Are you using all the means available to help to endorse your business? If you have a website and a web presence, there are many tools at your disposal to take you to where your customers are when they are not in your store. Do not have a “brick and mortar”? Then you may utilize devices that are able to drive customers to your “digital” door.
Think of digital and social media as your guerilla marketing arsenal (Anonymous 2010). These vehicles provide a low-cost form of marketing with potentially massive head-turning impact. As you are undoubtedly aware and as Zahorsky (2010) reports, not every company has $2 million to spend on an advertising campaign. But they are more likely to have $50,000 to spend on an internet sweepstakes. Internet marketing through social media allows firms to directly interact with customers.
Raab (2010) does warn that currently there is not a reliable way to analyze the enormous amounts of data that is gleaned from online marketing efforts. At least when it is compared with data compiled and analyzed through traditional media research methods. He does indicate that social media is not simply able to link to individuals, but consumers can be identified to the source where the message was seen. Consumers are also able to be identified by member profiles and groups. Knowing this, a business can more easily determine the most effective sources.
Cookies are another benefit to using internet marketing. Not milk and cookies type of cookies. Cookies are a primary means of tagging consumers (Raab 2010). Here is a neat example to the beneficial nature of cookies. For instance, a cookie is able to show an ad with a discount coupon to a previous customer to a website where the customer discarded the “shopping cart”. This is significant because even though the specific customer cannot be identified, they can be identified to a marking segment. The consumer remains a valid potential customer. Therefore, this customer could be sent further marketing messages.
Twitter is another excellent social media option. Twitter has the potential to be an incredible long-term marketing mix addition that has some real benefits. Just like Facebook, your company can acquire a great number of followers through the use of Twitter. You can slowly attract people to follow your company by placing web posts on Twitter and Facebook. Your posts need not sell anything. The helpful information in your firm’s tweets (posts) is useful in associating your company as the provider of beneficial information consumers can use.
Twitter can be a very valuable asset in your marketing arsenal. Tweets as Twitter messages are referred, can measure how much traffic a message generates and has the ability to identify the members of the sender’s social network. These messages can be tracked from consumer to consumer. Raab (2010) says if a company combines mobile, on-location and social media, a rich amount of information is provided concerning consumer behaviors. This factor (Raab 2010) provides direct opportunities to deliver highly targeted messages.
Maybe you implement a similar strategy as Royal Bank America in Pennsylvania (Cocheo 2009). Royal Bank built a special website, www.spurtheeconomy.com. Royal Bank was very strategic in employing the spur and the cowboy motif on the website to support the bank’s branding efforts. The purpose for the site is to stimulate economic activity by offering the bank’s four products. This strategy is targeted to small businesses. In addition, Royal Bank America’s Twitter page drives customers to the website. The bank utilizes Twitter’s strength of interactivity. Customer’s leave comments and pass these messages onto other people in their network. The bank’s Twitter page sends customers related messages and helps improve the bank’s online visibility. The long-term marketing benefit is derived from Twitter being used as a passive marketing tool by sending on helpful information and focusing on interesting local businesses.
References
Anonymous. (2010 November), You Tube leads the way in guerilla marketing By Mia Vaundry from Exceler8 Business Coaching. [1 page] The Morning Bulletin. Available: http://proquest.umi.com
Anthony, R. (2008 October), Technology for Small Business. [3 pages] Network Journal. Available: http://proquest.umi.com
Cocheo, S. (2009 September), Billboards, web, Twitter spearhead bank’s comeback. [5 pages] ABA Banking Journal. Available: http://proquest.umi.com
Leary, B. (2007 April), Widen Your Customer Pool. [2 pages] Network Journal. Available: http://proquest.umi.com
Raab, D. (2010 April), Marketing Systems for Online media; If a single common problem threatens the outbound campaign systems, it’s the need to handle unstructured data. [2 pages] Information Management. Available: http://proquest.umi.com
Raab, D. (2010 May), Bridging the Gap Between Online and database Marketing; Centralizing information is valuable even when it cannot be tied to a specific individual. [2 pages] Information Management. Available: http://proquest.umi.com
Raab, D. (2010 July), Autonomous Marketing messages; Messages that can track their own movement provide important insights into the connection between messages sent and resulting customer behavior. [2 pages] Information Management. Available: http://proquest.umi.com
Zahorsky, R. (2010 February), Tweet Deals. [2 pages] ABA Journal. Available: http://proquest.umi.comTweet
