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Social Media Marketing (SMM) Definition & Goals
What is SMM ? Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of Internet marketing that utilizes social networking websites as a marketing tool. The goal of SMM is to produce content that users will share with their social network to help a company increase brand exposure and broaden customer reach.
Importance of targeting in social media marketing It is a technique to provide business with a “target audience” . After all, marketing is for the purpose of attracting consumers. Information relevant to user’s likes can be obtained from the social networks. It is made available to advertisers and marketers; who can then advertise as per the requirements of the business and hence it is a very crucial technique. COBRAs: Consumers Online Brand Related Activities (COBRAs) is another technique which is used by the marketers to promote their products. It involves activities like uploading a picture of your new branded watch to instagram or facebook. It facilitates spreading awareness of that particular product on the social media platform thus gaining responses and demand for the product.
eWOM: Electronic word of mouth(eWOM) is another technique which can be carried out for effective social media marketing. With the use of this technique, electronic recommendations and suggestions help to promote a product effectively through consumer-to-consumer interactions. A good example for the same would be online purchasing. A good service will include good quality and early delivery which will earn a positive review which gives that site free advertisement via social media. A bad review will make a negative impression which will make that site undesirable.
Ramification of Social Media Marketing on Traditional Advertising With the growing use of social media marketing, the traditional advertising and marketing techniques are lagging behind. Print and Television advertising are the traditional techniques of advertising/marketing. Internet has already bypassed television as the largest advertising market. It is not necessary that the social networking sites show ads and pop ups. But the products marketed on social networking sites have entire pages for them and can help in active interaction among users interested in them. Introduction of other techniques like bar code scanner, which can be scanned by mobile phones and computers. These barcodes send the users directly to the product website or webpage.
Goals of Social Media Marketing 1.Drive Traffic to your Website One of the more obvious goals of social media is to drive traffic directly to your website. Because social media provides a simple way to link those who are engaging back to your site, it has proven to be one of the most successful ways to drive new traffic to your website. What does driving traffic to your website do? Aside from potential purchases, the increased traffic to your website increases your overall brand or company visibility, and in turn allows consumers to become more familiar with you and keeps your name fresh on their minds. It also provides the opportunity for increased activity within the site, such as interaction with the blog, a look into pricing and services and the potential to like and share the page. While traffic to your website shouldn’t be the end-all be-all to your social media marketing goals, it definitely is a very important one that shouldn’t be ignored.
Develop Relationships Even more so than with traditional forms of marketing, a huge goal of social media marketing is to foster and maintain relationships with important people, such as key influencers as well as target audiences. By keeping up to date with people through social media, one can gage what another’s interests are, where they could use help and what their own brand or company can do to provide assistance to them. When developing relationships with key influencers, be sure to pay attention to their interests and talents, and create a relationship that each party can benefit from. When creating and maintaining relationships with your target audiences, make sure that your communication is two-way, so that not only are you getting the information out that you need to, but that you you are also learning from their wants and needs, so they feel that you care and that their voice is being heard.
Flourish Your Brand An extremely important opportunity that social media provides for a company is to really let the public see their brand’s personality and what they stand for. Social media is a great place to let your public get to know you a little bit better by sharing things that you wouldn’t otherwise get the opportunity to share. These will let the crowd get a better idea of who the company is, what they’re all about and what’s important to them. The best way to develop your brand, and to maintain a consistent brand image, is to make sure that everything that you put out there for the public to see remains consistent and true to your brand’s beliefs and values. Don’t post anything that would confuse consumers about who your brand is. For more information on developing your brand, you can refer back to our blog “Social Media Brand Building.”
Inspire Interest Another huge goal of social media marketing is to develop interest among your audience. Always keep in mind what will keep your target interested when creating content for your social networks (while remaining true to your brand, as discussed earlier). People generally tend to gravitate towards posts or pieces that they identify with, so knowing your target audience well will help. In addition, intriguing graphics and design are another way to really draw the crowd in. Back that up with killer content, and you’ll have consumers sold. Also, just by developing a brand “personality” as we have discussed, more people will be able to relate to, and in turn will be more interested in your brand.
Advantages of SMM - 1)Increased brand awareness 2)More inbound traffic 3)Improved Search Engine rankings 4)Higher Conversion rates 5)Better customer satisfaction
SEO vs SMM ? SEO refers to the techniques and strategies used to increase the likelihood of a website appearing on search engine results, namely as close to the top of that list as possible. SMM does not involve search engines, but does play a key role in a website's exposure and online marketing efforts. Whereas dealing with search engines requires a delicate and constant adjustment of subtle factors (SEO) or costly premiums (SEM), working through social media is relatively cheap and holds the promise of incredibly lucrative growth, if done properly.
