The 1980’s! Sitting in your living room, watching the latest drama gripping the nation on your television. Just as the dramatic scene is about to reach a crescendo, the scene is cut short to play the latest advertisement. Groans of dismay ring around the room! Changing the channels was not an option, we only had two!
Advertising to market your brand was big business in the 1980’s. The only way to reach the mass market was by placing your brand in between popular programmes and devising memorable adverts to target a specific audience. Only businesses who possessed a considerable budget could avail of these marketing opportunities. TV advertisement was not an option for a small business looking to grow their market share. The Goliaths won!
Fast Forward 30 years! We have seen a massive shift in how we market brands and how we consume content on TV. In the Digital era people can now fast forward over advertisements and big businesses are under serious pressure to reach their audience. Tactics such as product placements in TV programmes are seen as an alternative method to increasing brand exposure. With a proliferation of channels, people have more choice than ever. Variety and education are creating a more savvy and conscious consumer who seeks value and control over their consumption choices. No longer should brands tell us what to do in advertising, they should talk with us to gain respect and insight. Time to change the Channel? Yes to Social Media! (see Digital Marketing Agency)
TV alone is no longer the main or desired marketing channel. Businesses of all sizes are changing their marketing channels and capitalising on the benefits of Social Media. It has revolutionised the way to build brand awareness. On Social Media channels people can communicate from all corners of the world and create communities with common interests. This allows a platform for businesses to communicate directly with people and make them feel part of their community. In turn these Social Media Marketing platforms (see Digital Marketing Agency) allow customers to engage with your brand, build loyalty, measure results in real time and add value to customers whilst keeping marketing costs down. Traditional marketing platforms such as TV don’t have the ability to meet these criteria.
What are the different platforms and which one suits me?
With over 1 billion users Facebook is the largest Social Media Platform and most popular amongst businesses. There is approximately over 2 million Facebook users alone in Ireland. Facebook has a wide variety of Demographics and most likely your target audience has a user account.
With Facebooks targeted advertising platform, businesses now have a greater opportunity to reach a wider customer base. Facebook allows a high level of engagement within your online community which makes it an ideal platform to build brand identity through targeted shareable content. Consumers of your brand can engage with you by sharing pictures, videos, giving feedback on products/services, participate in campaigns etc.
Facebook is primarily suited to B2C businesses. If you are a B2C businesses your focus on Facebook is to engage with prospective customers through visual imagery and creating conversation. This will build brand awareness (see Digital Marketing Agency).
Twitter is the second most popular Social Media channel with over 500,000 million users. Users are only allowed to use 140 characters. As people’s attention spans are low, delivering content in bite catches peoples attention.
Twitter requires people to actively interact with other people more, as content on timelines moves a faster than on Facebook. It’s these interactions that you need to build your brand.
For businesses Twitter is an extremely effective customer service tool and requires you listen, share and engage with your customers. In addition Twitter can also be an effective networking tool for B2B and B2C companies(see Digital Marketing Agency) .
LinkedIn is the world’s 3rd most used Social Media Channel. With over 150,000 million professional members, LinkedIn is the most widely used platform for B2B companies to network. LinkedIn allows prospective clients to search organisations, qualifications, experience, company structures, who the employees are etc. This enables you to connect and network with other businesses online to build up relationships.
If you’re in the B2B sector, building a LinkedIn profile and strategy should be the foundation of your Social Media Marketing Strategy. Think of your profile as a 30 second elevator pitch and why people would want to do business with you. Getting your LinkedIn marketing strategy right will see an increase in testimonials and referrals which will strengthen your brand position and reputation. LinkedIn allows you to publish content which can elevate your status as ‘The Thought Leader’ in your industry (see Digital Marketing Agency).
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing Social Media platforms and is 4th most popular Social Media Channel. Visual media is hugely popular on Social Media and people consume more visual media than any other forms of content. Pinterest is great way to engage with people by sharing ideas, providing graphic information and providing inspiration to people.
Pinterest is an ideal B2C channel for marketers. Pinterest is popular amongst women and the most popular industry sectors are fashion, automobile, retail and food.
Social Media has heralded a ‘Golden Age’ for marketing. Never before have we been able to gain access to powerful customer insights and develop close personal relationships. From a marketing perspective Social Media is multi-channelled and it offers the opportunity to create integrated marketing campaigns to maximise brand visibility. Changing the channel has never been as easy!
To learn how New World Digital can help you build your brand on social media (see Digital Marketing Agency), SEO (see SEO Company Ireland) or website design, simply Contact Us or phone one of the numbers above.
