Marketers need to comprehend the different types of techniques to make sturdy connections with the audience and arrive at decisions according to what is appropriate for the company’s brand name.
In my view, to defend the significance of marketing is to understand that social media is just a natural progression of traditional marketing and there are not many distinguishing factors as to social media versus traditional marketing. Many companies these days are moving and have already moved towards the concept of social media from previously marketing through the traditional sources like bill boards, TV, Radio and use of fliers.
To understand the different attributes that have arise in the natural progression of marketing is not much but it’s more like taking an add from the bill board and putting it up on the face book fan page by setting the tabs and displaying an advertisement of your company on it. Thus, the action remains the same but the way marketers encounter now is online and previously it was offline.
In fact the core and most important difference that does arise between social media and traditional marketing is the swing in the way the company socially interacts with its audience. The key difference is that there is more emphasis on building relationships, and developing a two way channel of communication to promote the company’s brand name and its products and services in social media, where as the old traditional way of marketing is accustomed to a one way communication model. For example if Gul Ahmed advertises its summer lawn collection through the traditional method of marketing by using the billboard, so just for instance imagine how the audience would communicate through such a channel; by setting up massive boards or screens next to the billboards where women can leave their comments and the board would display the feedback of every person on it, but is this possible and easy to do. Rather social media marketing help companies create content on different social sites, where the audience is expected to create discussions, comparisons and question on the topic or advertisement displayed. Another example of social media bringing customers closer to companies is when Starbucks started “MyStarbucksIdea” where the customers can submit their ideas for the company online on the site which is then voted on by other different users and in the end the best of which will be implemented by the company. Whereas GM uses blogs to communicate directly with its customers around topics ranging from design to green tech. These are just a few examples discussed how Social Media gets to engage a company with its audience. In other words, social media is like giving a human voice to the company or humanizing the company.
One hitch in social media is the amount of damage a company can cause to its reputation is a lot more than compared to traditional marketing. Every company makes a mistake once in a while, but it’s not very often that those mistakes are seen by millions of people. One blooper in social media can result in very serious consequences. Influencers have enormous audiences who care deeply about what they say, and there’s no other place where information can travel so quickly. Companies affianced in social media are at risk being exposed in a very destructive way. Since some businesses have witnessed mistakes by sharing too much information on the internet with its audience market, while others have adopted a silencing approach to the social media. But a balanced approach is the best solution, and every different company should open up to the social media depending on the type of products and services they deal in. Every company has to set its own policies regarding how open they should be and how much information they should reveal on their social media sites, it all depends on what is appropriate for the company’s products.
One imperative thing in the evolution of marketing is that Social media has blurred lines between both the people and the companies. This natural extension in marketing has created a gateway for brands to appear humanized as much as possible to the audience, it is a tool to communicate what your company is all about, and hence it is more time efficient and easy to interact over social media with your audience rather than doing all this on channels of TV, radio or print media or in simpler words the traditional way of marketing.
