Summary The company invests billions of dollars each year to create and maintain a brand's presence on social media. Facebook is the platform of choice for many brands: 80% of Fortune 500 companies have active pages on Facebook. A lot of branding every day...
The company invests billions of dollars each year to create and maintain a brand's presence on social media. Facebook is the platform of choice for many brands: 80% of Fortune 500 companies have active pages on Facebook. A large number of brand-derived content (articles, photos, videos, etc.) appear on these pages and other social media platforms every day. All content is inducing consumers to pay attention to the brand, interact with the brand, and purchase the product. Even the US State Department is fascinated by attracting followers – in order to get more “likes†on Facebook, the State Department has spent $630,000 between 2011 and 2013. Marketers' explanations for these investments are to attract social media followers, increase brand exposure, and ultimately increase sales. According to this logic, new fans in a social network that support a brand (brand endorsement, such as a brand-like identity on Facebook) will spend more money than before being pollinated. Buying products or services, and their recognition of the brand will encourage friends or friends to consume, and ultimately the brand business will get better and better. A lot of evidence seems to support the logic at first glance: multiple brands find that consumers who interact with themselves on social media do spend more than consumers who don't interact often.
However, the study and other similar investigations have a fatal logical error: confusion of causes and consequences. Attracting consumers to focus on a brand on social media may indeed promote consumption. However, people who are concerned about a brand may have a good impression of the brand, and that is why they consume more than people who don't pay attention to the brand.
The result is clear: the effect of social media is not as much as many marketers imagine. Brand identity on the Internet can neither stimulate purchases nor stimulate consumer spending. However, using marketing content to promote recognition of the brand will have a significant effect. Since social media pages are a gathering place for loyal customers, these pages are a unique channel for brands to get consumer information and feedback from key people. Marketers can use the information they get from web pages to develop new strategies for more successful social media.
So, how should companies release the power of “praise�
The good news is that the way to turn praise into meaningful behavior does exist, and it comes from the 20th century “Marketing Strategy Handbookâ€: advertising. Facebook’s annual advertising revenue exceeds $22 billion. Most of the revenue comes from brands that try to circumvent Facebook's algorithms, ensuring that branded content is in an extremely eye-catching position and attracts the attention of many users.
Social media has spread rapidly in the past 10 years, and many people predict that the marketing strategy will undergo a revolutionary transformation in the future. We often hear that “push marketing†(brand marketing, promotion of products and services) will end, “pullmarketing†(using social media and other channels to make customers a part of themselves) will Rise. "Multiple use of judo, less use of karate" has become a buzzword. However, our research shows that if social network marketing only uses a pull strategy, it will not have any effect. Modern social media marketing strategies should combine both old and new marketing methods.
Clever use of the power of "like"
Facebook has not yet opened the right to buy “key show†to the company – the company cannot focus on loyal customers. However, our research shows that focused presentations can influence behavior and help companies gain great value. To overcome this obstacle, smart companies choose to monitor their social network channels, discover persuasive discourses, and then incorporate these languages ​​into their marketing messages.
The sportswear brand Lululemon collects consumer-initiated and brand-friendly content by tracking tags (such as the “Sweat Life†tag) and forwarding. More brands are also adopting the now-popular approach of “seeding†social identity – spending money to have a charismatic opinion leader to try out their brand and then send the “endorsement†content to followers.
Make the network identify meaningful
The act of praising the brand does not affect online friends – the reasons behind this phenomenon include that praise is a very weak identity. Our research shows that there is a certain gap between the influence of praise and the recommendations in real life. But experiments by MIT's Sinan Aral and colleagues show that brand identity (including brand recommendations in a broader context) can lead to behavioral changes.
Experiments have shown that if people are only told that a friend has downloaded an app, they are less likely to download and use the app; but if the friend personally recommends the app, they are more likely to use the app. Other experiments have shown that "deeper" social media recognition can narrow the gap between reality and digital recommendation. The study found that if you see some Facebook posts that show that Facebook friends are using a product (not just a product), then your chances of buying it will increase. If the product user sends a text message to a friend in private, it is recommended to use the product, which will be more convincing. However, the promotion of such deep-level brand interactions may require a lot of energy and capital.
Our research shows that when brand "focus on display", the choice of online posts and user-provided content, the effect will be very good, because these content is more creative and more meaningful than the simple "like". For example, TripAdvisor informs shows users who browse a hotel's information about which Facebook friends have booked a room at the hotel.
Use "pull marketing" to find target consumers
One of the reasons why Facebook's advertising marketing is effective is that the brand's social media pages can attract a better audience, and their “likes†point to a clear path for targeted advertising. Even if the brand decides not to invest in advertising, it can still use social media channels to reach the most loyal consumers and get relevant information. Brands don't have to use flash content or other tempting means to attract new followers; in fact, these strategies can also have the opposite effect—brands may attract people who don't have much interest in themselves.
Companies that choose “pull marketing†should focus on organic growth and let consumers come here. Those who are willing to find a brand on social media can almost be said to be the most loyal and valuable customer of the brand. The group of these customers is the brand's largest asset: they actively provide feedback to promote product development, management and delivery; defend the brand when the brand receives unfair complaints; or the earliest users and promoters of new products or services .
For example, Lego uses its own social media channels to collect customer feedback on new products and promote new product lines. Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) clearly uses the Twitter account as a tool to collect customer feedback; in addition to responding to customer messages, it also expects the response time to be placed at the top of the Twitter page, updated every 5 minutes, indicating that the company is listening to customers. sound. If the customer knows that his voice can be heard, he or she will be more willing to provide information, and may even be more polite when the complaint is unavoidable.
With the development of social media, people's enthusiasm for this new marketing channel is also rising - the potential of social media to drive sales is generally optimistic. However, a recent survey of 427 US marketers shows that 80% of people cannot quantify the value of their social media marketing practices. A survey of Fortune 500 companies found that 87% of chief marketing officers (CMOs) admitted that they could not prove that social media brought new customers. Our research helps explain why marketers are frustrated by the use of social media – their approach is wrong. Advertising-assisted social media marketing practices can increase ROI and create opportunities for connecting with the most loyal customers.
Leslie K. John Daniel Mochon Oliver Emrich Janet Schwartz | Vince Lee John is Harvard Business School Associate Professor of Business Administration. Daniel Mocon is an assistant professor of marketing at the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University. Oliver Am Reich is a professor of management and social media at the University of Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz. Janet Schwartz is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University.
Liu Weiwei | Translated by Liu Yuzhen | School Button Key | Edit this article has been abridged, the original text see "Harvard Business Review" Chinese version March 2017 "How much is a "like"? (What's The Value of A Like?).
Glossy Polyester Canvas,Polyester Canvas Fabric,Canvas Polyester Inkjet,Water-Based Canvas
Guangzhou Quanxu Technology Co Ltd , http://www.skychema.com