Digital marketing

As the number of internet users grows each year, digital marketing is becoming an important marketing technique for firms. Many people today use the internet to communicate and conduct business. Businesses have taken advantage of the expanding use of the internet to reach a broader client base and efficiently engage with existing customers in order to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. One of the digital marketing strategies that firms have utilized to achieve their marketing objectives is social media marketing. This report explains how businesses can use social media as a marketing tool to achieve their marketing objectives. Social media is important in marketing because it is less costly than traditional methods of marketing. It is also an effective way of increasing a company’s customer base and improving customer relations.

Part A: Strategy and Justification

Justification for the Chosen Strategy

Digital marketing plays a significant role in increasing the audience and potential customers of a business. It allows a business to maximize its sales through online marketing. Digital marketing also creates a wider customer base than traditional marketing, and it enhances effective customer service (Dahl, 2015). Through the internet, it is easier, faster and more convenient to communicate with customers and deliver quality services. Engaging customers online also improves customer experience; hence promoting customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Social media marketing is one of the most effective online marketing strategies. It involves the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube to promote products and services online. This strategy is appropriate for marketing because it has the potential to reach a large customer base. According to Statistica (2017), Social media marketing is also more effective than traditional marketing because it is easier and more convenient for effective communication between a business and its customers. Social media marketing is also the most effective digital strategy because it is less costly and simple to use (Zarrella, 2010). Some of the social media sites allow free marketing. For example, a company can create a facebook page for free and post its products and services including images, videos, product descriptions and benefits.

Functions and Benefits of Social Media Marketing

The major function of social media in marketing is to enhance communication and interaction with customers. It enables the business to collect feedback, comments, complains and compliments from customers. Customer feedback is used to improve the company’s operations, product quality and customer services (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). Furthermore, interaction with customers through the social media enables the company to create a good customer experience and promote customer satisfaction and loyalty. A business can also use the social media to communicate important information with customers and other important stakeholders. For instance, a company may post a message on Facebook informing customers about certain issues e.g. change in prices.

Social media is also used to create visibility through advertising and promotion. The business may post promotional messages with images, descriptions, features and benefits of products. Such promotional messages encourage customers to buy the products (Barker et al, 2017). The social media also creates awareness for the company’s brands and products among online users. A business may also post a message in the social media to promote a new product. Customers can get updates of new products and existing products so that they can make consumer choices based on the information they get.

A business also requires an effective digital marketing strategy to generate consumer interest, attract customers, and minimize marketing costs. The social media offers an opportunity for businesses to place their advertisements strategically within informative posts in order to attract customers (Zimmerman & Ng, 2017). The business can use hash tags and keywords to generate traffic and identify potential customers with keen interest on their products or services. This process is affordable because it does not require a huge budget to implement. It is the best way that small businesses can compete effectively with large and well established companies.

Strategies for Generating Traffic

A business can generate traffic to its business by using creative and attractive posts, hash tags, key words, videos, images, and informative messages. Before choosing the best strategy to attract online users, the business should set online marketing goals in line with the overall goals of the company (Cesareo, 2004). The company should then craft an effective strategy that includes several messages and creative graphics and designs to attract viewers.

One of the most effective ways of attracting customers into the online business is to create attractive and informative posts on the chosen social networking sites (Brown, 2012). For example, facebook offers a platform for users to create pages or individual accounts and post messages that all followers and friends can view, like and comment. To increase the number of viewers for the company may pay for premium services so that their posts can be given priority on the social media network. Facebook gives users an opportunity to market their businesses by paying a small fee for their businesses to be displayed for everyone to see.

On twitter, the business can use hash tags that will attract a huge following. The message can be comedic, full of fun, but also informative (Agresta & Bough, 2011). It has to be a message that can easily attract the attention of social media users and at the same time pass an informative message. An interesting and educative message enables the company to attract many followers, and probably turn them into long term customers for the company. The messages may also contain links to external sites including blogs and company website to redirect potential customers.

Informative messages may be posted in form of text, videos or audios to attract more viewers. Educative videos attract many viewers who may be turned into customers. Videos are more appealing than texts because they are visual (Evans, 2010). The company can demonstrate how a product is used so that that the customer can be informed and educated about the use of the product. For example, a manufacturing company can demonstrate how a certain product can be used by customers in their homes.

Action Plan

The above strategies can be implemented in a series of steps to ensure that all important aspects of the social media marketing are implemented. The first step is to align the social media marketing strategy with the company’s strategic goals and objectives. In this stage, the company identifies the social media messages that will reflect the culture and values of the organization. The company should identify the key performance indicators of the company and post messages that reflect the values of the company on the chosen social media networks (Brown, 2012). Various teams and departments of the organization should be involved in planning so that the goals of digital marketing are aligned with the goals of each department and the entire organization. For example, a social media campaign may aim at achieving increased customer base in line with the goals of the sales and marketing department.

The second step of implementing the social media marketing strategy is to translate the social media goals into specific digital marketing tactics (Brown, 2012). In this case, the company should identify the specific actions that need to be taken to achieve the set goals. For instance, if the goal of a company is to increase its customer base, the company may create informative videos to advertise the company in different social media sites. To reach the desired number of customers, the company may create one sponsored post every month or every two weeks to ensure that the company reaches as many audiences as possible.

The business can hire a social media manager or use internal IT personnel to create posts and monitor them to see the growth in audience and respond to questions and comments from customers. Furthermore, the team of IT experts should prioritize its plan to ensure that the appropriate social media tactics are used to achieve the intended goals and objectives (Charlesworth, 2016).

Key Management Concerns

To implement the social media marketing successfully, the management should provide the necessary support and coordination of activities. The management has to provide sufficient funds to support the social media activities such as sponsoring facebook ads, purchasing new computers and providing internet access. Furthermore, the management has the responsibility to manage change in the IT department to ensure that the company adapts to changes in the business environment, including technological changes.

The management should also coordinate activities and hire the right people to handle social media campaigns. They should identify the knowledge gaps that should be filled in the IT department and hire the right talent to oversee the implementation of the social media strategy (Cader & Tenaiji, 2013). The management should also oversee the activities of each team and communicate regularly to identify the needs of the social media marketing team and respond to such needs responsibly.

Evaluation and Monitoring

The top management is ought to monitor and evaluate the progress of the social media marketing to ensure that the digital marketing goals are achieved. The monitoring and evaluation team should measure the results of the social media marketing regularly to establish the costs and benefits of the process (Fenn, 2010). If the costs exceed the benefits of the social media campaign, the management can suggest an appropriate change strategy to achieve the desired goals. The team can propose a complete overhaul of the digital marketing team and suggest new tactics to correct the problems encountered in the marketing process.

The monitoring and evaluation team may also use feedback from online users to make appropriate changes to the social media marketing strategy. For example, if many customers enquire for more details about a product, the management team can advise the IT department to provide more information about the products and services of the business on the social media text messages, videos and audios.

Part B: Practical Element

The marketing efforts of Skrill include various marketing campaigns in the social media. The company has Facebook and Twitter accounts with informative and persuasive messages intended to promote its services. The company has 18,000 followers on twitter and 628,663 followers on facebook. These accounts inform existing customers about new services. It also informs potential customers about the products and services offered by the company. The posts created in these pages contain videos, audios, texts and links to the company’s website. In this regard, customers are easily directed to the company’s online services through the social media.

Figure 1: Skrill’s Facebook page (Skrill, 2017a)

Figure 2: Skrill’s Twitter Account (Skrill, 2017b)

The two figures above show the company’s twitter and facebook accounts. The posts captured in the screenshots show that the company has informative videos, texts and links to external sites to generate traffic to the company’s online business. Therefore, Skrill has an effective marketing strategy on the social media. However, there are a few areas that the company needs to improve.

On facebook, the company may pay for its promotional posts to reach more users. Furthermore, the company may use better graphics and images to make the facebook page more attractive to users. On twitter, the company needs to do aggressive marketing by posting interesting messages regularly in order to attract more followers. The twitter account currently has a small number of followers, but they can be increased through aggressive marketing and communication strategy.

Conclusion

Social media marketing plays a significant role in digital marketing and overall marketing strategies of any organization. A well planned and successfully implemented social media campaign can attract many customers and increase the customer base of the business. It is also advantageous over traditional marketing strategies because they reach a larger number of audience and are more cost effective. They are also easy and convenient to use for communication with existing and potential customers in order to improve the company’s services and product quality. However, the company has to take key steps to make the social media campaign successful. There should be a proper planning to align the social media marketing goals with the overall goals of the company. The marketing team should also use tactical approaches and create attractive, informative and interesting posts on social media sites to attract more customers and increase the customer base of the company. For example, skrill uses Facebook and twitter to post informative texts, videos and links to company website in order to generate traffic. The company can improve its social media campaign by being more aggressive in marketing and using paid ads on various social media platforms.

References

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Saravanakumar, M., & SuganthaLakshmi, T. (2012). Social media marketing. Life Science Journal, 9(4): 4444-4451.

Skrill (2017a). Facebook Page. [Online]: Available at: https://www.facebook.com/Skrillpayments/posts/687994991226965. [Accessed Sept 15, 2017].

Skrill (2017b). Twitter Account. [Online] Available at: https://twitter.com/skrill?lang=en. [Accessed Sept 15, 2017].

Statistica (2017). Number of social media users worldwide from 2010 to 2021 (in billions). [Online] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/. [Accessed Sept 14, 2017).

Zarrella, D. (2010). The Social Media Marketing Book. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Zimmerman, J., & Ng, D. (2017). Social media marketing all-in-one for dummies. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons.