Time to explore new faces of social media marketing
David Muller, a successful businessman and creator of Veritasium expressed his disappointment over using Facebook as a marketing tool. According to Social Media Examiner’s report, less than 50% of the marketers believe that Facebook is not an effective platform to market their products or services. Still, a whopping 97% B2C firms use Facebook as a social media platform. This paradox is quite inexplicable or so it seems.
Reference:
www.statista.com
The inverse relation between likes and sales
There has been a lot of study going on in this front. The agenda of this article is to bring forward both the positive and negative views. Facebook’s model of earning money is via advertisements. This essentially means that Facebook would gain money if more number of companies pay Facebook to market their products. Social media marketing is heavy on gauging customer’s interest by number of likes. These likes, however, can mislead the analytics team. More than a thousand likes on Facebook doesn’t mean that your product or service is well received. The sales figures have very less correlation with the number of likes on Facebook. Illegitimate and phony likes further add to the confusion. These false likes create barrier between the communicator and the customers, as it is difficult to filter out genuinely interested customers.
Unlike Youtube, Facebook gets money when company decides to advertise via Facebook. Facebook doesn’t benefit from further removing bogus likes or illegitimate followers. Thus, organic growth of fan base on Facebook is solely dependent on the company. On the other hand, youtube gets money when a creator’s video is liked and viewed by many viewers. This incentive to make money via mutual benefits puts youtube ahead in terms of legitimacy as well as success of both the parties.
Most of the companies, hence, are exploring new social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Vine etc. Social media marketing is no longer synonymous to posting ads on Facebook or creating a page. What is it then?
4 C’s of social media marketing
Social media marketing is evolving like never before. The 4 P’s of marketing are obsolete now. Their place has been taken up by 4 C’s of social media marketing.
Creating
Creating essentially means creating content online. The content should be attractive as well as informative. This is the first step in marketing the product or services online.
Curating
With the advent of technology, the information becomes outdated in seconds. Thus, it is important to update the information and communication regularly.
Connecting
Generation Z is all about digital devices. Thus, connecting with the youth and the customers on all the platforms via all the means (not just Facebook) has gained significant importance.
Culture
Culture determines the taste and behaviour of the customers. Understanding the culture and changing accordingly is the success mantra.
Needless to say, 6 second Vine is replacing 30 second ad on TV. Facebook and google+ have users which constitute more number of users than population of several countries put together. More number of people own mobile devices than toothbrushes. Thus, social media marketing is becoming new channel of communication.
