Saturday, 16 June 2012

Part 2. E-Marketing Strategies.- Amplify & Lead

3. Amplify  Once a consumer has decided which product to buy and makes a purchase, companies can use social media to amplify their engagement and foster loyalty.   For example, when Starbucks wanted to increase awareness of its brand, it launched a competition challenging users to be the first to tweet a photograph of one of the new advertising posters that the company had placed in six major US cities, providing winners with a $20 gift card.  This social-media brand advocacy effort delivered a marketing punch that significantly outweighed its budget.  Starbucks said that the effort was “the difference between launching with millions of dollars versus millions of fans.”


4. Lead  Social media can be used to lead consumers toward long-term behavioral changes. In the early stages of the consumer decision journey, this may involve boosting brand awareness by driving Web traffic to content about existing products and services.  Consider the example of when grooming-products group Old Spice introduced its Old Spice Man character to viewers, during the US National Football League’s 2010 Super Bowl.  The company’s ambition was to increase its reach and relevance to both men and women.  The commercial became a phenomenon: starring former player Isaiah Mustafa, it got more than 19 million hits across all platforms, and year-on-year sales for the company’s products jumped by 27 percent within six months.
Marketers also can use social media to generate buzz through product launches, as Ford did in launching its Fiesta vehicle in the United States.

Finally, social media can solicit consumer input after the purchase. Intuit, for example, has its community forums.  Starbucks uses MyStarbucksIdea.com to collect its customers’ views about improving the company’s products and services and then aggregates submitted ideas and prominently displays them on a dedicated Web site. That site groups ideas by product, experience, and involvement; ranks user participation; and shows ideas actively under consideration by the company and those that have been implemented.
Convert knowledge into action  Despite offering numerous opportunities to influence consumers, social media still accounts for less than 1 percent of an average marketing budget when most CEO's should be pushing it to 5% for maximum gain.

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