Social Media as a Marketing Channel

Mention Facebook or Bebo and many will turn up their nose and say they are simply places where people waste hours on end staying on the same site, browsing pages, day after day. Would this not be what might be called a captive audience! Imagine a website with lots of eyeballs and a huge “stickiness” factor. Imagine being able to market to the same “crowd” day after day, knowing that they will return at particular times and do particular things on the site.  Any marketer who dismisses this is going to lose out on a very profitable market.

But what exactly are Facebook and Bebo? Both are what are known as social networking sites. Or, put more plainly, sites where people can connect and communicate with their friends. It’s about communities, and communication. Note the word communities – it’s about people building and connecting with others.  Demographically Facebook’s participants are aged between 18 – 24 years old however the 35 – 54 year old segments is growing faster according to recent statistics. It gets an estimated monthly traffic of 83 million us citizens.  55% of its users are female.

Bebo is similar but is more targeted to a younger crowd.  Its demographics are as follows:

63% of users are female

The average age of users is in the 12 – 17 years age bracket and the average monthly traffic is about 6.6 million.

The above figures are based on the US sites but as is can be seen there are diverse audiences and lots of traffic going to these sites.

Let’s start marketing…

Ok if you go in with the traditional attitude of “let’s market to this audience” you are doomed. Social media sites are not about marketing, advertising nor selling.  They are about communicating.  They are about sharing information. They are about being very “under the radar” in your techniques.  At the top of this article I used two important words – community and communication. These are the keys to any marketing undertaken on social media sites. People are there to communicate and form, build and share communities and information. They don’t want to be pushed or forced to read a marketing message.

 Target a large retailer, in the US did a very successful Facebook Campaign, where they set up a Facebook page, based around a theme of Dorm Survival Guide aimed at college students.  Within this page they had products for students, recipes and other information.  However, rather than blatantly push their message they brought a community of people together and told them how they could make the best out of a new situation. They knew that people going to college would be lonely and homesick so they used this to their advantage. Remember the power of emotion in your marketing message.

What were key points to note about how Target ran this campaign?

They looked at the demographics and saw the audience they could target

They created a theme around what they wanted to market

They visited Facebook and got acquainted with the audience and what they liked, did not like, and how they communicated, i.e. they even mimicked their language.

They built a community where members could post stories and share information.

Vey little advertising was done on their facebook page, although they did chose to run ads on the Facebook network which went to their page rather than the retail e-commerce site.

However not all companies who have ventured onto the social media space have been successful, as is noted by the cases of Wal-Mart and McDonalds.  Both attempted to create Facebook pages, Wal-Mart to create a similar theme to Targets, and McDonalds to create a page for recruitment.  In both cases the social media public commented on their policies and labour practices and brought a very negative image of the company to the fore.

What must be remembered is that social media is just what it says, a media that is open to all to participate. Remember it’s dominated by people who are not shy to express their opinions, and express they will!  A company is then faced with the decision to close down any kind of feature that allows people to post comments or to allow comments and thus allow people to possibility criticise them.  Herein lies the problem. If the company close down the Facebook page people will then comment on how they censor the truth. This could in turn lead to a lot of negative publicity.

 Of course a clever spin can be put on this as company representatives can use these to gain valuable feedback on how the brand is perceived; and then use this information in further campaigns. Or actively engage with the users.

Before entering the social media space, ask if your brand is suited to it. Even if it is not 100% suited to the market, can it be tailored to the market in order to gain more recognition to a newer audience?  Research the activities of the target market, how they act, what they do, even down to the language they use.  Decide on how you will deal with discussions and forum postings which may get out of hand. 

Although the above information seems very common sense many firms and agencies can sometimes overlook the basic aspects which can either make a campaign a success or failure.

If you’re not quite ready to jump in and create a Facebook community, you can use their advertising. The major advantage of Facebook advertising is that you can tailor your ads to be shown to the exact market you wish to target. For example, Americans aged 24 – 34, interested in Design. If there are no groups of people that fit that demographic Facebook tells you.

Social media is something you need to explore as a marketer/advertiser, however you need to ensure that if you do undertake campaigns you have fully researched your market in every aspect.

Next month we’ll discuss Bebo and how it can be used.