Use of
Social Media by Companies To Reach Their Customers
The author
wrote this article to demonstrate the important role of social media in
connecting the customers to the firm as sellers. He also uses this article to
inform the readers what social media is. I think that this article is important
as use of social media is getting more widespread. The world seems to be
smaller with social networking activities. The major social networks are
Facebook, Twitter and You Tube. Currently, there are one billion Facebook
users (Business Bloomberg, Oct 2012).People have been using social media as
means to interact within the society. The
greatest advantage of social media is the free cost of the channel to the users.
For example, Facebook does not charge any premium to the account holders while
providing free and convenient social networking services. Facebook owner
manages to list his firm in the Stock Exchange as a public company merely by
collecting advertising revenues from companies advertising their products and
services.
The author has conducted the study in India to find out how companies utilize social media to market their products. He found out that 83% of the companies agreed that they would not succeed in marketing their strategies without social network. 52% of the companies are able to win new customers through social media. Majority of big retailers use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with their customers for complaints and compliments. Customers are satisfied when they get feedback promptly whenever they have doubts and unhappiness about products and services. He also found out that company will suffer losses if they do not respond to their customers’ grievance. One company name Parle Agro used Twitter to keep track their inventories and it turn out that it was successful to increase their sales. (Bhanot, 2012). The author supports the above finding by stating that consumers make purchases base on their cyber friends’ recommendation. As the costs of using social network are minimal, small and medium firm could afford the budgets. Author also thinks that companies could enhance their product images with the use of social media while reaching out to more people. (Bhanot, 2012)
For implication, managers should know how to use social media effectively. Firms should be creative when designing their web pages. Advertisements should not contain too much information to the social media users as to avoid sense of overload data. Firm could update the advertisements frequently too. They should consider implementing their marketing strategies at the right timing and to the appropriate group age. Managers should also consider competitiveness of their rivalry. The products that they advertise should seem unique and different from their rivals.
Written by
Sandeep Bhanot, Sies Journal of Management, March 2012, Vol.8 : Issue 1
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ReplyDeleteSocial networks such as Facebook and Youtube do color our life a lot. As an individual consumer, I spend averagely two hours per day on these websites. Everytime I watch clips on Youtube, there's always some annoying advertisements accompanied with them. Honestly, these annoying ads bother me a lot. Of course I know where they come from and why these specific ads shows up on my screen, but I never spend even two seconds on each of them. Indeed, social networks are good tunnels for marketing, but these marketers also have to watch out not to challenge their potential consumers' patience.
ReplyDeletetechnology decades, people can check their Facebook, Google + and more every second with their smart phone. Therefore, social media becomes one of the most important and effective media marketing channel for all of companies specially international enterprise.
ReplyDeleteSocial media can help companies to collect their reviews, feedback or evaluation of their campaign right after they started.
However, it is not easy for all people to check their ads. Moreover, social media becomes the toughest channel for every companies to survive because customers can evaluate your products, compares with yours substitution.
Conclusion, to be able to survive on social media channel companies should have a strong in technique, creative in ideas in their marketing and development department.
Social networks are becoming more and more present in everyone life. Even if you are not a computer savvy, you can use them because most of them are user friendly.Therefore, the number of people using social networks are so huge that they can be a potential future for all current and future companies. So, it is very important to have an eye on them for future investment. However, they represent a huge potential market, advertising on them is not 100% effective as one might think. There are still room for improvement to locate the right market to which certain adverting can be sent to. Facebook is one of the biggest and their shares are not where thy should be, because people are still not 100% convinced about social media advertising effectiveness.
ReplyDeleteThe advancement of Social Media as an advertising venue is firmly in place globally. It would behoove all managers to embrace the technology. It's essentially a very low cost option to further business sales.
ReplyDelete