Marketing plays a very significant role in the organization’s overall success and development. Some of the main marketing activities are advertising, promotions, sales, customer service and relations. It is very important for an organization to market their product or service before and after its introduction from the customer’s perspective. The marketing strategies and functions carried out in order to market the products to the customers and boost its sales, understanding the preferences of the customers must be creative, effective and cost-effective.
The most common form of marketing is through advertising. Creative and effective advertising targeted at the intended customers can boost the sales, and improve the performance and popularity of the organization and can make stronger presence among the customer base. However, with the advancement of technology, internet and social media, they have paved in way for newer, advanced and active marketing.
The popularity of the social networking among the internet users and with the number of people joining and using the social media and networking services to communicate among themselves increasing each day, it has got a lot of attraction from the marketing professionals and has kindled in their thoughts to make use of it for effective, active and result-oriented marketing.
The Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a latest of its kind, in which the social media, sharing and networking sites and platforms are interactively used by the organizations to promote their products and services, by sending across mails, messages (with text, audio, video and other media contents), online ads to the users, and posting the same on online discussion boards, blogs, groups, communities and other online forums.
Some of the social media networks are face book, twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, Blogger, wikis, podcasts etc. In this way, the direct customers are targeted, bringing about a greater awareness of the products and services among the customers. This is an active marketing strategy, in the sense that the customers can give reviews/responses and opinions on the products and services, triggering a row of discussions, conversations and comments from the customers online.
The response information from the users, can be effectively used for better understanding the preferences and choice of the customers and consider them to improvise the products and services, as also the same can be used to develop the business of the organization.
The advantages of the social media marketing are: they directly involve the communication with intended customers, provide information and understanding of customer preferences from which organizations can devise better business strategies, increase its presence and reputation as brand and it is cost-effective.
Though the social media marketing involves greater challenges, innovation and creativity, the power of social media networking and internet along with the effective marketing ideas and approaches can take the businesses to greater heights of success. Its time organizations go online with social media marketing, to promote their products and services, and attract and retain the customer base.