BRIANWOOLF.COM
 
  Welcome     Marketing & Loyalty     Speaking & Connecting     Brian's View     Books by Brian     Marketing Studies     Contact Us  
 
 

Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)
 

Social Media Marketing Opportunities

By Fiona Woolf
October 5, 2013

The average American spends approximately three hours online every day. Nielsen observes that Internet users spend more time on social media sites than any other site type...

Social media is characterized by collaboration and interaction. It encompasses websites and applications designed for networking, content-sharing and community input. This includes social network sites (eg, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn), online forums, blogs, picture-sharing (eg, Pinterest) and user-generated content sites (eg, Reddit, Wikis).

Consumers are influenced by the opinions of others on social media sites, and are actively seeking online reviews, ratings and recommendations to make purchase decisions. Equally important, a growing number of consumers are willing to participate in social sharing for rewards. Here are ways you can use social media to capture the voice of customers and increase your online presence:


Effectively using social media to generate positive promotion, build brand awareness and strengthen customer loyalty can be a difficult task. Four software tools that can help businesses address this marketing challenge include:

Social Toaster lets your fans find you, and is centered on promoting advocacy rather than recruiting new customers. Anyone can become an official social advocate for you by completing an online sign-up form which links the person's social network account(s) to Social Toaster. Branded emails are sent to advocates who can share the content (as is) with a single click across their social networks. Gamification sustains involvement, and advocates earn points for signing up and sharing content. Prizes are awarded daily, weekly and monthly.

Zuberance builds brand advocacy. It identifies your existing customers who are talking about you online and recruits them into their advocacy program. Advocates are given tools making it easy to write product reviews, which it publishes (with permission) across social network sites, third party shopping sites, and third party review sites. This draws positive attention to your business and boosts your online ratings, and Zuberance tracks the clicks, sales, and sharing that result from its marketing endeavors. It does not incent advocates with points or prizes, believing that being able to provide input is rewarding in and of itself.

Social Grower is designed for retailers with a card-based loyalty program. In lieu of your existing loyalty card, retailers use Social Grower's plastic social rewards card, which automatically links to members' social network accounts. Each time a member uses (swipes) the card, it affords the retailer the opportunity to post messages (with permission) to that member's social network page. The card also triggers automated check-ins on Foursquare. Note: the retailer still receives its data as before.

Social Rewards offers social sharing rewards programs that complement existing loyalty programs. Special deals and offers are sent to members, incentivizing members to share them across their social network(s). It tracks all online mentions of each deal, awarding members points for social mentions that lead to actual sales.

Retailers are beginning to understand the power of social media to attract new customers and maintain loyal ones. Today, it is standard for companies to represent themselves on social media (eg, having a Facebook page to advertise and receive quick feedback) but this does not tap into the potential of using social media to interact with customers. As seen in the examples above, the ability to use social media for engaging customers and generating positive online attention is what makes it an invaluable medium for retailers to be following, testing and developing new marketing strategies.

Copyright © 2013 - 2025 Fiona Woolf

About the author...

Fiona Woolf, a graduate of the University of Virginia, specializes in market research.

Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

Learn the insider's tricks and techniques to turn every customers into a 'super spreader' for your brand. It's better than free advertising. Once you start this ball rolling, your brand can grow rapidly through word-of-mouth, advocacy, influencers, and customer loyalty. Super-charge your company's marketing strategy, build up your market share, and make more sales through repeat business and customer loyalty.

Find out what works - and what doesn't - and who's succeeded, and how they did it. See how the world's top brands keep their competitive edge against all odds.

The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook walks you step-by-step through the techniques, metrics, reporting, analysis, marketing models, technologies, tools and innovations for successful marketing strategies - both traditional and emerging - with expert guidance from thought leaders in every major market. Find out the best ways to gather, analyse, and act on customer data to increase profitability, build your brand, empower your customers, beat the competition, reduce churn, and increase customer profitability. This is a marketing book you simply can't afford to be without.

This book aims to hand you all the facts, figures and research data you need for the best decisions for a more profitable, more engaging marketing strategy. It also highlights all the facts, forecasts and trends identified by our experts from the global Marketing Factbook's vast database of market data, news, studies, research and articles, and presents you with an invaluable library of ideas and practical support you can call upon at will.

With The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook at your side, you'll have instant access to a true goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, research and market data, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid, profitable marketing strategy.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)
 
Copyright © 2001-2025 Peter J. Clark