Social Media Marketing

A multi-million dollar company spends a million to build a product that is expected to create frenzy as soon as it hits the market. Too much is at stake to say the least. However, those million dollar tags are inconsequential unless a further million is spent to market that product.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing

A multi-million dollar company spends a million to build a product that is expected to create frenzy as soon as it hits the market. Too much is at stake to say the least. However, those million dollar tags are inconsequential unless a further million is spent to market that product. After all, sending those pamphlets as supplements along with the morning newspaper is just not enough. Who reads them anyway! Flashing advertisements during breaks on T.V. has become an expensive exercise that costs companies a fortune.

That is when a need for a cheaper and a more effective marketing strategy arises and that is where Social Media Marketing comes into play.

What is Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing, put in simpler words, is promoting a company's product by the means of blogs and Social networking Websites like Facebook and Twitter. These days when we are surfing some websites, we often come across widgets or buttons at the end of all the articles, which read 'Share', 'Like' or 'Tweet'. As soon as we hit those buttons, that article gets posted on our facebook and twitter profiles. Now being posted on our profiles, those articles are visible to the social networking circle we are in, that is, the people in our friend list. So even the users, which had not come in direct contact with those piece of articles, get access to them and the same process gets carried forward. There is not a better example of mouth-to-mouth publicity.

The personalized pages of the companies on these websites invite users to check the latest news, photos videos and updates on the new products launched in the market

It would be safe to say that Social Media Marketing has brought a revolution in the way products were promoted among the potential customers. What makes Social Media Marketing so effective is that it gives a personal touch in the sense that seller and the buyer are on the same platform. Interaction is done on the real time basis through one to one contact. Through blogs and social networking websites, companies have flooded the Internet.

Why Social Media Marketing

Whilst, advertising through Internet has been in existence from a long time in the form of those flashy pop-ups that, well, used to pop up from nowhere as soon as we clicked some URL's on the websites, it hardly used to generate any curiosity in the user for that product. Instead, the irritated user so conveniently clicked the close button and resumed his work. What sellers needed was a way to grab user's attention and more importantly, hold onto that attention. Social Media Marketing helped companies achieve this goal.

How Social Media Marketing makes it possible

Social networking websites do not entertain any pop-ups or random advertisements. They instead have an entire page dedicated to the product. These pages contain all the information on the product like its launch date, its features, its uses, the updates in that product and much more.

But what separates Social Media Marketing from the rest is that it is not a one-way traffic. At the end of the day, the user not just goes through the pages of data, shuts down his computer and goes back to sleep with all the doubts lingering on in his mind. Instead, whenever user has a difficulty understanding something or he is not satisfied with the amount of information available, he can post a question and not only the industry experts, but anyone who understands the question, can answer it.

Secret to a successful Social Media Marketing

Marketing, done through any platform, has the same underlying factors that make it a success or a failure. A company building a certain product, has to incorporate all the features that make the product marketable.

Once the product is ready to be launched, creating awareness is the first step to be taken. Understanding the customers and their needs follows next. Customer always has to be educated about the company and its products and that is where Social Media Marketing proves to be the biggest asset. Creating an online community for the launched or about to be launched product, a company can invite the customers to join that community and answer all their queries. The community pages can be used to forward the customer to company's website by providing the links to the URL.

The one to one interaction between the customer and company's own expert goes a long way in building a reputation with the customer and is the best way to win his trust.