As marketers, we must find a way to capitalize on the
opportunity that social media provides.
It’s not enough to just communicate with potential consumers and hope
they happen to click to your brand, like it, and interact with it. We sometimes look at social media as
something that is connecting people around the world to our brand but we have
to look deeper than that. Social media
is connecting consumers with people in their own communities and personal
spheres. It is through interacting with
other individuals talking about your company that consumers will engage,
search, and find the specific brands and products that will be the best fit for
them.
The New Marketer
Traditional avenues of communications and advertising are
important in attracting attention and brand resonance but social media has
added a new wrinkle to the communication mix.
Powerful tools of communication are in the hands of the public now and
they can at once hurt and help your brand in an instant, depending on their own
personal experiences with it. The power
of word-of-mouth is hundred times more potent and powerful in this digital
age. “Social media has evolved from a
mere post it-answer it model…to instantaneous publish-subscribe models,”
providing an instantaneous call and response to an individual’s followers
regarding what to purchase and where to purchase. An excellent example of this kind of
connection between consumers is when an individual “stands in front of a
refrigerator in a store and check out reviews of that model; the consumer can
Twitter his network to get advice on all models, this brand, and this store
instantaneously…buying hesitancy is removed and the purchase takes place.” (Qualman, 2013, p. 83)
This is an extreme example but illustrates a great
opportunity for marketers and companies to track how people are discussing the
brand and allows them the ability to interject and take part in that
conversation. Word-of-mouth has always
been an important tool that marketers were never able to take full advantage of
until now. Word-of-mouth now exists in
the digital realm and happens in an instant.
Marketers can now physically watch and interact as it happens and
spreads. This video shows one small company,
without the resources of a major corporation, finding great success in
connecting with the word-of-mouth conversation already happening around the
subject of wine.
Jared & Subway
So how can marketers take advantage of these conversations occurring
without them? Like the people at the
Wine Library, they can jump into that conversation, searching for where people
are talking about their product and comment and interact with consumers. Subway is a major example of a company that
nearly missed the boat on an opportunity where people were already talking
about their sandwiches.
Jared’s Subway weight loss story was a major marketing win
for the company. His story presents the
sandwich maker and its low-fat sandwiches in a positive light. Since Jared started as a Subway spokesman,
sales have grown at an incredible rate.
However, when the Jared idea was first introduced to the company, Subway
rejected the entire idea behind it.
Jared was someone who “was an avid user of [Subway’s] product and
service” that the company dismissed out of hand. However, once they turned around on the idea,
the company found unprecedented success.
Subway’s Jared experience, though not taking place through
social media, demonstrates a great overall lesson that is vital we learn as
marketers in this new digital age.
Essentially, companies “need to be comfortable in knowing that not
everything related to the brand will be owned by them; their customers will
take ownership.” (Qualman, 2013, p. 85) Conversations about their products and brands
are already happening on the Web and will continue to happen with or without
their input. Marketers need to watch
this conversation happen and help guide it towards a positive view of the company
and/or brand in order to achieve success.
How can businesses use social media to steer the
conversation? Great, immediate customer
service over Twitter and commenting on blogs is a great way to increase their
own interaction with consumers talking about their brand. But how else can companies interject
themselves into conversations already happening in regards to their company/brand?
Works Cited
Qualman, E. (2013). Socialnomics: How Social Media
Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc.
