Social Media is nothing new in Marketing.
Everybody says that social media is the newest form of marketing and must be adopted by businesses in order to be successful, especially as everyone is spending more and more time online these days. But is social media in fact such a new form / style of marketing?
For years, the idea of successful marketing is to deliver the right message about your business and importantly, in the right places in order to be seen by the biggest audiences likely to engage with your brand. In other words, powerful brand awareness delivered to your key target audience. Have we not be doing this for years anyway before social media and the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc have merely been making things easier?
Social media enables us to contain an audience in an active location that we can deliver key messages to at key optimum times. This style of marketing is available in many other forms of marketing too, ie we advertise in the local newspaper which is released at a regular intervals and distributed at known locations to a loyal readership – We used to advertise in the Yellow Pages which again was a household name product which nearly every home had thanks to them being delivered out nationally and consumer awareness was to check them in order to find relevant local businesses. Business networking likewise relies on brand awareness to attract members who gather at known times and locations enabling you to join and share out your business message to – Bill board advertising usually relies on large marketing spaces set out in key locations that holds high levels of consumer passers by allowing for high visibility and brand awareness of the advertising business. Television and radio advertising is the same, these channels have built audiences over the years and are able to sell advertisements at cost.
From the above we see a pattern which is that all forms of marketing really holds the same key to success and value for money for the advertiser who only needs to make the decision as to which style of marketing would give them the best ROI. What social media does hold a unique edge over other forms of marketing is that for the time being, it is free to use and gain success with. You can build your own audiences and own them and deliver your business messages which on other forms of marketing would cost you, ie adv space in newspapers or websites, poster advertising at stations or air time costs on radio and TV.
Social media is the newest type of advertising, but the style and route to success is very similar to what we have been doing for years…
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