Social media marketing is here to stay. I believe that social media has given businesses a whole new outlook on how to advertise and reach their specific market. It is also making is easier to reach a large amount of people in a short amount of time. Let’s take Facebook as an example, there are 500 million users, 50% of them check Facebook on a daily basis and each user on average has 130 friends.
Social media is also making it cheaper for marketers to connect with customers. Twitter is free to use, all you need to do is make a name and start adding other users, and this is the same with Facebook. These are just some popular free easy ways that social media has changed marketing forever. Search engine marketing is a very large part of social media in the last 6 years. Every company or businesses wants to be the first to pop-up when Googling about their industry, this has become a competitive in the social media world. Although not everyone is buying into the social media seen, there are gradually growing each day and with new technology, such as the ipad making it easier to be involved we will see greater strides.
References
February 1, 2010. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics.
It's interesting that you bring search engines into the discussion because we hear that a lot of companies are "so opposed" to social media marketing that they continue to deplete their resources by traditional forms of marketing. However, if there is such a reluctance to use social media as a form of marketing, those who believe the "old-school" way of marketing is the only way should start out just by trying their luck on search engines. Google has an entire department dedicated to selling those ads you see on the right-hand side of the page. My cousin's girlfriend works for Google and that is what she does - sells advertisement to companies. Companies pay more for how many words they want "hit" when a consumer types something in the search engine and they pay based on how high up they want their ad to appear. I think if reluctant marketers started off trying out search engine advertising, they would get a lot of traffic-flow generated from this form of advertising and realize that social media might not be such a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteThe statistics you bring up are a good point of why word-of-mouth is so important to a company. If a company can reach one person, they can potentially reach 130 people through that one person via WOM. I think that is why social media has become so popular, especially with consumers. We want to hear other people true experiences with a product or company before we buy into it. We want the good and the bad so we can make an informed decision. Granted, I still look up products on Google to search for the company website, but my next search is on Facebook and Twitter to see what my peers have to say about the product. Consumers have learned that marketers spin the truth to sell a product. We don't want to be spun, we want the truth, and social media brings consumers the truth.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up great points focusing on web browser firms and the potential of they have in reaching consumers. Its hard to believe that businesses would be willing to pay a high price just to be the #1 name that shows up when using a web browser. With that being said, it is a very smart and efficient way to reach your target market becuase the first half is finish; they are already serching for your product. I am curious of the percentage of google users that always click on the first 3 links provided, compared to the users that search further for more information.
ReplyDeleteYou have a lot of good facts in this blog topic. Social media marketing is definitely a cheaper way to advertise than any other form of advertisement. Marketing is so effective on social networking websites because there are so many facebook users. The fact that you mentioned there are more than 500 million users is crazy. That just shows that tons of people use it everyday to connect to other people, and to talk about their favorite brands.
ReplyDeleteI agree i fell like social media is a very strong and growing market that business' need to look into. there a simply to many possibilities and to many social media users to ignore. What will be hard though is testing the waters and finding out what exactly will work
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