Businesses cannot be sustained without employing the best marketing tools and tactics. For each enterprise it is a race for a bigger chunk of customers, and the one with the most effective marketing campaign or program will benefit the most. Marketing tools change and evolve over time and each time a new tool or marketing avenue is discovered, it takes some time for it to be used universally. The same holds true for social media, which has unleashed a world of opportunity for social networking and businesses.
However, social media can prove to be effective if used correctly and after due consideration to a few key issues. What type of social media will work for a business will be determined by issues like:
- The nature of business
- Is it transactional or relationship based
- Is it on-going and personalized
- The type of clientele and the target market
- Would they respond to technical updates or a friendly note about an offer
- How do customers make decisions
For close relationships and networks where direct personal interaction is useful, Facebook or blogs will prove to be useful. On the other hand, transactional businesses would benefit from email marketing or social media like Twitter.
Technical updates are best provided on websites of the business where every visitor gets all the relevant technical information. Offers work best in short, crisp messages delivered via emails or as ‘Tweet’. Blogs would have an impact on the younger generation since they are fonder of blogging than the older generation. Interestingly, older people have now got hooked to Facebook and are ideally approachable through this social media.
Another crucial issue is marketing of luxury or high end products. If marketed through the wrong social media network, it will dilute its value and undermine the appeal, after which it may be difficult to position it as a premium product that can demand a high price.
Social media must be adopted after getting educated about the various types available and after careful consideration of all the issues mentioned above. After all, it is critical to reap the best results, which will happen only when the right and the most appropriate social media tools are adopted.
May businesses believe that social media is potentially a waste and this is simply because of the bad press that social media channels have encountered in a number of business circles. But the fact is that that this new marketing channel has matured immensely, helped in part by a number of global brands who because of their involved on sites like Facebook and Twitter have helped to acclimatize these vast audiences to being marketed and advertised to. Though many of the worlds largest brands of effectively blazed a trial in social marketing thousands of smaller businesses have learned from what these brands have done and new they are beginning to adapt these strategies to suit their own needs
