Hello, everyone! This time would discuss the Social Media Integration of an online initiative.

Every business-oriented person or group is always optimistic about selling and marketing their products with the aim of being the industry leaders. To achieve this fete, people employ different strategies and use diverse studies as guides towards promoting their services or products. However, setting up the business or shop and selling products does not guarantee one success in their ventures. Therefore, there is a need to integrate various structures such as advertising, marketing, customer relations, and promotion in order to be successful. Marketing and advertising tend to be one of the crucial aspects of promoting the business. Then again, new methods and strategies crop up with time, and one has to keep up with the latest trends if he or she seeks to be the best. This blog post is meant to help individuals and corporates to introduce digital marketing initiatives that might improve their business. In this post, the focus will be placed on social media integration and the procedures to ensure a smooth transition, efficiency, and sustainability for business success.

Digital marketing involves the use of technology to promote or sell merchandise (Chaffey, 2018). Currently, the digital platforms allow advertising and marketing executives to market their products to a wide audience. Indeed, its penetration overpowers the traditional marketing methods; hence, it is a very important marketing tool. Moreover, it becomes an expensive venture for companies when they calculate their investment and returns. Traditional media refers to print media such as newspaper, billboards, posters, radio, and television, and their costs may be too high to compare with the return on investment (Chaffey, 2018). Moreover, its spread is not vast as it relies on the location or access to the media. Therefore, the introduction of digital marketing helps in overcoming such vice and brings a new perspective to the advertising scene.

Below the link can browse the difference between several types of media:

www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/customer-acquisition-strategy/new-media-options/

There are two types of communication channels in digital marketing: online and offline (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick par, 2012). Offline communication refers to a one-way interaction with the customer. The client relays their promotional material through word-of-mouth, merchandising, sales promotion, sponsorship, and advertising among other methods (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick par, 2012). However, its downside is lack of feedback from the market, and it can be expensive to conduct. The method works best for established companies that seek to make a statement in their delivery of products or services. It will not be efficient for startups as it fails to create good bondage between the company and plausible customers. Online communication is the vice to offline communication; the client and customer establish a two-way interaction (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick par. 2012). Such communication utilizes social media market, online partnership, search marketing, and interactive ads among others. Due to its array of options, online communications improves chances for both SMEs and established companies to promote their products or services.

As illustrated in the introduction, the blog will focus on social media marketing and the way a person can use the available tools to promote business. Social media marketing revolves around four main entities. The first one is audience participation, whereby a company can set up a group or network and send invites to various people (Stephen, 2016). Here, the company engages with those that accept their request, and together they are in a position to receive criticism, opinions, and suggestions about their product. Audience participation prepares the company for the second entity, which entails management of social presence. It is the process of updating customers on new products or services and changes (Shaikh, Siddiqui and Vasatkar, 2016). Eventually, it allows the consumer to have an update on current events happening in the company, which is efficient in answering some of their questions.

The third important entity is viral campaigns, especially when conducting promotions (Armstrong, Elizabeth and Giardin, 2016). The social media has the capacity to reach a vast audience, and spreading the message requires effective strategies. A company can use influential people in the society as its brand or campaign ambassador to promote the product. Imagery plays a key part in the success of viral campaigns as it could build or destroy a company. Therefore, one has to implement caution to his or her choices by undertaking proper background checks. Another aspect of viral campaigns is the use of issues or annual events to run a campaign, which is targeting a particular group (Armstrong, Elizabeth and Giardina, 2016). For instance, if one was to set up an online shop, a person could roll out viral campaigns during annual women’s day and employ a social media agent to run it. It is safer and cheaper method, which guarantees positive returns for the company.

The fourth entity, customer feedback, acts as the most important aspect of social media marketing. Customer care helps the company to handle some of the issues with their products or services before they escalate (Leung, Bai and Stahur, 2015). Moreover, it provides the consumers with a communication channel that they can utilize to know more about the business or lodge a complaint. Traditional methods of customer service such as mail and phone calls are expensive to both the business and consumers. Moreover, the relay of information takes time especially through the mail as one has to wait for a response before posting his or her feedback. Social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter are great avenues for business to converse with consumers (Leung, Bai and Stahur, 2015). They are fast, widespread, and effective towards the communication between the two parties. However, the business has to set up the right equipment for their employees to communicate with the consumers.

Overall, social media integration proves to be a viable option for any business due to its flexibility and wide market scope. Moreover, it is a cheaper and better way for a business to relay information to their consumers, which allows the company to specify their target audience. Indeed, social media integration will be integral for any business that seeks to grow its products or services to existing and emerging markets.

References

Armstrong, G. Cole, B. Delia Elizabeth and Michael D. Giardina. “Embracing the Social in Social Media: An Analysis of the Social Media Marketing Strategies of the Los Angeles Kings.” Communication & Sport, vol. 4, no.2, 2016, pp. 145-165.

Chaffey. The Difference Between Paid, Owned and Earned Media – 5 Viewpoints, 17 June 2012, www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/customer-acquisition-strategy/new-media-options/. Accessed 31 March 2018.

Chaffey, Dave and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick. Digital Marketing: Strategy. Implementation and Practice. London: Pearson, 2012.

Leung, Xi Y, Billy Bai and Kurt A. Stahura. “The Marketing Effectiveness of Social Media in the Hotel Industry: A Comparison of Facebook and Twitter.” Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, vol. 39, no. 2, 2015, pp. 147-169.

Shaikh, Nomaan, et al. “Social Media Marketing.” International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology, vol. 3, no. 6, 2016, pp. 870-872.

Stephen, Andrew T. “The Role of Digital and Social Media Marketing in Consumer Behavior.” Current Opinion in Psychology, vol. 10, 2016, pp. 17-21.

Digital Marketing Initiatives

Introduction

In the current digital era, marketing has been revolutionized with a paradigm shift from the traditional channels, such as print media, radio, newspapers, and television, to digital channels, such as social media, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, and display marketing. This shift has been caused by technological revolution especially through the growth of internet and social media. It has made businesses to rethink about the way they advertise and market their products and services, with most business preferring the digital channels over the traditional channels. However, some companies are yet to understand the dynamics of social media marketing and the best practices to adopt in order to use digital marketing to their advantage. This paper examines the digital marketing initiatives that companies should adopt for effective and successful digital marketing.

Customer Acquisition Strategic Initiatives

Customer acquisition is one of the major goals of digital marketing. A company must always strive to acquire new customers and retain the ones already present (Agnihotri 16). Customer acquisition through digital marketing entails gaining new customers and persuading them to purchase a company’s products or services. There are many ways and strategies that marketers use to improve customer acquisition and retention. In deciding which strategies and tools to use, the cost is a key consideration, and companies consider the cost of customer acquisition an as important metric to determine how much value customers bring to the company (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 323). Statistics by Griffin and Lowenstein suggest that it costs approximately five times more to acquire a new customer than to maintain an existing one. They also suggest that the success rate of selling a product to an existing customer is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20% (Griffin and Lowenstein 10). These statistics indicate that acquiring a new task is difficult; therefore, a company must employ the right strategies in order to increase its probability of success in as far as customer acquisition is concerned.

With a wide array of marketing channels to use, it can be difficult to determine the most effective one. Therefore, a digital marketing initiative requires resourceful planning. The aim of this planning should be to prioritize the core elements and key tactics that can increase reach while maintaining a low cost (Kingsnorth 43). A customer acquisition plan through digital marketing will include content marketing, search engine optimization, and social media marketing. These tools vary in terms of reach, application, and cost.

Content marketing entails creating and sharing digital media, such as blog posts and videos, and publishing content for a targeted audience online. The key to a successful content marketing is giving the right information to the right audience at the right time (Lieb 2). Before implementing content marketing, companies must identify the personas of their buyers, content needs, and preferences by prospective buyers, consider the marketing and organizational goals, challenges and risks involved, and determine the content marketing metrics and key performance indices to use in gauging the success of content marketing (Ryan 23). As companies use content marketing, they also need to ensure that the content rank high in the search engines. The key to ensuring that content marketing is effective is integrating the content with search engine optimization in such a way that content appears among the first search results returned by a search engine. Therefore, businesses ought to invest in developing natural links which make SEO initiatives produce unsolicited links from people who appreciate content (Kingsnorth et al. 8). It is important as it will expand the digital marketing reach. Website design is also important in improving customer experience, as navigating through a website should be not only easy but fun as well.

Customer acquisition through social media entails gaining online traffic, especially through social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These social media platforms have high number users; for instance, Facebook has more than 2.2 billion users across the world (“Number of Monthly Active Facebook Users”). Therefore, companies can have a wide reach by marketing their products through social media. One post on social media has the ability of reaching potential customers across the world with just a click. Businesses can also boost whatever they post on their social media accounts so that it can reach more people across the world, launch viral campaigns, and receive real-time feedback from their prospective customers.

Digital marketing initiatives have gained popularity over traditional channels since they provide a greater level of engagement, make customers able to compare products of different companies, allow customers to stay updated about products and services, and enable instant shopping. Statistically, there exists a positive relationship between digital marketing and sales increase online advertising, social media, and search engine optimization have been identified as being highly positively correlated to sales increase (Yasmin et al. 76). Notably, sales increase is driven by new customer acquisition through market development and market penetration. The risks that digital marketing poses include the fact that not all potential customers are connected to the internet, data security issues, and the fact that online trends change rapidly. Therefore, companies must keep up with these trends in order to remain relevant and competitive.

Conclusion

The digital initiatives that any business employs should be aimed at developing or improving the experience of existing customers, encouraging the return of customers, and attracting prospective the customer as well. To achieve its goals, a business should effectively use its website, affiliate marketing, content marketing, and social media platforms in order to reach out to its customers. In addition, it should provide personalized recommendations and services to its clients, which is very important, especially if the business wants to retain its clients. Digital marketing initiatives employed by any business become more effective if there are prescribed key performance indicators that can provide statistics on the level of engagements and the audience reached using digital marketing tools.

Reference

Agnihotri, Raj. Effective Sales Force Automation and Customer Relationship Management: A Focus on Selection and Implementation. Business Expert Press, 2010.

Chaffey, Dave, and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick. Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow: Pearson Education, 2012.

Griffin, Jill, and Michael W. Lowenstein. Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers — And Keep Them Loyal. John Wiley & Sons, 2002

Kingsnorth, Simon. Digital Marketing Strategy: An Integrated Approach to Online Marketing. Kogan Page Publishers, 2016.

Lieb, Rebecca. Content Marketing: Think Like a Publisher — How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social media. Que Publishing, 2011.

“Number of Monthly Active Facebook Users Worldwide as of 4th Quarter 2017 (In Millions)”. Statista — The Statistics Portal, 2018. www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/. Accessed 15 February 2018.

Ryan, Damian. Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation. Kogan Page Publishers, 2016.

Yasmin, Afrina, et al. “Effectiveness of Digital Marketing in the Challenging Age: An Empirical Study.” International Journal of Management Science and Business Administration, vol. 1, 2015, pp. 69-80.

Introduction

Marketing is largely associated with product promotion whereby the concerned parties possess the urge to sell more of what they deal in. In general, every individual may be considered a seller since he or she might promote own self, a product, or even an organization that an individual represents. Therefore, marketing remains vital to the success of all businesses across the globe.

Over time, the application of digital marketing has increasingly become important owing to the number of people who use the internet and social platforms in particular (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 150, 2016). Specifically, the introduction of Facebook advertisement has attracted a large volume of business people who aim to take the advantage of a large number of the social media users. Currently, Facebook boasts over 1.2 billion daily active users with an average of 3-4 hours per day (Holzner 96, 2008). This provides a big catch for the business advertising, and the ability to use a custom audience targeting makes Facebook advertisement a necessary tool for anyone who aspires to success in business.

Benefits of Facebook Advertising

The Facebook provides a platform with numerous individuals as targets such that one does not need to do the hustle of gathering the target group. In most cases, one of the greatest challenges to marketing has been the definition and creation of the audience. The world has become a busy place where every individual seeks to mind own businesses. The audience availed by Facebook is, therefore, a significant opportunity for marketers.

Moreover, the fact that the social platform records a daily active audience of over a billion users is something that puts a smile on the faces of most business people. In other words, business marketing has grown to a new level since the target audience is reached easily. At the same time, social platforms are shared with all the users all over the world (Zarrella and Zarrella 201, 2010). Therefore, Facebook offers an efficient tool for marketers from all industries.

What does this mean for advertising and the growth of the business? It reflects a limitless platform whereby an investor in Africa can share information about his or her business with individuals from all the other continents. Such a rate of networking is healthy for growth and development and it has facilitated the globalization rate. Currently, e-marketing is rated among the top revenue earners and a venture with sure returns. The secret of such businesses thriving has been the effective use of the online platforms. This further implies minimal costs incurred in conducting businesses hence maximizing the profits. The good news is that Facebook has seized this opportunity to offer affordable, convenient, and effective product promotions through advertisements.

Similarly, marketers are able to create custom audience adverts. Filters can be defined based on geographical location, institutions attended, age, profession etc. For instance, an investor in the USA who deals with medical services and would like to reach only the American individuals in the medical field can actually customize the target group to just that. This applies to everyone from any part of the world, provided that such individuals have deliberate promotion plans.

Eventually, anyone who wishes to promote will feel the satisfaction of having reached the right target group, what is usually referred to as “a good run for one’s money.” According to Facebook study, the adverts that are custom made have a 387% chance of being talked about by co-workers, family, and friends. These lead to further recommendations that boast a 92% activity as most people prefer the word of mouth recommendations (Ryan 16, 2016). In the long run, these qualities receive the supplement of affordable costs that enables every individual to set own budgets in accordance with available resources.

Disadvantages of Facebook Advertising

In as much as Facebook advertising has lately won over a huge number of users, it provides a universal public view of the target groups. This can be harmful in case a customer has to share a negative experience related to a certain product or service. This means that such comments can be seen by everyone who subscribes to the advert and can discourage potential customers. On the other hand, considerably long video adverts discourage those without good internet sources. An individual who purchases daily internet bundles would rather not indulge in such video adverts (Miller 127, 2012). Therefore, Facebook advertisements have some limitations that affect a number of users.

When it comes to Facebook adverts, one has to assume that almost all of his/her target population is Facebook users. However, this is a wrong assumption. It, therefore, limits a business person who sorely relies on the social media platform. Marketers should conduct occasional researches to understand whether their target audience is covered by tools applied.

Conclusion

Despite the demerits of Facebook advertising, it guarantees a good Return on Investment considering the costs involved. With increased investment in the advertisement sector, Facebook advertisement has increased its revenue by close to 3 billion dollars since 2015. Therefore, with the world slowly accepting e-commerce as one of the major market places, Facebook promises successful advertisement that would cover various target groups.

References

Chaffey, Dave, and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick: Digital Marketing. Pearson, 2016.

Holzner, Steven. Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow your Business. Pearson Education, 2008.

Miller, Michael. B2B digital Marketing: Using the Web to Market Directly to Businesses. Que Publishing, 2012.

Ryan, Damian. Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation. Kogan Page Publishers, 2016.

Zarrella, Dan, and Alison Zarrella. The Facebook marketing book. O’ Reilly Media, Inc., 2010.