Utilization of Facebook as a Means of Targeted Marketing Outreach - Essay Example

Section/# Utilization of Facebook as a Means of Targeted Marketing Outreach With the rapidly increasing prominence of social media and the means by which firms and corporations can leverage such an outlet to acquaint themselves with prospective clients, the necessity to adequately measure and represent the level to which social media is contributing or detracting from the overall success of a given entity becomes a question that any firm/corporation engaging in social media outreach should be attempting to measure. As such, this brief report will seek to objectively approach the way in which social media is currently used with the marketing efforts and results that Engage4Life has been able to generate. Similarly, as a means of determining overall viability of the social media outreach plan that has heretofore been utilized, the discussion will be concentric upon seeking to define the plan that best promotes the interests of the firm while seeking to maximize the exposure per pound spent on marketing that lies at the core of any and all successful marketing analyses. As a way to provide answers to the overarching question of effectiveness which has been outlined above, this report will seek to lay out the results of a pilot study. As such, the pilot study will have the express intention of providing insights into whether or not the social media outreach which is being performed has a positive contribution to the viability of the firm, to what extent, and whether or not the expense to operate such a program is worth the yield that it generates. As with any pilot program, the scope, time frame, number of individual results weighed, and an analysis of the contributing factors have all been weighed (Tuten et al 2012, p. 203). The following section will briefly detail how each one of these was undertaken within the confines of the given pilot study. For purposes of the pilot study, the account activity, posting ratio, overall number of hits, total number of sign ups generated and percentage of clicks garnered were analyzed. With respect to the period of time that was employed, a period of 2 months of activity was analyzed (Rodriguez et al 2012, p. 371). The raw data itself was made available to the requesting entity by statistics and tracking software provided free of charge to the firm via Facebook’s statistics software. For purposes of brevity and the absence of bias, the software was employed as a way to readily generate a plethora of data and habits with relation to the web habits of those within the target demographic. Through an analysis of the time period mentioned, the reviewer was able to obtain a clear view of the overall nature of user activity and demographic behavior pertinent to the groups to which the firm is most interesting in reaching. Similarly, another highly useful, yet not entirely necessary, benefit that the analytic software provided was the ability to generate detailed geographic information with regards to the domestic arrangements of the users that were analyzed. Whereas obtaining the information that has thus far been presented would typically have taken a very long period of time and have been a very costly venture, the ability to utilize the analytical software that Facebook provided allowed for a more complete an detailed look at the nuances of behavior that would otherwise have been an entirely separate research question or pilot study entirely. In this way, key demographic and geographic trend data was able to be understood that although not necessarily helpful for this particular pilot study would nonetheless doubtless be highly useful in the future to help delineate key marketing strategies and areas of focus which the firm could seek to leverage as a means of gaining a higher degree of inference on the target group. As the previous description has detailed, the ability of the software to accurately represent the ways in which key consumer demographics behave with reference to the product in question is an invaluable strength. However, a key weakness that is represented in such a level of analysis is the fact that the pilot study has no informed way of ascertaining the means by which the prospective customer arrived at the content that is under discussion within this pilot study. Put more simply, the means by which the user’s web habits, likes, personal habits, and other key factors influenced upon the visibility of the marketing that is being discussed cannot be clearly determined within the resources that this pilot study has sought to weigh and reference. Although the benefits of using the analytical tools that have up until now been enumerated upon, this unique weakness bears mention as it would likely not be represented in a pilot study that relied on a more conventional means of data gathering/analysis. Results: The results of the pilot study and the analysis of the data that has been garnered has revealed that from every 100 individuals within the target demographic that are presented with the marketing material, it can be expected that approximately 15% will continue on to sign up for the firm’s offerings. This ratio was determined as a result of the fact that from the 500 total users which were selected a respondent rate of 75 was noted. Naturally, a higher rate of initial interest was registered; however, due to the fact that some respondents were outside of the key demographic as well as the fact that a number of respondents did not complete the sign up process prior to clicking away and not returning to the action, the statistic of 15% which has been noted is indicative of the statistic of those that actually followed the process through to its legitimate end; i.e. generating useful and quality marketing information through which the firm can seek to engage the user on a more personal level (Basil 2012, p. 69). It should be noted that the actual statistics and numbers that have been represented within this pilot study are not only indicative of total sales and prospective sales that the firm may seek to engage in; rather, they are also a valuable means of outreach and customer communication/visibility that does not always directly translate to a level of verifiable and discernible immediate sales data (Trainer 2012, p. 329). As such, many marketers and statisticians would be remiss to assume that they could draw a very clear line of correlation between the results that the pilot study has yielded and the way in which marketing should necessarily changes to reflect the new dynamics that such results have indicated. There is an ancillary factor that cannot be ignored based upon the results that were indicated. This has to do with the way in which the marketing reaches potential clients and even without generating actual signs ups necessarily helps to raise the image and visibility of the firm in question. This is what can be referred to as an ancillary and immeasurable benefit of the firm’s social networking outreach (Narayanan et al 2012, p. 75). In this way, the study that has been performed falls noticeably short in helping to determine the overall net level of benefit that such a high visibility can yield to the firm. This is mentioned due to the fact that weighing the benefits as opposed to the costs of maintaining and operating a social networking presence on the web is something that cannot be fully understood or appreciated based upon a simple cost to actual sign ups generated mechanism which has been performed herein. This is of course an obvious weakness of the pilot study which has been performed; however, to the credit of the author it is something that is exceedingly difficult to capture and or measure and as such is a facet of the social networking benefit that will need to be discussed, weighed, measured, and analyzed at a later date by a subsequent study (Giamanco et al, p. 88). These results that have herein been presented can of course be used in multiple ways. If the firm is facing a situation in which it is struggling to determine which of several marketing tools to employ then the social outreach tool is one that requires an extremely small amount of resources to set up and operate and yet yields a residual sign up rate that is not commensurate to any of the other marketing tools available to the firm with relation to actual results per pound spent (Dominic et al 2012, p. 302). Additionally, should the firm be facing a situation in which one of several marketing options is available as a means to promote and differentiate the company, the social networking option is highly attractive as well as it provides an extremely low cost means whereby to integrate with and promote to the affected demographic. Moreover, one of the distinct benefits to utilizing the social networking strategy for growth is that it has the ability to become an ever present facet in the social lives of those individuals which have liked or friended the group via social networking (Daley 2013, p. 135). As a function of announcements, news feed injections and a host of other factors that can help to raise the visibility of the firm, the means by which the user is made aware of the firm and its offerings. This bears a clear and decided advantage with relation to more traditional forms of outreach that the firm has engaged upon in the recent past (Stephen et al 2012, p. 630). As was denoted by the pilot study, the firm had typically engaged in traditional marketing as a way of outreach to engage the interested parties in the services that the firm offered. Naturally, asides from being a one dimensional and highly expensive, time consuming, and labor intensive process, the process itself was something that could only engage with the appropriate shareholder/target demographic around once or twice a year. This was partly and largely due to the fact that the marketing events took place on location within the educational institution and required that a team of company representatives were there to facilitate the process. Although there is positively nothing wrong with such a face to face introduction of the firm to the potential client, the fact of the matter remains that such a means of marketing is both highly cost ineffective and highly time consuming. For this reason alone, it is the belief of this author that the extensive use of social media is a way in which the company can seek to shift some of its marketing burden form the cost and labor intensive/traditional set up that had originally been utilized and work to aim it more towards an approach that is concentric upon utilizing the technology that the target demographic is most at ease with (Court 2012, p. 113). The final benefit to utilizing social media within the context of outreach and marketing for the firm in question has to do with the target demographic that the firm is trying to reach (Hill et al 2011, p. 819). Whereas other companies would need to undergo extensive additional inquiry into the level of usage and current members per community of social media, for purposes of this firm, it can be rationally assumed that nearly at a maximum of all individuals within the target demographic know and utilize a litany of forms of social media. Obviously, the casual observer may think that such a broad oversimplification has a high likelihood of error; however, ancillary studies have indicated that within the target demographic, well over 90% of individuals within this specific age demographic utilize social media – oftentimes multiple forms of social media (Thurston et al 2012, p. 74). Similarly, the level of outreach with which the firm could seek to engage the respondents is higher than the other demographics due to the fact that the recent explosion of handheld/mobile computing brings the marketing abilities of firm to an even wider and more continuous audience than the times in which social media only referred to the few hours of the day in which one was able to sit in front of a traditional wired machine and engage with the social media (Agnihotri 2012, p. 335). In fairness, it should be understood by the reader that social media does exhibit key weaknesses which can serve to lessen the effectiveness of how it can be used as a social media outreach tool. First and foremost among these is the fact that social media has begun to experience a slow but sudden retraction from its high point over the past several years. Multiple news reports over the past several years have indicated that social media itself is becoming less and less popular as individuals are not only spending a smaller amount of time within the sites associated with the umbrella term of social media but also actively discarding or deleting their accounts due to a range of privacy issues and other factors. These factors alone have not contributed to a mass flight from social media or tarnished its ability to be used effectively as a marketing platform; however, they do bear note for the individual or firm interested in transforming their marketing strategy to more effectively integrate such a platform. Due to the results that have been drawn herein, it is reasonable to say that the firm in question should at the very least attempt to incorporate social media within their existing and current form of market outreach. At the very most, if the other forms of market outreach appear to be too costly and do not yield a high enough level of result for the firm, it may then be necessary to look to social media as a way to backfill the drop in customer interest that would be noticed as a result of discontinuing any of the existing forms of costly, labor intensive, and time consuming marketing outreach mechanisms. References Agnihotri, R, Kothandaraman, P, Kashyap, R, & Singh, R 2012, Bringing "Social" into Sales: The Impact of Salespeoples Social Media Use on Service Behaviors and Value Creation, Journal Of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 32, 3, pp. 333-348, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Basil, M 2012, Coverage of social marketing efforts in the mainstream media, International Journal Of Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Marketing, 17, 4, pp. 295-302, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013.Divol, R, Edelman, D, & Sarrazin, H 2012, Demystifying social media, Mckinsey Quarterly, 2, pp. 66-77, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Court, D, Gordon, J, & Perrey, J 2012, Measuring marketings worth, Mckinsey Quarterly, 3, pp. 113-118, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Daley, J 2013, The social score, Entrepreneur, 41, 1, pp. 132-138, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Dominic Yeo, TE 2012, Social-Media Early Adopters Dont Count, Journal Of Advertising Research, 52, 3, pp. 297-308, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Giamanco, B, & Gregoire, K 2012, Tweet Me, Friend Me, Make Me Buy, Harvard Business Review, 90, 7/8, pp. 88-93, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Hill, R, & Moran, N 2011, Social marketing meets interactive media, International Journal Of Advertising, 30, 5, pp. 815-838, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Lipsman, A, Mud, G, Rich, M, & Bruich, S 2012, The Power of "Like": How Brands Reach (and Influence) Fans Through Social-Media Marketing, Journal Of Advertising Research, 52, 1, pp. 40-52, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Narayanan, M, Asur, S, Nair, A, Rao, S, Kaushik, A, Mehta, D, Athalye, S, Malhotra, A, Almeida, A, & Lalwani, R 2012, Social Media and Business, Vikalpa: The Journal For Decision Makers, 37, 4, pp. 69-111, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Rodriguez, M, Peterson, R, & Krishnan, V 2012, Social Medias Influence on Business-To-Business Sales Performance, Journal Of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 32, 3, pp. 365-378, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Stephen, A, & Galak, J 2012, The Effects of Traditional and Social Earned Media on Sales: A Study of a Microlending Marketplace, Journal Of Marketing Research (JMR), 49, 5, pp. 624-639, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. THURSTON, B, BERGL, S, FEIFER, J, FRIEDELL, D, GUERRA, E, KARPEL, A, KELMAN, E, LIDSKY, D, MCCUE, M, MULLANY, A, RHODES, M, & SCHOMER, S 2012, THE SOCIAL MEDIA ROAD MAP. (cover story), Fast Company, 168, pp. 68-89, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Tuten, T, & Marks, M 2012, The Adoption of Social Media As Educational Technology Among Marketing Educators, Marketing Education Review, 22, 3, pp. 201-214, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Trainor, KJ 2012, Relating Social Media Technologies to Performance: A Capabilities-Based Perspective, Journal Of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 32, 3, pp. 317-331, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 January 2013. Read More