“Social media helps to create communities. Successful companies in social media function more like entertainment companies, publishers, or party planners than as traditional advertisers,” – Eric Qualman
The rise of social media platforms is a recent phenomenon in the world of commerce. Businesses of every hue are working to define and create an appropriate social media marketing strategy in their pursuit of increasing customer engagement, expanding the business base, creating an enhanced mind share among paying customers, and highlighting their business to the legions of online business prospects. This strategy is driven by the realisation that social media represents an important aspect of the marketing mix that is operated by modern businesses; another aspect of such motivation stems from the ubiquity of the multiple social media platforms that populate cyberspace and the implied volumes of new customers that emanate from such platforms. We must note that the serious enterprise is increasingly allocating substantial resources to devising and implementing a social media marketing strategy in an attempt to highlight its business and to attract online customers. In light of the above, businesses must work to refine constantly their marketing strategies on social media and work intuitively to create an outstanding brand presence for the benefit of all stakeholders.
Active communications with all stakeholders, notably customers and consumers, should form the crux of a social media marketing strategy operated by a business. This gains significance when we consider the fact that communications represent the lynchpin in every marketing strategy. Businesses that operate an active and vibrant social media presence should converse with customers regarding the products and services offered by the business; this helps to expand the scope of consumer awareness and enables the business to get a sense of the customer’s wants and requirements, his or her preferences and proclivities. Businesses can also gather feedback and customer reviews from social media platforms when they invite customers to click on web-links that afford customers additional space to air their views. This information can be systematically gathered and analysed in order to impart relevance to every business action. We must note that this aspect of the social media marketing strategy also helps the enterprise to perform in terms of delivering prompt and precise customer service to every individual customer.
The primary intent of every social media marketing strategy should be to attract and retain new customers for a business enterprise. To achieve this objective, businesses may consider creating and deploying top class content to boost customer engagement. We must note that this is an old strategy pre-dating the dawn of electronic communications but remains just as relevant to a modern social media marketing strategy. In addition to visual and video content, business enterprises can create blogs, quizzes, exclusive online deals, discussion forums, etc. to bolster their marketing strategy on social media platforms. These actions help to create and sustain an on-going dialogue with customers, boost consumer satisfaction, and customer confidence, create healthy relationships with online audiences, enforce transparency in transactional actions, and create a fine corporate identity on the Internet. We must note that top class content cannot be conjured from thin air and therefore, a business must plan to allocate resources to create and deploy content through social media handles.
A refined end-user experience should help a business to gain significant return on investment through its social media marketing strategy. From a utilitarian point of view, such an experience could mean smooth and uninterrupted connections between the social media handle and the business website. This is important because such connections can prompt online customers to initiate and complete a business transaction that starts at the said handle and culminates in the transactions page (or online cart) of said business enterprise. This component of the social media marketing strategy is crucial because it can enable impulse buyers to transit from the social media handle of a business and swiftly close a transaction for a desired product or service on the website. Such actions hold especially true during peak shopping seasons when a business might announce a limited edition product on social media followed by immediate customer conversions as reflected by completed sales in the corresponding website. Further, some enterprising business operators may choose to create a micro-site for special products and this may be advertised on social media, accompanied by a web-link to said micro-site. We must note that these mechanisms can be exclusively orchestrated through social media handles and have the potential to boost business profitability at short notice.
Businesses may choose to use relevant keywords and hash-tags on new posts that grace their social media handles as part of their social media marketing strategy. The use of such devices is important because it helps to drive online traffic to the social media handles of commercial enterprises and can boost participation from online audiences. For instance, a quick service restaurant may choose to use hash tag “#hotdogs” to attract customer attention to a hotdog festival at its physical premises. This is essentially a conversation that piques the curiosity of fans and customers of the business and can translate into higher sales numbers at the said premises. Online customers may be offered a special discount when they attend said festival and display the hash tag at the checkout counter; this remains a popular technique to boost sales and drive conversions.
Customer testimonials can be deployed as part of a social media marketing strategy by businesses that are keen to attract new customers. This action should be used sparingly because each testimonial should be accorded its own space in the social media handle; the business should work to create the impression that it values each individual testimonial and should highlight the same for a considerable time. The effect can be dramatic at times because customers tend to trust the opinions of other customers; such citations may allow a temporary uptick in customer traffic. In addition, interesting dialogues and fan interactions may emerge following the posting of such citations on social media. We must note that customer testimonials must be treated as sacrosanct and therefore, online businesses must cite these opinions verbatim.
In the preceding paragraphs, we have examined some of the techniques that can be used to craft a great social media marketing strategy. The average business enterprise that seeks to leverage social media platforms in its marketing mix should bear in mind the fact that social media has become one of the permanent platforms that power customer interaction; therefore, it is incumbent on all enterprises to speak the language of social media and connect to customers at a deeper level. These actions have to be methodically mapped out and consistently executed before they yield a sustained return on investment. In addition, we must bear in mind that social media remains a fluid platform that can ignite customer comments at any time and therefore, businesses must be vigilant in their monitoring of social media handles. This assumes importance because negative comments and feedback can be damaging to a brand and its brand owners; this fact necessitates a quick and nimble approach in terms of conversations on social media. In addition, every business needs to invest substantially to flesh out a cohesive and well-rounded social media marketing strategy in order to gain the full benefit of such actions.
