Technical Communication
Social networks sites have attracted interest of most goods and services marketers, for the reason that there are quite a couple of benefits for a firm that invests in the systems. Social-Interactive and online marketing is quickly gaining focus and is thus gaining good publicity among most contemporary marketing strategies.
The amount of sales in this form of marketing is often the unit for measuring performance. The huge number of socials sites users makes the strategy a preference, therefore, the increase on amount of transactions generated through social networks marketing. This is attributable to the capability and effectiveness of the social sites (Plummer et al, p.33).
Challenges of Social Network Marketing
Information security is the biggest challenge this firms faces because as technology advances, the ability to cope effectively with today’s security threats in social sites such as web hacking to steal consumer identity, and other internet disruptions also incarcerates the freedom of usage.
Virtual networks or social networks marketing face insecurity-related complexities and slowness in progression because clients are keener to clarify viability before venturing into any form of transaction. Risks involved in virtual transactions or commitments causes a huge threat especially to vibrant sites such as Face-book, MySpace, twitter, linked-In or emails servers, since they necessitate submission of personal information.
Before investing in social networks marketing, it is important for any firm to consider incorporation of proper information security strategies. In order to have effective business alliances there is need for security of Information.
There are possible instances of insecurity, for instance recent Google and Yahoo security attacks in China. This requires major investments on security measures in protection of such risks including loss of patent laws, compromised integrity or loss of data and change of personal information by malicious people or fraudsters.
The future of marketing through social network sites requires great support from government regulations and business policies or requirements. There is urgent need to quantify the sites’ information security as a competitive advantage. Regulations also make the customers to feel comfortable transacting in such firms and provide a legal platform in case of violations.
Costs and Benefits of Social Networks to Marketers
According to (Wimmer and Dominick, p.33), social networks are generating a lot of enthusiasm among majority of internet users, especially the youth and interaction procedures are equally advancing at a very high rate.
Today, marketing firms engage in this interactive form of advertisement to meet customers’ needs, market new products as well as ensure constant business growth. Leisure is a strong advantage to the advertisers since they are able to find and capture attention of most people easily; particularly those who are better off financially and have the will to spend.
Social networks marketing also offer remarkable easiness of client participation through interactive marketing. Most firms prefer such form of networked marketing, since there are high rates for diversification. Marketers are able to adjust quickly to the market conditions and are in a position of easily building relationship with clients through easy procedures at lowest cost possible.
Some of the benefits to the customer include convenience, ability to gain extensive information and direct or online engagement with suppliers means few or no strain associable to need for persuasion during trade.
Social network sites are able to provide data that relate to a company’s decision to venture into a certain market. The sites also provide chances for diversification of the market niche and profitable opportunities for marketing both internationally and locally.
By viewing the interactions, profiles and comments, the marketers are able to note significant aspects of the market such as local and international purchasing powers thus engage strategies that would elevate sales (Cooper et al, p.104). Today, the advertisement or marketing trends have changed from the physical seller to buyer interaction to the automated social advertising trends (Cooper et al, p.104).
Vibrant advertising is crucial in the efforts to get in touch with customers. This is the reason why face-to-face advertisement has been very effective as a concrete reference measure since as time in history. Social sites such as facebook or twitter have become the current modernized word of mouth.
Most social sites users share the purchasing experience with close friends or family members. The friendly advice on either the good and bad aspects of a product is a measure of protecting each other from unfavourable products or exploitations, but eventually adds up as a marketing tool. The procedure of informing each other within the social forums helps the business to grow. It is equally a fast way of marketing new and reliable products, since people recommend them during normal interactions in the social sites.
The benefits of social-sites marketing strategies are wide, but having a few advertisement aspects or pages on social sites is an excellent strategy for enhancing sales. The firms also need to invest heavily on security since the possibility of gaining unsavoury reputation is easy due to promotions that lack proper branding.
The main drive behind use of social sites advertising ought to be achievement of business growth (Cooper et al, p.107). Beside the fun involved, one of the many benefits for marketing through in social sites for the company would be to garner popularity. The strategy has to attract attention in relation to products or services. Social sites enable the marketer to customize information and capture the attention of specific category of audience.
The marketer is also able to divert from the common advertisement strategies and build relationship with potential clients or give extra information to market the company as a whole. When the readers know more about the company, they gunner confidence, trust and embrace the opportunity to know more. Making the company’s sites interactive attracts the attention of potential clients every time they are online, because they confidently enjoy any new posting of new models.
A company that advertises on social sites also benefits from the ability to form a forum of friends, and use social network pages to add new friends to the social forum. Attractive marketing article and new information provides an attractive feature for most people, this means that the company is able to capture more and maintain potential clients as social friends easily.
The ability to use the social sites in providing clients with links to more information about the company is equally an advantage of using the social pages. Persuasive and encouraging marketing strategies are additional and easy strategies to utilize in social sites or pages. Companies are able to avail the latest information about the business and bolster the list of amazing friends, who will equally act as marketing entities for this style of social marketing strategy (O’Guinn et al, p.18).
Potential Clients and Products for Social Network Marketing
The internet mainly captures attention of the young and middle-aged potential clients, who are dynamic and thus open-minded to capture any new ideas available from the virtual world.
There is a significant increase on the number of people using the internet. According to Wimmer and Dominick (p.33), most people have access to the internet today either at schools, social centres, cyber cafes or at the comfort of their homes or offices and are hence potential clients.
Most of the common or more appropriate products for online trade include books, computers, software, computer accessories, gifts, food products and cars. Merchandises like cars and the spares are often not available for consumers within the local markets.
The online purchasing provides ease of purchase, convenience, facility to compare product lines, ability to compare prices and easy way of paying (Wimmer and Dominick, p.34). It is therefore easy to capture attention of potential client through the social sites as opposed to other forms of advertising. This is a clear indication that companies are able to realize better returns due to low marketing costs and more sales.
Social Network Populace
A firm is able to enhance growth of the number of potential clients enormously by having advertisement pages on social network sites. Currently, social network sites are the favourite social networking forums, thus the best preference for marketers.
The procedure of using social network sites pages to market products and services has to take the natural style meant for social sites, which is to reveal the business through building relationships. Today, social network sites have over 200 million global users, thus the reason why this is an appealing market niche (O’Guinn et al, p.18).
Already thousands of marketers in different fields use social network sites pages for their marketing reasons, but majority of them are amateurish Junk-mails distributors. Such kind of informal advertising and over commercialization is prone to affect usage in future, for instance if one keeps on finding interrupting adverts. The meaning of social sites face compromise and therefore people with a main aim of connecting to friends, associates and families will pull back from usage.
Conclusion
As good marketer, aims at using the latest and widely embraced technology, to capture attention of the audience into their profiles. This step assists potential clients to learn and relate to the firm. People interested in social sites have interest in finding background information of the company beside the products. There is equally a need to search for categories or marketing groups or environments that portray general interests.
Social sites also provide groupings of people with similar fields of interest where it is easy to share knowledge and new content regarding latest or particular products or services, for instance women are generally interested in beauty products and share various similarities. This means that it is easy for a marketing firm to capture large attention easily. It is also possible to share content among friends who maybe potential clients.
These strategies assist in reaching almost the entire network of millions of subscribers within the shortest time possible. Unless marketers are able to maintain socialization and creation of social groups as the main purpose of social sites, majority of their advertising strategies will compromise the sites and prevent people from frequent access, since they will aim at avoiding the interruptions.
Works Cited
Cooper, Scott. Grutzner, Fritz and Cooper Birk. Tips and Traps for Marketing Your Business. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Inc. 2008.
Plummer, Joe. Rappaport, Steve. & Hall, Teddy. The online advertising playbook: proven strategies and tested tactics from the advertising research foundation. New Jersey, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2007.
O’Guinn, Thomas. Allen, Chris. & Semenik, Richard. Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion. Ohio, OH: Southwestern Cengage Learning publishers. 2008.
Wimmer, Roger. & Dominick, Joseph. Mass media research: an introduction. Kentucky, KY: Cengage Learning, 2005.