networking and media sharing. Bookmarking involves utilizing the bookmark function of the browser to create and save your account and share them with friends all over the world (Saraj 2010). The examples of bookmarking sites include: Digg.com, Stumbleupon.com and Delicious.com (Saraj 2010) Social networking sites are vital for making new links with people and family members and to share whatever information you want to share. Some of the commonly used social networks include: Facebook.com, Twitter.com, and Myspace.com (Saraj 2010). Finally, as the name suggests, media sharing sites are used to share photos, videos and audios and the commonly used site in this category is YouTube. Note that once the information has been conveyed to other users of the sites, they have an option of giving their views making social media communication very interesting and interactive. The fact that it is enjoyable has today caused a problem of internet addiction. Social media marketing campaigns are series of planned activities using the social media to persuade consumers and members of the public that an organization’s or a company’s, products or services are valuable (Ward 2012). Today many people have access to internet and so they visit social media sites. Therefore, companies who choose to venture into social media marketing campaigns will establish a large customer base and improve their reputation. Social media marketing campaigns are interactive in nature and this gives the public an opportunity to air their views about a company; its products and services. This may happen in the form of compliments or criticism. When a company is commended for good work, it should endeavor to maintain and improve the same. Criticisms should be taken very positively because they are meant to steer positive change in the organization. For instance, if people complain about the branding of a particular commodity, the marketing experts should ensure that the branding is changed to suit the tastes of consumers. Different companies have used social media networks to market their products. Social media campaigns are vital in marketing an organization’s products due to its high interconnectivity and interactive nature. However, caution should be taken to ensure that it is done in a systematic and efficient way to meet the desired objective of persuasion. If poor strategies of social media campaigns are employed, the objectives of the campaigns may not be met. One of the important ways of conducting social media campaigns is by signing up in to the most convenient social media sites, for example Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Dig.com among others. Signing up alone is not enough; the marketing team of the business entity must ensure that a large social network is developed in order to reach as many people as possible with a persuasive message. Different sites have different ways of enhancing connectivity and communication with the target groups. For instance, you can add friends on MySpace, and poke or write on the walls in the case of Facebook connections (Joan 2009). Once a large network of the target population has been built, the marketing team can interact with the potential customers in a bid to persuade them to purchase the organization’s products. When involved in social media marketing campaigns, the marketing team is expected to be real and tactful in their communication with the online potential customers. Joan (2009) alludes to this fact by documenting that, it is important to be authentic within professional and legal limits. Authenticity will enable sincerity and openness, and the social media campaign team will give information the way it is. Take an instance of a company selling condoms that is engaged in social media marketing campaigns. Some religious affiliations like the Catholic Church consider the use of condoms as a gross violation of their religious principles. Some societies consider it a taboo, and therefore a topic that should not be discussed openly. But the fact is that HIV and Aids is real, and it has affected everybody all over the world. It is a common saying by communication experts on the illness, that if you are not infected then you are affected. This is true since the disease has shaken the social, economic, political and cultural pillars of the contemporary society. The social media campaign team in this matter should be real and call a spade a spade as this will enable the potential customer’s to make informed decisions. Since the marketing team members do not live in a vacuum they may share their real life experiences with the target group in a bid to boost their persuasion and ultimately sales. The society is comprised of different social groupings, which have different behaviors and cultures. During social media campaigns, the diversities should be taken into consideration to ensure that different groups’ interests are respected. Joan (2009) documents that; you should try to connect with people with whom you have a common ground. The diversities of the members of the public should be taken into serious considerations during social media marketing campaign drive. Different companies have different products, which are used by different societal groupings. Take an example of marketing sanitary towels in the social media. It would very ridiculous to involve male marketers in the same. The target group may be very skeptical about it, and they may develop a negative attitude towards the products simply because they will feel that there is an element of deception. Why this feeling? The feeling is because they are aware that men do not undergo menstruation circle and are not in the best position to market sanitary towels. There ought to be some common ground between the social media campaign team person and the target group. The common ground will help the social marketing expert to understand the target group and to identify with them, to boost the sales and the image of the organization. This consideration should be in place for every social grouping like the youth, the elderly, the educated, the race and the religious affiliations of the target group among others to enhance sales. To ensure that the social media campaign meets its objectives, it is necessary to carry out an evaluation to monitor its progress and to establish how it relates to other promotional strategies. What is evaluation? According to Hornby (2000), it means forming an opinion on the value or quality of an undertaking after a systematic and a careful thought. In other words, it is measuring the progress of a project with the aim of ensuring that the desired objectives of the project are achieved efficiently and effectively. In the event that evaluation reveals loopholes or shortcomings of the project, it is prudent to speedily change implementation methods to ensure quality success. After understanding evaluation, it is clear that it is an integral part of ensuring that social media campaigns succeed. Social media campaigns are not undertaken by companies just as a formality but it is done in order to achieve results, and as such evaluation is very important. Campbell (2012) observes that, social media marketing campaigns are digital making it possible to measure various metrics, and this helps in monitoring the progress of the campaign. The fact that it is digital makes it advantageous for example the communication happens in real time unlike other promotional strategies. There are five ways to evaluate social media campaigns, they include: brand reach and exposure, engagement, market place competition, influence and measure conversions (Campbell 2012). Let use examine influence method of evaluation. When a marketing campaign is influential then the results will be seen on how the online target groups respond to your message. Other promotional strategies are not as influential as social media campaigns due to limited interaction. When measuring its influence, it is important to know, that the more the respondents, the higher the level of influence of the social media marketing campaign. For example, when Facebook is used, the level of influence can be monitored by the number of times your messages are commented on or liked (Campbell 2012). When your messages are not commented on or liked, the marketer should get the clear indication that the marketing campaign is not doing well. In the event of this, the marketing team must strategize to ensure that the goals of marketing are efficiently met. If many people respond to messages, this indicates that the marketing campaign is influential and need to be sustained and improved. However, it does not stop at just being influential. The main goal of marketing is to create positive awareness and eventually to ensure increased and sustained sales. If many people comment on the message it should lead to improved sales, hence social media campaign evaluation should not just stop at the online evaluation but also examine the effects of the same on actual sales. It is not enough to simply monitor how many people comment on your messages. The evaluator should go a step further to find out, how many of the comments are positive and negative. Business is not a one man’s show unless it is a monopoly. There are various business entities that deal in the same product or service. It is required that such businesses compete fairly and within the law. When evaluating social media marketing campaigns, it is also important that the products or services of competitors are also monitored to establish how the marketed brand is competing. Social media marketing campaigns, unlike other marketing strategies, enables the marketer to measure the positive and negative comments of on both the organization’s and competitor’s products and services. Campbell (2012) has come up with, share of voice and sentiment or marketplace competition evaluation model that addresses these concerns. It is a tool that is used to measure the penetration of the product or service in the market and how it compares top that of the competitors. The evaluator needs to collect and process both negative and positive data about the product. If the positive comments outweigh the negative comments, the campaign process is on the right track. However, the positive comments may just be above average like say, 60% in comparison to the negative ones. The marketer should not be contented with the 60% but should strive to achieve an excellent mark of over 85%. This is because positive remarks translate to improved image of the company and its products that ultimately improves the sales. Further, the evaluator should also monitor how their competitors are doing in the social media marketing campaign. Parameters used, may include, how many positive comments do they have, what about the negative comments and how often are the comments made. When it is found that the competitor is outdoing your business, you must strive to improve and be on the top. To improve, the marketer should find out what the competitors are doing and how they are doing it to ensure their success. However, extreme caution should be taken to ensure that unscrupulous and illegal means are not used to outdo opponents as this may be very detrimental to the business. Another benefit of using social media campaigns is the ability to examine online engagement of the target group or the potential customers. Other promotional strategies cannot effectively and efficiently examine the engagement of the potential customers. Campbell (2012) states that, “by measuring how many users engage and interact with your message you can evaluate the appeal of your marketing efforts to the public.” You need to ask yourself how frequent are comments made about the marketing message by a particular person. If someone just comments once and forgets about the message then the social media campaign strategy is not working well. A sale is not successful unless it is repeated. Repeat sale will be achieved through constant engagement of the potential or the actual customers with your marketing information. For example in Twitter, the engagement is measured by the number of retweets and the total number of twitter users who are involved in the activity (Campbell 2012). The marketing message should be informative, tactical and interesting to boost engagement. When the engagement frequency and number is low, the marketer must develop ways of improvements. On the contrary, when the same is high, the marketer should improve and sustain it to realize stable sales. Social media marketing campaigns have become very important marketing tools today. It has numerous implications both positive and negative to the organization and to the general public. Social media campaigns have enhanced globalization and people are aware of different organizations all over the world and their products and services. This to the business entities is very beneficial since their marketing strategy is able to reach people all over the world in real time, hence easy expansion of customer base. There are also negative implications of social media marketing campaigns. Some organizations pose in the sites as legitimate business entities yet they are not. The main aim of their proprietors is to defraud people all over the world and to go underground after the catch. Social media marketing campaign has also come up with the problem of addiction. Addiction is detrimental both to the general public and organization since it jeopardizes their productivity. Social media marketing campaign is a marketing tool that is used in the contemporary complex business environment. The internet technology has enabled easy, faster and efficient technology. Unlike other promotional strategies it promotes interaction hence marketers are able to understand the mind of the actual and the potential customers in real time. This will help the marketers to meet their requirements thereby promoting organizational image and turn over. Further, social media marketing campaign enables the marketer to effectively measure the level of influence, the engagement of the target groups during the process. Finally, the marketer can monitor how the competitor is fairing on in order to make informed decisions when competing. Extreme care should be taken to ensure that social media marketing campaigns are done within the law. Owing to its importance, more research and inventions should be made in order to improve the technology. References About.com. (2012­). What is Social Media? Web Trends. Retrieved From. http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/social-media.htm Campbell Kunle.(2012). 5-ways-to-measure-the-success-of-a-social-media-campaign. Fuzzone. Retrieved from. http://www.fuzzone.com/blog/919/social-media-marketing/5-ways-to-measure-the-success-of-a-social-media-campaign/ Hornby, A.S. (2000). Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary of Current English. New York: Oxford University Press. Joan. (2009). Use social networking to market your product, service 10 ways. The Publicity. Hound. Retrieved From.http://publicityhound.net/use-social-networking-to-market-your-product-service-10-ways/ Suraj. (2010). Types of Social Media Sites. Machoarts. Retreived From. http://machoarts.com/types-of-social-media-sites# Ward Susan (2012) Social Media Marketing. 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