Strengths and Weaknesses of Social Media platforms.

Social media marketing has its strengths and weaknesses but overall, it’s a strong force within digital marketing and it allows for products to become viral through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Advantages and disadvantages will be bullet pointed below.

Strengths of Facebook:

·         Companies and businesses can create brand awareness through Facebook, by having a large enough presence and activity through a Facebook page can gain exposure to consumers

·         Customer feedback is a great advantage as businesses can review reviews left by customers by leaving a written review and also, companies can directly come in contact with their consumers through Facebook Messenger which is a great asset to Facebook

·         Through Facebook, you can advertise directly to the type of targeted audience that your product or service will suit best, for example, what gender, age, hair colour, geographical region etc.

·         Through Facebook, companies can improve their SEOs. Many tools can be easily added to your website, in result, you will be able to publish any content on Facebook from your website.

Weaknesses of Facebook:

• ·         For businesses, Facebook can be very time consuming on a day to day basis. Having a larger company requires responding to frequently asked questions, handling negative feedback accordingly and overall, maintaining a positive reputation. If a Facebook page becomes out of hand, it can result in a negative impact in the company.
• ·         To manage a Facebook page, especially for larger companies, a staff member may be required. It is important that they have the right skills, or else they might not be able to respond to negative feedback very effectively.
• ·         Creating a Facebook page, can be slow and frustrating, with growing a large following can take years. Often companies have to run competitions, often requiring consumers to “like, comment and share” to gain exposure to a wider audience.
• ·         Subscriptions on a Facebook page can prove to be difficult for a business. If a consumer isn’t happy with the content posted on the page, they can easily unsubscribe from your page, which results in a difficulty in trying to measure how many people are viewing your feeds.

Rich Media: Strengths and Weaknesses

Rich media is a type of advertising that solely uses advanced technology such as video streaming, video clips, flash games, that allow businesses to interact with their audience through digital media.

Strengths of Rich Media:

• ·         Rich media has a high interaction rate with their audience as through rich media, companies can include videos and live streaming, which in turn can result in audiences being able to interact with the ads more, and result in brands improving their companies.
• ·        Rich media allows for the growing of social media platforms as companies are not restricted to only being able to link to one social media platform.
• ·        With rich media, businesses can create any sort of campaign to scale depending on their needs and on their budget all the while having a substantial impact on the market.
• ·        By advertising with rich media, there are definite higher performance levels in comparison to standard non-rich media ads. Figures show that the average click through rates are five times higher than click though rates for non-rich media ads.

Weaknesses of Rich Media:

• ·        Rich media ads have a tendency to be more expensive than regular ads as they are quite difficult to create
• ·        Many of the files for rich media are quite large and can often slow down the browsing you do on a particular website. They often take quite a bit of time to download.
• ·        Unfortunately, when viewing videos online, there is a lot of ad avoidance. Many viewers want to skip the ads after five seconds and many don’t pay attention. As rich media ads are quite expensive, this can be a blow to your campaign.

Strengths and weaknesses of Twitter:

Strengths

• ·         The length of Twitter messages are easy to use for companies. They are short, clear and concise. The fact they are 140 characters makes it easy to do this. Because of this, marketing on Twitter is easy to gain exposure without spending all day writing a piece.
•      Twitter allows businesses to lower their marketing expenses. To set up a page it costs no amount of money. Companies can advertise on Twitter for a much cheaper price and will reach 1000 times more people in a short space of time.

•          On Twitter, not everybody is going to like your page and retweet your tweets, but if you build enough of a following, you can reach a much more targeted audience depending on consumer’s interest in your product or service.

•  ·         Using Twitter for marketing is very effective as you can reach your businesses main promoters directly and they can connect with you.

Weaknesses of Twitter

• ·         There is a possibility that a staff member can be put in charge of your businesses Twitter page which can lead to negative feedback from consumers and disappointing marketing campaigns depending on their skills.
• ·         Unlike Facebook, Twitter requires fast responses as a tweet has a greater chance of becoming viral at a more rapid pace, if complaints aren’t responded to quick enough, a negative effect come upon your business.
• ·         Hacks on Twitter are a definite trend. If you are not careful in securing your page, hackers could potentially damage your brand reputation, dependent on what they write.
• ·         As there are so many tweets tweeted at the same time, your tweet could be missed if it does not grab the attention of your audience.
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Digital Marketing Strategies: Campaigns and Examples.

 Within digital marketing campaigns, companies can use a number of digital strategies to aid the success of a campaign. As social media and viral marketing is ever growing, companies can use social media marketing to use with a campaign. For a number of successful campaigns in 2017, a social media platform was used in conjunction with the campaign. A company will often use Facebook to post adverts or Instagram to post a picture with a hashtag. This spreads the awareness of the campaign as it has the tendency to go viral.

Storytelling can also be an effective digital marketing strategy. Often, consumers want to know more about a brand and what they stand for. A story has the ability to communicate the brands message with its customers. If done correctly, a story can evoke compassion, while also addressing customer needs.

For certain types of companies, particularly beauty and fashion brands, will use online PR to promote their products. Often companies will send an influencer on YouTube or Instagram a foundation or a pair of shoes etc., and will pay them to sponsor their product on their posts. This can be very effective for their campaigns as there are many influencers with substantial followings that can have a huge impact on the sales of a product. 

Often there have been times when a popular YouTuber has recommended a product and that said product can result in being sold out in stores, e.g. the Tarte Shape Tape concealer was a prime example of this.

1.     One example demonstrated this year was made by Heineken. Their “Open Your World” campaign was one of the most influential social campaigns of 2017. Heineken set out to achieve what the Pepsi Ad failed to do. This campaign used political differences and extracted the humanity from behind them.

The campaign involved people from all political sides, e.g. Feminists, climate change activists etc., and put them into team building activities, with a set of questions to ask one another. After the team building activities, both people in their duos revealed their political outlooks. The duos then both had a Heineken and debated over their differences. During the campaign, Facebook was used predominately as their social platform. The campaign was a success as in only days after its release, the YouTube video was viewed 3 million views and 50,000 shares in the first month.

2.      Another example was H&M’s “come together” was successfully completed by the retailer at Christmas of 2016. The campaign was hailed as the UK’s most successful Christmas advert of 2016 with approximately over 5 million views on YouTube.

This campaign proved that genuine creativity can create something innovative and effective without having to use elaborate technology trends. H&M hailed one of the top Hollywood directors, Wes Anderson to shoot an advert alongside one of the stars of his movies, Adrian Brody. By directing this campaign in the style of Wes Anderson’s films, a connection with consumers was instantly made. 

Through this campaign, H&M were able to stand out in comparison to other adverts of the year, by hiring a top Hollywood director and enabling him to have free will over the campaign rather than sticking to brand suggestions. This campaign was a huge success in 2016 as it crushed the competition for Christmas adverts.

3.     “Lidl Surprises” again was an innovative campaign that combined both digital marketing and traditional marketing to deliver a campaign that tackled consumer’s needs and concerns head on and managed to satisfy them.

Within this campaign, Lidl had one task only, which was to ensure customers had no worries as to where the food stocked by Lidl was local and fresh. To do this they didn’t create loose tag lines that sound appealing in terms of advertising but didn’t mean anything to any regular consumer. Instead of this, they publicized negative criticism they received and posted it to social media. 

Lidl eased consumer’s fears of where their produce came from by unveiling to them where the source of it was. As a result, Lidl managed with honesty and good intentions showed suspicious customer’s that they don’t need to worry about the produce that Lidl stock on their shelves. The campaign was a massive success for Lidl as using both social media and TV enhanced the overall customer satisfaction by ceasing their worries. Lidl managed to step out of the traditional marketing strategies and outdoing their competition.

4.     In 2017, Gucci produced an innovative campaign dubbed as “humour” that incorporated current social media trends in order to target a specific demographic. Within this campaign, Gucci aimed to target a particularly younger generation, who wouldn’t be able to afford their products just yet, in order to increase their brand awareness.

The campaign centered on Instagram with the aid of a microsite to provide supplementary information. Primarily the campaign was based on the hashtag #TFWGucci (That feeling when Gucci) which was created around the popular phrase from social media “That feeling when” which was then accompanied by a humorous image that was linked back to a Gucci Product. By mimicking already created memes, Gucci had the ability to explore a popular social media trend and in turn target younger audiences to raise brand awareness. 

The photos on Instagram accumulated over 2 million likes and 21 thousand comments. As a result, this campaign proved to be a success as Gucci were able to improve their brand awareness and improved their social media platform.

The SOSTAC Model Explained

Q1. The SOSTAC model was formed in the 1990’s to aid with marketing planning by PR Smith. This marketing model has six stages on how to create a successful marketing plan. They include, Situation, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Action and Control. SOSTAC, as a marketing model is easy to follow and explains key struggles when creating a marketing plan.

Situation Analysis

Situation lays out the framework for any business marketing plan. It is recommended for businesses to use situation analysis to allow for an outline of their business be known, what their business entails, who exactly they are and how they intercommunicate.

Within situation analysis, a business should consider where their company is standing. It is recommended that a business follow certain guidelines. 1. A SWOT analysis, what the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the company are. 2. A competitor analysis, who your competition are and how do they compete in certain areas e.g. price, product and service. 3. Consider who your online consumers are and how do they react to your product and/or service? Does their demographic region increase/decrease sales? 4. Assess your digital channels. What channels are working and how are they effective for your business?

A SWOT analysis can be quite effective for your business as it highlights both the problems that are current and present in your company, while also it can enable improvements to be made in all departments, not just digital areas. A SWOT test can be efficient to gain customer feedback, specifically in retail.

Objectives

In Situation analysis, we asked the question of where are we now. The objectives centre on the question of where do we want to be? A company should focus on two methods of creating measurable and efficient goals. 

The first set of goals entail the 5S’s. Sell, Serve, Speak, Save and Sizzle. It is important for a company to make their goals to make their goals measurable. The 5S’s enable a company to create goals that achieve this. Once measurable goals are produced, it is recommended that those goals should be converted to SMART objectives.

In the sell area, a company needs to look at how they make the most profits, and how they can improve on the appearance of their product or service to increase their sales.

The serve area is one of the most important as it sets the tone for your business. How you look after a customer is what sets you apart from your competitors. The more you take into consideration a customer’s satisfaction, the increase of brand loyalty and awareness will rise.

A product or service in the market that a company produces has to sizzle. If you produce a product or service that it subpar in comparison to your competitors, it won’t withstand for long on the market.

To speak to a customer is a very important factor. By doing this, you are informing them about your products which in turn leads to brand awareness. A customer will have the ability to voice opinions and debate.

Budgeting and saving money in digital marketing is crucial as wasting money is a huge possibility. A budget is needed to ensure that money is spent in the right areas.

Your goals have to be SMART. Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Time Related.

It is crucial for your objectives to be specific. A company has to create goals that are specific to a particular issue within the company.

Can they be recorded through traditional quantitative and qualitative methods such as surveys and questionnaires?

Can your objectives improve the overall running of the business?

Are the objectives related to the issue at hand within the digital marketing department?

Is there a reasonable time frame to achieve what the company has set out to do?

Strategy

Strategy looks at how the company will get to the place where their objectives set out to do. In order to fulfill this, an acronym called STOP and SIT is used. This involves; segments, target market, objective, positioning (OVP). SIT uses; sequence, integration and targeting and segmentation. A company must ask how they are going fulfill their objectives.

Segmentation: A company must decide who they are going to market their product to. You should state whether or not you are going to segment your market by either geographic, demographic or even behavioral. Each group should have similar needs and wants.

Target Market: you must decide who your target market is, following the segmentation of your market. Is your product going to target and older or younger audience?

Objective: Base your strategy off your objectives. When creating a strategy it is important to keep your objectives in mind as you ultimately want to achieve these goals within a specific time period.

Positioning: The question a company should ask is how do we want to be perceived in each different target segment? Positioning includes how a brand takes their position against their competition brands.

Sequence: The sequence that is recommended to follow is Trust, Try. In a digital marketing company, sequencing is important as it allows for customers to feel as though the information being provided to them can be trusted, and also where the source came from.

Integration: Integration involves a company combining all their data base they have on their customer relation management. This can include their company’s website, email marketing, telephone lines and customer satisfaction surveys. Integrating their information allows a company to evaluate their data bases and can provide solutions on how to improve them.

Segmentation: It is important to segment your market based off the product a company is planning to sell. Dependent on the product, it could benefit the business by targeting to a younger audience in a specific region. A company should segment their target market based on the geographical, demographical or consumer behaviours.

Tactics

Tactics entails how exactly do we get there? While in strategy we ask how we get there, tactics involve how to get there exactly.

Within the tactics strategy, a company needs to think about their product and how they are going to market it effectively to meet your objectives. It is recommended that they use the 7 P’s of the marketing mix to focus on key areas.

What is your product, and is there a justification on why it is on the market alongside competitors? Is the price suitable dependent on what your product entails? From where it’s sold, is it there an effective reach for customers globally, or are there restrictions? To promote your product do you have sufficient advertising to sell it to consumers?

A company can promote a product efficiently in a number of ways digitally. Email marketing can boost your sales and increase profit by sending emails based on customers buying habits which can influence their decision to repurchase, while also offering promotions to tempt a customer.

Ensure your company can provide positive customer service, as it improves the overall rating of your product. Consumers will have common questions about delivery of the product, returns policies, etc.

When a consumer purchases your product, create a checkout process that is easy and efficient to complete. Basic details should be provided such as a name and address along with a post code. Card details should be filled out next to complete the purchase.

Actions

Actions bring to life your objectives and plans. It provides who does what jobs and when. It allows a company to start pursuing the action that was set into place. This is the stage that incorporates what tasks need to be fulfilled.

Within each stage of a company’s campaign, there are responsibilities that need to be covered. Information about responsibilities need to be tackled if any of the tasks are to be completed.

In this stage, a company must tackle weather they are going to use internal staff or external agencies.

Key questions should be considered based on what tactics are being carried out. For SEO’s, what keywords should a company be using. From there, a company should use those keywords to enhance their websites and increase their overall rankings.

Another example of a tactic can be PPC (Pay per Click). Are keywords that a company is using effective to enhance their target market, is the planed budget sufficient?

The overall actions a company makes will effect whether or not a marketing campaign will be carried out efficiently. A company must plan their tactics with the result they want to achieve at the end.

Control

Control is the final stage of SOSTAC. We can ask the question of how we know that we are getting there.  This stage is based on how a company will consistently track their campaign based off their objectives that were created in stage 2.

 Companies can do this by continuing to monitor their Sell, Serve, Sizzle, and Speak and save tactics. It is important to include usability testing. Constantly seeking out problems or issues that arose through the website should be monitored and tackled. Within this stage you can test your customer satisfaction through customer surveys and tests. You can have the control on how to fix problems in customer satisfaction areas. We can then figure out what happens with all information received about the monitoring of all departments of the company and who reports to who within the business.

Digital Marketing as a Marketing Medium

Digital Marketing, commonly referred to as internet marketing, web marketing, online marketing and e-marketing, represents marketing goods and services via the internet and mobile platforms.  

Digital Marketing hold a number of various techniques. These include; Search Engine optimisation ,Search Engine Marketing, email marketing, viral marketing, micro blogging, blogging, podcasting, vodcasting, virtual worlds, photo and video sharing, social networking, and mobile phone campaigns using SMS. 

Within digital marketing, there are a number of tools to enhance marketing strategy, examples of these include: WordPress and blogger, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, Flicker and YouTube and Google Analytics.  

Q1. There are a number of characteristics of the web as a marketing medium. These Include, Global Nature, Cost, Viral marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Push and Pull advertising, Interactivity, Feedback, Google Analytics, Speed, PPC, 24/7. 

Global Nature:  

Within digital marketing, there are no confinements to where you advertise, which results in companies spreading the awareness of their product or service at a more rapid pace. Emails and campaigns can be sent by email or posted on various websites, which in turn, will reach consumers worldwide, not dependent of geographical location. Global marketing can enable a company to gain more financial stability. 

Cost: 

Digital Marketing has cost effective advantages over traditional marketing. A skilfully planned and effectively targeted digital marketing campaign can reach at a faster rate to targeted customers at a substantially lower cost. Digital marketing can allow companies to nearly permanently replace costly advertising in newspapers, television and radio channels.  

Viral Marketing:  

Viral marketing is a marketing technique that encourages receivers to spread the awareness of information, a video clip or a product, and in turn, the information develops like a virus. Viral marketing entails brands and companies using pre-existing social networks to make consumers aware of their brand focus and products/services. Viral marketing will only be successful if the receivers will be willing to pass the information along their social platforms.  

Google Analytics 

Google Analytics presents where your visitors on your site are coming from, their activity on your site, and how long they stay on your website. Google Analytics provide the most successful activity and pages on your site, which in turn can improve your website by providing information that consumers take an interest in. By using Google Analytics, a business can make intellectual decisions that can lead to beneifical advantages to your business, e.g., if a certain website was dominating your traffic, a business could look for alternative websites that can possibly gain exposure with consumers who could be interested in your product or service.  

SEM (PPC) 

Search Engine Marketing is based on a pay per click basis. PPC involves when a company pays when a user of from their website clicks from an ad that directs them to your website. SEMs are a cost effective digital marketing technique as the ad is only produced when certain search words are entered, and the company solely pays when the traffic is directed to your site.  

Social Media  

Social Media provides a way to connect with people of similar interests, regardless of a geographical region. Social media allows businesses to share and create content to promote and spread the awareness of their products and services. Many companies create official pages and post videos demonstrating products, text updates, and anything that encourages brand engagement, which includes competitions and paid promotional videos. 

Push and Pull Advertising 

Push advertising involves getting a product directly to a consumer. It is a strategy that companies use to “push” their product on a consumer. Push marketing is often used by new businesses to promote their products and services and to gain exposure, an example of a push strategy is face to face showrooms, selling products directly.  

Pull advertising is based off trying to get consumers to come to you as opposed to pushing your product upon them. This form of advertising entails companies stocking products based on the demand of their consumer base. Examples of pull advertising includes sales and discounts and mass promotion amongst social media.  

SEOs 

SEO’s, commonly referred to as Search Engine Optimisation ensures that your website is created so that your pages are returned first when completing any search into search engines. SEOs are very beneficial to businesses as they are cost effective. Since there are hundreds of millions of websites available, it can be difficult to gain exposure, so in turn using SEOs will aid businesses to make their brand known.  

Rich Media 

Rich media is an effective way to advertise within digital marketing as it is more advanced and it allows for videos and audio within advertisements which in turn permits more engagement with viewers and consumers as opposed to text advertisements and display. Rich media has many benefits including brand awareness in comparison to other formats of online advertisements.  

Speed 

Digital marketing moves at a constantly rapid pace. It is very easy to find the information you need on a product within digital marketing due to its links with social media platforms and search engines such as Google and Bing. You don’t need to look for an ad on a TV or go through a magazine to discover what you need to know about a product or service