Social Media Integration into Advertising Strategy
Social Media Integration into Advertising Strategy
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Institutional affiliation
Abstract
Social media has been developing for a long time now. With time it has become an integral part of any strategy that a company wants to employ to maximize profits. This has been necessitated by the fact that many people; who are the target market, are spending most of their time on social media.in an attempt by the companies to tap into this rich and cheap way of marketing, most firms have come up strategies that will enable them to be on better competitive edge. The main objective of this research is to look at the ways through which companies can effectively integrate social media into their already existingtraditional methods of marketing. Additionally, it will aim at unearthing the leading edge trends in integrating social media into traditional marketing methods.
One of these leading edge trends is the introduction of smart phones, which has increased the access of many people (target market) to the social media. From the research, it has established that there are various avenues that can be used to integrate social media into n traditional marketing. These include utilizing the value of social connections and used a variety of social media platforms. In future, the companies should aim at ensuring that they are best prepared to blend both the traditional and social media strategies to ensure they reach as many customers as possible.
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Social Media Integration into Advertising Strategy
According to Manternach (2001), Social media must be an integral part of the marketing strategy of any company for it to achieve a competitive edge in the market. This is mainly driven by the fact that currently, most of the consumers spend a lot of time on these sites. Developing of a social media strategy for a company may be a taunting task for many organizations. The strategy may differ according to the industry the company is involved. In general, there are certain things that almost all the firms need to put in place to ensure success of the social media marketing strategy. These include; coming up with the appropriate message, what tone the company will use to create the message in the social m, media, and ensure timely and regular posting of messages that are of good quality. For a company to introduce an effective social marketing strategy, they must involve all the stake holders in the company. These include; the management and the staff who are to implement these strategies (Batton, 2012).
Munger (2012) is of the opinion that a company that does not enjoy a following on the most popular social sites, is on the way to losing its grip on business. Some of the most popular social sites that can be utilized by a company, that plans to use social media as a marketing strategy include; Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn among others. In an attempt to ensure a company has proper social media marketing strategy in place, this paper will aim at fulfilling three objectives. First is to report the leading edge trends in integrating social media into the traditional marketing strategies utilized by the companies. The second aim to come up with specific recommendations of how to incorporate social media into the market segments. Lastly it will include how the recommendations proposed can fulfill the balance of integrated and differentiated requirements as recommended by Cadotte and Bruce (2003).
The leading edge trends in integrating social media into traditional marketing methods.
According to Cadotte (2008) the most important aspect to be considered by any company in marketing; is being able to come up with what their clients want in a product, designing the right product and ensuring that the information about the designed product reaches the targeted customers in an appropriate and timely manner. As much as the traditional methods of marketing are thought to be costly and time consuming, the right blend of these methods with the social media will work the magic in marketing of the company’s products. Gunelius (2011) is of the opinion that Social media marketing has not developed extensively as it is only at its initial stages in most companies.
According to Hansberry (2012), with the increase in the use and adoption of social media, customers are now swiftly shifting from using the social media for entertainment and are now attaching some business aspect to it. He is additionally of the opinion that most people are now using these social sites to get recommendations for their products. It is estimated that most of the target customers are mostly available on the most popular sites of Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. One of the leading edge trends that may be beneficial is the increase in the number of social media platforms. It is upon this realization that most companies seeking to cash on this market have decided to embrace this fully. Currently, there are a lot of new entrants into the platforms in the social media. Apart from the most common ones like twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, there are other platforms that have come in to revolutionize the social media platform. These include Google+ and Pinterest (Hanbery, 2012).
Another leading edge trend is the increase in the use of smartphones and tablets by most of the people frequenting the social site. This has enabled most companies to connect to their target market in a very speedy way. With this smartphones, come a lot of applications like viggle that allows faster communication between the company and the customer (Lewis, 2012).
Recommendations
From the research done, integrating of social media into the traditional marketing methods can best be achieved through the following recommendations. The company should utilize the power of social connections in ensuring success of the integration. As much as the company uses the social media, they should appreciate the value of the connections that exist on these social media. For instance, it is believed that most people on social media are capable of responding positively to any recommendation that their friends on these social sites advance to them. It is for this reason that the companies that want to utilize the social media platform have to entice their customers to share the information of the company products with their friends on these social sites (Lewis, 2012).
Secondly, the company should broaden its scope and usage to several social sites. It is believed that as much as Facebook has a lot of followers, it may not turn out to be the best social site for marketing. This is according to a research done by shorp.org. It is estimated that about two thirds of the customers use you tube when looking for products online. In the light of this, the most probable and effective way to maneuver through this hurdle is for a company to come up with its own media like video and then ensure that the product is widely distributed in the mostly bused media in the social circles (Heid, 2012).
Thirdly, in creating to message to be posted on the social media platforms, the company should be alive to the fact that different people use different gadgets to access the social media. It is upon this realization that the company should come up with messages that are accessible through all or most of the popularly used gadgets. The most commonly used gadgets apart from computers are; smart phones and tablets. Additionally the company should aim to build the loyalty and trust of the customer through social media. This can be done by the use of the popular blogs like twitter. In order to ensure that customer loyalty is enhanced on the social site, the company should ensure quick and timely monitoring of the customer comments on these blogs. Additionally, the company should initiate surveys on these sites to enable them understand the needs of the customers. Furthermore, all the customers’ complaints should be; dealt with in timely manner and post on the same sites how you resolved the problems the client had.in addition, the customers should be able to give their candid feedback on the comments posted on the sites. The last thing that a company can do to create loyalty is by ensuring that all the customers that had satisfactory service from the company posts on the social site (Heid, 2012).
Another recommendation to integrate social media into the traditional methods is by ensuring the full support of the managers of the firm. The company should find managers that are fully conversant and optimistic of social media then having them oversee the actualization of this project.it is believed that using the top management will help those bellow them appreciate the value of social media in business marketing. Additionally, social media should be the way of operation in each and every department in the company. The company should desist from forming departments to deal with social media. Those that are not so good and using the media should be given the motivation and guiding by the savvies to help them appreciate the essence of social media in business (Batton, 2012).
Conclusion
With the increase in the use social media by customers, there has been development of the desire by many companies to change the use of these media from entertainment to commercial purposes. With time, many companies have come up staff and professionals that will help them integrate the use of social media and their traditional method of advertising like television and print media. The companies have launched a campaign through the social media to ensure that their products are acceptable to all the people using social, media. Most of the companies follow closely the comments made online and attempt to respond to them as promptly as possible. As much as the companies need to use television and print adverts, they have to compliment them with social media to achieve maximum returns (Hanbery, 2012).
References
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