The Shift From Print to Social Media

Currently, 93% Of Marketers Apply Social Media For Their Concern And This Number Continues To Grow Slowly

How many of you recall what marketing was like earlier all the TV commercials, the Facebook/Twitter/Instagram posts etc?

I'k sure it took a few seconds to call up your thoughts. If you practise, and then y'all're 1 of the few lucky (or rather unlucky) ones to have witnessed the social media revolution and how it enabled business owners and retailers to take their marketing campaigns to the next level.

So, What Is Marketing?

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as "the action, prepare of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."

There are both internal and external marketing factors which interact with 1 another in whatsoever campaign and impact the overall success. These are

• Pricing
• Product/Service offered
• Place (a.g.a. distribution)
• Promotion

Moreover, in lodge to satisfy predefined organisational objectives and stay ahead of the competition, organisations should anticipate certain wants and needs of its customers and satisfy them better than anyone else in the market place.

How Marketing Evolved Over The Years

Digital marketing has invaded every aspect of our lives. But it developed rather recently. Earlier all the flashy TV commercials and social media ads, there was a different system in existence.

From the 15^th till the twenty^thursday century, print media – comprising of newspapers, magazines, and billboards – was the chief channel of advertising.

The first half of the 20^thursday century saw the emergence of new mediums of advertising viz. radio, television and telephones. The 2nd half of the 20^th century saw Tv ad revenue surpassing radio and magazine advert sales and telemarketing emerging every bit the almost common marketing tactic.

Past the end of the 20^th century, newspaper advertisement revenue was in billions as print advertizement was made easier attributable to the emergence of personal computers and desktops. During the same time, mobile phones gained popularity thereby making SMS marketing possible.

This period also saw the first automated large-calibration commercial utilize of spam east-mails for promotional purposes. Soon, search engines launched by Yahoo (1995), Enquire.com (1997) and Google & MSN (1998) gained popularity every bit the term "search engine optimization" emerged.

The Internet Revolution

In 2000, the net chimera popped and the features of the digital world, which were only available to a select few users became available to the full general public and tech related growth saw an increment of nigh 500% on the NASDAQ index.

Post-obit this, greater emphasis has been placed on piece of cake information sharing & transfer, user-centric design and collaboration thus enabling brands and retailers to engage with the client in new ways ultimately leading to the origin of the term "Social Media Marketing".

The Birth, Growth And Expansion Of Social Media

Some milestones in history when it comes to social media are –

• 1997 – Six Degrees (The globe's first social media site)
• 2002 – LinkedIn
• 2003 – Myspace
• 2004 – Facebook
• 2005 – YouTube
• 2006 – Twitter

Reverse to pop belief, the thought of social media did not originate with Facebook. The idea came to light in the 1970s when e-mails were beginning used for marketing purposes. The world's beginning social media site, called equally "6 Degrees" was launched in 1997 and enabled the users to upload their profile and become friends with other users. The networking sites developed in the 2000s made us look at social networking from a different bending and inverse the manner we approached marketing forever.

Most people are accustomed to traditional forms of marketing considering of their longevity and were a little humble about fully embracing the idea of digital marketing. Simply since traditional marketing only allowed business owners and organizations to target a small audition, they eventually took to the internet for promoting themselves.

Equally social media channels allowed for easy interaction with the audition and gave users the ability to choose how they wished to receive promotional content, the number of agile monthly users grew rapidly.  These channels eventually brought people from unlike geographical regions to one common platform for sharing and exchanging information with one another.

Some other reason why social media witnessed a tremendous expansion in a relatively brusk time span is considering it proved to be cheaper as compared to traditional marketing and offered a improve ROI to investors.

Every bit of 2017, a full of $41 billion have been spent on social media marketing. Some other interesting facts about social media are –

• Number of internet users in the world – iii.8 billion
• Active social media users – 3.02 billion
• Facebook user base of operations – 2.04 billion
• YouTube user base – ane.5 billion
• WhatsApp user base – 1.2 billion

The Downside To Traditional Marketing

There were some inherent shortcomings of traditional marketing which were soon compensated by SMM thus making marketing feasible for all types of businesses, irrespective of their allocated marketing upkeep. Some of them were –

Piffling to no interaction with your audience

In the case of print media, there was negligible contact betwixt the editor and his audition. Impress media was more of a ane-mode advice, where the content creator was acting like an information provider, trying to build a brand reputation.

Very costly

Generally, the cost varies from publication to publication and on the size of your order (flyers, newspaper ads, radio commercial, handouts etc). Depending on the complication of your requirements, design and the set-up process, the cost may skyrocket thereby making such advertisements costly for minor businesses and startups.

Results cannot exist measured

While there are a plethora of tools available online to measure and monitor the various metrics (book, reach, distension, retweets, comments, replies, shares) of SMM campaigns, the same cannot be said about traditional techniques. This ultimately makes it hard to runway the progress and calculate the ROI of a print media campaign.

Difficult to receive feedback from the customers

As there are a select few channels of communication between the author and his audience, it is hard to provide channels for receiving regular and consistent feedback from the readers to measure where the author tin can amend his work or get access to better sources for future articles.

Loftier bounce rates and poor conversion ratio

With traditional marketing mediums, a common problem was the high bounce rates. Unimpressive conversion ratios further added to the worries of marketers, farther making marketing a claiming for them. The conversion was unpredictable as there was no way of measuring how many users noticed the advertisements and wished to engage in business activities with the brand.

Benefits Of Social Media Marketing (SMM)

At present that we've talked about the shortcomings and drawbacks of traditional marketing techniques, let's talk about the advantages of SMM over other forms of marketing.

Information technology is easier to know your audience

SMM has made it adequately easy to know details about your audience by making use of the dissimilar tools available in the market. Moreover, multiple social media login and sharing options accept fabricated it possible to collect data from different social profiles of users to have a ameliorate understanding of their ownership behavior thus allowing yous to develop targeted ads.

 Audition targeting made possible

Every bit gathering information about users has been made like shooting fish in a barrel, we can now quickly know about the likes, dislikes, interests, and hobbies of users with just a few clicks. This allows yous to devise marketing campaigns specifically tailored for your target audience to ensure high conversion rates as your ads will be inclined to the users' interests.

Increased exposure

Equally compared to print media, where your reach is limited by geographical or budgetary restrictions, SMM allows you to reach out to almost everyone with an cyberspace connection. The all-time example of a platform with worldwide exposure is Facebook, which has managed to bring more than ii billion users together, assuasive them to share content with one some other.

Cost efficient

We already know that distribution of impress media is a costly matter and somewhere down the line, you volition face financial troubles. But with SMM, the scenario is different equally you only need an internet connection to publish and share data as most social media sites do not charge the users any money for sharing content. Also, ad and PPC campaigns cost a lot less than splurging on traditional marketing channels.

Developing a solid fan base of operations of loyal customers

SMM has enabled brands to publish content created past them beyond different channels and interact with their customers and fans on a regular footing. The customers follow accounts of their favorite brands to go the latest updates and receive promotional news and coupons.

 Establishing potency in the online domain

When brands postal service the latest news, updates and industry insights across unlike social media channels ofttimes and before anyone else, the users showtime seeing the brand's accounts as the "go-to" destination for latest factually correct news. This gives credibility to the brand and helps institute a commanding authority in their corresponding domains. A good online reputation also helps directs traffic and increase a brand's sales.

Quick feedback and customer service

Feeling neglected and disrespected is one of the primary reasons why customers switch brands while making transactions. SMM has revolutionized customer back up as a user can connect with the staff at whatever time of the 24-hour interval from anywhere. Brands tin now offering personalized support to their customers and improve customer retentivity rates by making their customers feel valued.

Community building

This has to be ane of the nearly pristine advantages of SMM over traditional marketing. It fosters a sense of belonging when following social media accounts of diverse brands and increases the overall appointment offered to users. A solid community also acts every bit social proof while pitching to other users. Somewhen, the community becomes self-sustaining and doesn't crave much effort from the moderator/admin for initiating posts and other activities.

Sharing (content) is much faster

Sharing print media content with others was a challenging chore as one had to physically take the piece of content to show others or send information technology via post to their friends and (or) families thus spending unnecessarily for the purpose of sharing.

Since social media channels practise not charge the users any fee for posting and sharing content, SMM is favorable to users and retailers with a tight budget. Cross-channel posting has even made it easier to reach out to different audiences and direct traffic to your website with but a few clicks.

 Easy measurement of ROI

SMM has immune for like shooting fish in a barrel measurement of ROI for all your campaigns by giving solid figures of different metrics such equally customer acquisition, pb generation, clicks, acquirement, contest entries, etc. depending on your goals and helps you choose the best platform for maximum ROI. Based on these results, you can and so make the required changes and improvise your approach towards targeting your customers.

Social Media Marketing Has Become A "Need"

Considering the benefits of SMM over the traditional approach, it was just a matter of fourth dimension earlier people all over the world got involved with SMM. The " Social Media Revolution " which print media brands feared was correct effectually the corner and it soon became unavoidable.

Currently, 93% of marketers utilize social media for their concern and this number continues to grow slowly. The increasing number of active monthly users of different social networks and the amount of time spent daily by an average person on such sites has made SMM not merely the best fashion to reach out to customers, but also a "necessity" equally many claim that print media is slowly losing its significance. Moreover, in the globe of e-commerce, where almost all the users are a few clicks abroad, you need to come up with new and artistic ways to concenter your audience and piece of work towards keeping them engaged with your make.

Social media also plays a crucial role in helping users research, detect and share information almost brands, products and services. Studies accept shown that threescore% of all users looking for products/services through several online sources came to know well-nigh a particular brand or service provider through social networking sites.

We all know that in today'south digital world, where information is readily bachelor to the customers (thanks to Google), it is of import to focus on your brand's presence and maintain & build an online reputation which is inclined with the interests of your customers.

The one thing brands owe SMM is that personalized client support tin be provided to the customers at all times. Nowadays, instead of being put on concord or chatting with the customer intendance executives for long hours, users can simply post a complaint on the social media pages of a brand/service provider and receive quick reverts, which make the client feel valued and cared for ultimately compelling him/her to continue doing business with the brand.

Referral traffic has emerged equally one of the most apparent sources of business organisation for brands has been made possible by SMM equally discussion-of-mouth references brand it piece of cake for users to trust the experiences and reviews of their friends and colleagues.

The Situation Today

In uncomplicated terms, the situation today is such that a person sitting in Guatemala, a Central American land (for those like me who are non too potent on world Geography) can read the reviews/ideas of someone halfway across the world in India or shop from the website of leading Italian fashion brands such equally Gucci, Prada, Armani etc.

Simply on a serious notation, with 94% of all marketers are using SMM in some form or the other, social media advert is steadily growing at a rate of twenty% annually and the total spending will cross the $fifty Bn mark past 2019.

Another trend gaining popularity is the want of users to human action equally brand ambassadors and advocate for their favorite brands through social media. Capitalising on this opportunity, brands are aggressively recruiting their fans, account followers and other users to spread recommendations and reviews about their products and services. Consumers who do write, share and comment on production reviews online claim that they share their experiences to tell others most how well a company did their job and to receive loyalty rewards by the company.

Social media users are also showing a groovy interest in cooperating and working together with their favorite brands. 60% of 18-34-year-olds say that they will happily work with brands and desire to requite recommendations to improve and customize the production.

Brands have even started offering incentives for the users to refer the brand to new users. It is a mutually beneficial relationship as the brand gathers a large presence and the customers are offered cheaper prices for the products/services offered.

In Decision

Gone are those days when marketing was all most hard selling and improving the sales figures. SMM has started focusing on building relationships with users (potential customers) and helping them solve their problems. The number of relationships you lot build is straight proportional to the trust your customers volition place in yous.

SMM has achieved this past keeping all channels of communication betwixt the customer and the brand open & accessible 24×7, something print media could never achieve in all its years of being.

Though SMM has completely revolutionised marketing, some retailers continue to employ traditional methods and are yet to fully take the paradigm shift to the digital globe. Though information technology is tough to say whether traditional methods will survive the change, we can be certain that SMM is here to stay and will encapsulate the globe in the coming years.

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