How is Social Media different than the rest of the marketing mix?

 

 

Marketing, for as long as we know, has always been focused towards providing one- sided messages to the consumers. This was usually done through channels such as media advertisements, ad campaigns, hoardings etc.  Today, however, with new marketing concepts like social media emerging, concepts such as the marketing mix are taking a back seat.

Social media platforms can provide valuable info on how a product or service is perceived in the market by harnessing a network of people. They can be utilized to build and sustain relationships with consumers in real time. Accomplishing near real-time listening and interaction with customers was impossible with older methods of marketing communications but in an age of social media, this ability is almost taken for granted. As with any form of marketing communications, there are positive and negative aspects of social media which determine its usefulness as a marketing tool.

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms make it possible for companies to really understand how consumers perceive, buy and use their product or service across the globe. Assessing consumer perception through social media has two main advantages. It helps the company to categorize their consumer market after listening to what they want in real time. The company can then act immediately to customize its product or service as per the categorized consumer market based on what they need.

Social media significantly reduces the time and resources which companies usually have to spare when getting feedback from customers.  Moreover, with the constantly increasing use of mobile and internet devices, consumers have constant access to social media platforms, allowing them to describe their experience with a product or service immediately after they experience it. This kind of real time information is crucial not only for companies to understand their consumer base but also for other consumers to learn about the product or service.

This brings up another major advantage of social media when compared to other marketing methods. It not only enables companies to build relationships with customers but also allows customers to build relationships among themselves.

For example, shoe retailer Nike aims to build its customer relationships by creating online communities through Facebook pages, YouTube video communities and Twitter. While Nike monitors for conversations about its products in these communities, potential customers do the same in hopes of gaining feedback from like minded customers on what shoes would suit their lifestyle and needs the best.

From Nike’s example it is clear that social media is unique in that it allows companies to engage customers throughout the product lifecycle from planning to development to final sale and beyond.

However, adoption of social media has been slow because companies are wary of its negative impacts to their corporate image. The biggest disadvantage with constant conversation and online transparency is that companies cannot control the conversations surrounding their brand and products. Therefore one negative customer experience or one misstep on the part of the company can cause a small problem to escalate into a public relations nightmare. Before social media, companies had much more time to strategize how to deal with a negative issue. Today, however, companies are expected to respond immediately to good and bad customer interactions alike.

When I was hired by a B2B IT consulting firm in India to implement social media marketing, I had the opportunity to experience the pros and cons of using social media platforms firsthand. I was given the task of integrating the company’s strengths in the traditional marketing methods into social media and build an online brand image for the company.

My team’s strategy was to first listen to our consumer base by mapping conversations of people from various sectors like healthcare and education to track down businesses that might need our technology and also identify if they used competitor technology.  Then we created a company blog, which served as a platform for online discussions. This blog consisted of technology discussions as well as press releases and events hosted by our partners and us. By highlighting our thought leadership in the industry, we were able to gain the interest of our consumers. This reflected in the increased traffic to the site, an increase in our Google site ranking and lead generations through our blog.

In a period of one year our company was not only known among our network through traditional marketing but also built a strong brand following online. My experiences made me realize that Social Media marketing is not an alternative to the traditional marketing mix but a compliment to it.