Social Media Strategy in Selling to Todays and Tomorrows Customers - Essay Example

Executive Summary

With a wide range of choices for businesses to choose from, there is need to set the best guidelines under which a business can use in order to choose the most appropriate medium. As a result, I managed to come up with the most effective strategies that can be used to ensure that a business can use to reach a wide customer base with the use of social media. This paper contains the strategies to be employed to choose the best social media channel in order to reach the target market, how the channel can be used in the selling process, the advantages and disadvantages of using social media and the steps that a company should take in order to implement the media strategies stated.

Social Media Strategy in Selling (Marketing) to Today’s and Tomorrow’s Customers

Over the years, e-commerce has emerged as the best strategy for business enterprises to sell their products globally. Many marketing companies have emerged to cater for the growing demand for selling via social media. With the varying quality services offered by these social media platforms, there is need to choose the best option to use. By this, the company ensures that it covers a wide geographical area by spending the minimum possible finances on sales and marketing.

“A social media strategy defines the relationships, their value and sets out a plan to harness them to achieve a particular goal or set of goals” (Fox). A huge percentage of the world’s population use the various social media platforms for socializing, business among other reasons. Many business marketing agencies are using this fact to their advantage though not all of them have set the best strategies to reach an audience effectively. Rouse has defined social media marketing as “a form of Internet marketing that utilizes social networking websites as a marketing tool.”

Social media platforms include Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google +, YouTube, Linked In, Pinterest, blogs among others. Various types of companies and industries can use the above platforms to advertise their products and with critical analysis, they will be able to choose the alternative that will ensure that they access their target market. This is because there are different sites that address different classes of people with respect to age, gender, occupation and social status. Blogs, for example, are created for different purposes and people using the internet look for varying information (Rouse). To reach the right audience, a business has to choose the right blogs and websites in which to market their products.

The world’s fashion industry is a great example of industries that can fully utilize social media marketing to market their goods. Everyone dresses and people have varying tastes and preferences for fashion and clothes. Due to the fact that there are platforms meant to address almost all audiences, fashion can reach a large audience. Catchy outfits and accessories also spread super fast through almost all social media. A picture of an outfit can be seen by a large population all over the world in a day.

The target market is the main aspect that is considered when choosing a social media platform. A wrong choice of platform may lead to wastage of resources. Identifying your target market involves asking oneself questions about the nature of the product. This can be divided into two segments: demographic and psychographic. Using the two segments, the company then carries out research on the market.

Demographics involve researching the characteristics such as age, gender, employment status, race, family size, marital status, religious beliefs, the level of education and nationality of a population. Raw data on demographics can easily be accessed on the web. The company will get to find out all about its potential customers and methods to be employed to market their products effectively.

Psychographics involves classifying people according to their personalities, interests, habits, aspirations, lifestyles, values and attitudes. Psychographic data is acquired by critical analysis of a consumer through reading through consumer profiles in social media, issuing questionnaires and reading the reviews and opinions of consumers on your web page. Psychographic data is used to ensure the best customer experience, choosing the best medium in which to market, and improving products to suit customer tastes and preferences. Both segments work hand in hand.

Source: Business Insider

The figure above indicates the population that use various major social media platforms and are divided into various age brackets.

Age being the major factor affecting the demographic segment, it is evident that many people aged between 18-44 years use social media. A business in the fashion industry will hence concentrate more in Snapchat for trending clothes. Official clothing is advertised mostly in Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter where many users in this age bracket are in the working class. It will be a bad idea to market in the social media products that suit aged people aged above 65 years. Especially via Snapchat because small percentages use this medium. If one must, however, the best platform is Facebook and LinkedIn.

Source: Cubeyou

The table above shows psychographic factors that affect the use of social media platforms in relation to the variables penetration, reach, popularity, and relevance.

Reach is a percentage showing those consumers that have the particular psychographic characteristics. Penetration, like a reach, represents the percentage of consumers having the desired trait but in this case, the consumers must fall within the target audience. Popularity informs on the nature of the desired psychographic characteristics when compared to the mean population. It explains the tiniest details about the audience that makes them distinctive. Relevance tries to create an equilibrium between popularity combined with reach, and the target audience (Patel).

Like every other aspect, social media marketing has both advantages and disadvantages. Using social media marketing enables business’ products to be recognized worldwide since the media is used easily by people globally. Moreover, it develops loyalty among the users through online promotions and contests and hence they end up being your fans. This will ensure that you do not lose customers to competitors (Baer). Higher website traffic multiplies your sales since your products are able to be marketed over a wide geographical area over a short time.

Furthermore, social media marketing is relatively affordable compared to other forms of marketing such as banners, audio-visuals and print media. This is in the sense that many users can view and share your products as compared to other forms of marketing. You, therefore, get a good value for your money. It is also interactive because your fans can comment or sign up via email. This enables them to send feedback that can give you morale and help you improve your products to suit their needs.

However, the company cannot control negative feedback by consumers, some of which may have been posting negative feedback with malicious intentions. The posts may be available for public viewing which will greatly ruin the reputation of the company and reduce its ratings. One negative feedback may make the business lose a huge percentage of potential customers. It is also demanding since there must be a customer care panel to respond to posts and questions by consumers, as well as update any required information to the web page. The advantages overweigh the disadvantages and therefore, social media advertising is a worthy strategy (Hoelzel).

If a company is not using social media to market its products, then it is losing a lot of potential customers. Everyone is moving online, considering the number of users on social media platforms. Imagine the billions of people across the globe using Facebook or Twitter. Companies can see to this by interacting with customers by joining the website. Users can repost or share the product information and therefore reaching more people. Some companies have fully utilized social media platforms to market their products.

Emmy’s Closet and Zappos are examples of companies in the fashion industries. Emmy’s Closet is an online market that sells outfits for kids. It has integrated e-commerce and social media marketing and also has its site called Etsy.com in which there is a program that enables the user to look at the items and if interested, buy them directly via Facebook. It also has a share button in which one can share the website with their friends through social media. Their social buttons are personalized to look fancy, which makes it more appealing hence increasing the chances of sharing.

Zappos sells shoes and outfits and uses their Facebook to attract their audience. “Their catchy saying ‘Let’s be in a Like-Like relationship’ shows they treat their potential fans as equals, solidifying their relationships even more” (Porterfield). They provide an option of subscription whereby you can subscribe to their emails so that they can send you the latest fashion trends through your email. They have a ‘fans-only-content' place which has their exclusive content. You have to be their fan to view these. The ‘Fan of the Week’ platform enables fans to post their pictures, and the rest of the fans can vote the best picture. The picture is posted on their wall where everyone can view. This may seem inappropriate, but on the contrary, it helps build a close relationship and goodwill with the customers.

The goal of maximizing profits cannot be accomplished if a firm does not embrace social media marketing to widen customer base. There are steps that should be followed by any company or industry to achieve this. First, the company has to create awareness of its existence by having an online presence, building reputations and getting to build alliances with bloggers. Second, create a blog whereby you can write about your business and the products that you sell. After that, choose the most appropriate social media platform to suite your target market. Choosing a relevant platform ensures that you have your products advertised at the right place and to the right people.

Use the demographic and psychographic data to analyze and choose the target market. By analyzing, you can find the social platform where most of the target market engage in. Finally, get to interact with your audience through providing any further details on your web page or blog. Answer their questions and ensure that they are satisfied. Use of catchy language and themes attracts and ensures that you win their loyalty. Also meet their expectations by providing the services they like most (Porterfield).

In conclusion, it is very clear that the social media is a powerful marketing strategy to use. In the current world where almost everything is done online, each company targeting a broad customer base should embrace online marketing. Using the right tips, efforts and steps as stated in the paper, any company marketing its products through social media will with no doubts reap the benefits. Social media marketing is a worthy investment that will ultimately bring the desired results. Never take social media for granted!