Course: SLF 125 Business Planning and Startup

Reading

What if your "store" is the Internet?
What if your "store" is the Internet?
Credits
Adapted from Marketing, Boundless Business Open Textbook, Chapter 15 Social Media Marketing
www.boundless.com/marketing
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Powerful international brands boast having millions of fans on their social media pages. Small businesses need their fans, also! Many shoppers “shop” first on the Internet, sitting at home or at offices finding out about new opportunities to solve problems, buy new products, use new services, or attend events that support their interests and passions.

Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their own social networks. This is called “viral marketing” because these messages spread.

By repeating the message, the user’s connections are able to see the message, therefore reaching more people. Because of the concept of viral social media, companies frequently use social networking sites to promote products and services via word-of-mouth. As the information about the brand is broadcasted and repeated across the social network, more traffic is brought to the company’s website. This results in earned media rather than paid media (which is a plus for a small business with a small budget).

Social media allow marketers to refine their segmentation strategy by reaching a narrow target audience. For example, some social bookmarkings sites have a user base that is overwhelmingly female, attracting companies that target primarily women. Social networking sites also reveal vast amounts of information to their creators about prospective interest in products and services.

TIP: If you do not feel comfortable in this world of social media, you might consider taking a course at a local community college or find a media company that can assist with this important part of your business.

Social media in business allows anyone and everyone to express and share an opinion or idea somewhere along the company’s path to market. Small locally-based businesses often use social media to transform customer comments and testimonials into relevant and compelling content for personal selling, advertising and other promotional tactics.

Every day new technology offers businesses a way to connect with customers. Quick response (QR) codes, for example, have gained in popularity after first being introduced in European and Asian mobile markets. Acting as a visual hyper-link to a page, QR codes enable users to jump to a mobile optimized offer page. Companies of all sizes recognize the technology as a very powerful tool for initiating consumer engagement at a time when the marketing message is likely triggering an emotional response — the impulse moment — for the potential customer.