Social Media: An effective platform for digital marketing

The proliferation of online social network

The rapid growth of Web-based platform has significantly changed people's interactions and habits. As online communities can actually bring people together from across the world, real world social relationships can be migrated to the virtual world to some degree. From a customer's perspective, online social networking tend to enhance the benefits like richer and participative information sharing, cost reduction, efficiency, convenience as well as product diversity. Specifically speaking, through social network, customers are able to seek others' opinions about certain products and sharing their own's. The word of mouth effect has never been stronger.

Why social media

To ensure their market share in this digital era, firms should also engage with social media just as their customers do. From a survey conducted among market managers from big companies in Portugal, the following benefits of using social media as marketing platform are concluded:

• Improve information gathering and feedback
• User-friendly tool
• Increases knowledge
• Promotes internal and external relationships
• Supports decision making process
• Increase productivity
• Better outcome measurement

Comparing to the traditional marketing methods such as advertising, digital marketing via social media can effectively enhance communication. Not only can salesperson precisely target and reach customers, but customers can also be a co-producer for its content and spread the message among peers. Also, since direct dialogue can be easily established with customers, it is convenient for marketers to collect feedback and make improvement accordingly.

How to measure: a typology of digital media engagement

Since the investment in digital marketing evolve in parallel with perceived benefits and high level of digital marketing usage can indicate high level of digital interaction, a cluster analysis can be performed to identify groups of firms with similar digital marketing usage and benefits perception.

As shown above, it suggests four distinct digital usage/benefits profiles.

• Engagement:high usage of digital marketing and benefits from it.
• Qualification: heavy investment on digital marketing tools but low expectations regarding benefits in return.
• Discovery:lack of digital marketing usage and low benefits
• Dead-road: low commitment to digital marketing but with high expectation.

Managerial suggestions 

To gain a competitive advantage in digital marketing, firms should utilize social media as an effective platform to build long-term relationship with customers. 
Firstly, firms should maintain a high level of digital marketing usage in order to be responsive to customers' need online. Secondly, various kinds of social media can be used for different customers. For instance, Wechat and Weibo official accounts can be very powerful marketing tools when targeting Chinese customers, while Facebook and Instagram allow firms link to the rest of the world. 

From my perspective, firms should also focus on the customer engagement like create more customers' interaction rather than merely deliver the content. Besides, the feedback collection and follow-up actions are also critical for firms to effectively evaluate their performance.

Reference

http://socialmediaweek.org/jakarta/2015/02/05/5-social-media-trends-online-businessman-needs-know/

https://socwork.wisc.edu/using-social-media-social-work-student

Tiago, Maria Teresa Pinheiro Melo Borges, & Veríssimo, J. M. C. (2014). Digital marketing and social media: Why bother? Business Horizons, 57(6), 703-708. 

The importance of emotion on a website

Due to the huge number of website on the web, emotion is becoming a powerful tool to build a great experience for users. Until now, procuring emotion through a website was not essential, but things have changed and competition is always more intensive.

An interesting design includes an emotional experience and will make visitors remember the concerned website. This emotion also allows giving a more human function and qualities to the website and is now considered as the key to the full potential of today’s web design. This emotion will encourage them to share the content make decisions quicker and pay money more confidently. Implementing emotion on its website brings huge benefits as sales, conversions, regular customers, donations, or finally traffic.

A performing and well designed website will

o   Appeal

o   Catch users attention

o   Be effective

o   Allows users finding what they’re looking for

o   Procure fun to use

o   Be memorized by users

Who is it for? What are the activities and functions within? In what context will your website be visited? Upon this preliminaries studied, you can start the web-design and make a website which perfectly target your potential customers. On a great and performing website, customers can guess the image of your company, its values and its visions.

Through a website, you can provokes the following emotions:

• ·      Trust: In order to increase the trust index of users, it’s interesting to let the access to the portfolio & testimonies, describe the company with a persuasive text, adjust the design with the appropriate color and tones… Trust is largely the most powerful emotion that motivate user to come on your website.
• ·      Happiness… A website has to bring the user into its “world” and values. Inserting pictures with smiles is an interesting way to transmit the happiness. This is used in many sectors as travel websites, charity projects, and automotive industry websites…
• ·      Empathy: This emotion is very used by charity companies. Here, they will put touching pictures and stories. By this way, visitors will be impacted and be never indifferent to the concerned cause.
• ·      Surprise: It can be discount, arrival of new products or services, which answer customer needs. The objective of this emotion is encouraging users to take quick actions.

A website which procures emotion will satisfy users, and offer them an experience. It will procure the need to tell their experience to their entourage. At least, these users will become ambassadors of the brand, even if they didn’t purchase.

The objective of building emotion on a website is clear, it’s building a relationship with users, impact their mind, win their loyalty and make them coming back. Nowadays, many companies as Apple, Louis Vuitton pay a lot of attention to create a great story telling and give a strong personality to their e-platform. At least, visitors are impacted and feel emotion.

Elio NICOL

Denys SAISSE

References:

http://www.instantshift.com/2014/09/18/emotions-in-website-design/

http://www.onextrapixel.com/2014/03/10/the-use-of-emotion-in-web-design/

http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/02/25/importance-emotion-design/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/building-emotion-into-your-websites/

Instagram : how to create a real commitment?

Nowadays, Instagram is one of the most popular social media. That’s why it’s important to know how to use it efficiently. A good use of Instagram will permit you, in a new innovated way, to communicate and present your products. With a great number of active users each month, Instagram became a real marketing tool to increase your company’s visibility.

©Instagram 

Today, it is essential for a brand to have an Instagram account. It allows a lot of possibilities: share photos, special promos…

But what is the point of Instagram if the content isn’t viewed?

Subscribers make all the sense of Instagram so you have to have a large number of viewers.

How to have a great number of followers on Instagram ?

This article shows the 15 rules to follow:

 1.      Share content daily

2.      Post at hours when the audience is most receptive

3.      Interacting with his followers

4.      Create your own branded hashtag

5.      Identify your publications like followers

6.      Use the video function

7.      Save time by taking over existing images

8.      Create a contest

9.      Share your Instagram photos on other social networks

10.       Analyze your best publications, and ask yourself why

11.       Share photos of your product with followers

12.       Use emoticons to attract the attention of Internet users

13.       Use 7 hashtags  per publication

14.       Use of hooks to create sentences commitment

15.       Do not overlook the geo-location

We think those advise are very relevant to aim your followers goal and to have a good brand image.

To put it in a nutshell you have to be very present, diversify your content and be strategic.

Géraldine Caenen, Clara Terol

Source : http://www.danstapub.com/15-astuces-pour-creer-de-lengagement-sur-instagram/

How beacons combines experiential and engaging marketing to be a win-win for brands

Tell me more about Beacon !

Beacon technology is becoming a new trend for companies to practice marketing in a different way that the traditional one: marketing digitalized. Indeed, using Internet and apps, marketers have seen here the opportunity to target the customer by giving them a very specific and individualized information.

As devices becoming really sophisticated, brands need to find a new/better way to ensure that customers continue to engage with through promotions and incentives.

This technology works through little sensors based on Bluetooth Low Energy.

Beacon can be seen as an intrusive way to reach customers but, actually, promotions will get to them based on how they shop. What is quite impressing in this kind of scheme is that the customer can be continuously doing something. Anywhere he would go, the customer can receive an information about what to do at that moment, and so pushing him to buy, or at least to visit the store (which is already a huge gap : attract consumer).

Firms use this technology, in one hand, to create a close and personal relation with consumers with offers and different push messages, in another hand to get information to make this relation even more personal and adapt to each person. This kind of marketing is very clever. Before that, to get information about consumer needs was not so easy, and it is still a long procedure sometimes : for example head a market study takes time to gather information, analyze it and to use it appropriately. With Beacon, as the message is personnalized, the consumer can provide, by its own willingness, the information the company needs. Then the company can better target, the customer will give more information, and that is a virtuous circle : we could also nominate the a « Data Marketing ».

By doing this, firms can also try (it would be a lot of work for IT guys) remarket directly with beacons. Imagine if companies, with data they have on what you checked on the website, are able to give you a promotion directly related to your research. That would create a purchase and also make you go to the store to get this promotion. Beacons seem to be a real opportunity for marketers but only if they use it right.

Everyone does not yet accept it and you have to download the application (one for each brand) and turn your Bluetooth on. This is not so much to do, but, even if you put information panels at the entrances of the store, not everybody will look at it and take time to do it.

The only way to make customers do this is by proposing a real service and real advantages and not only promotions that pop on your phone every 5 minutes you spend in the store. This is the real challenge for brands in order to make beacon essential because this how you’ll get a lot lot of data on the time spent, the path of consumers and when do they go shopping, which will improve the system.

From MarketingTechNews

By Gaetan Lusven and David Delpoio