The Not-So-Smooth Ride of Social Media Marketing
Growth in Social Media Marketing
You’re a master of social media, right? You can take on a marketing manager position and hit the ground running. If you think social media marketing is always a smooth ride into marketing tactics, think twice.
C.F. Hofacker and D. Belanche explain their views on social media marketing in an article of research from the Spanish Journal of Marketing, Eight social media challenges for marketing managers. They clarify that the concept of social media controls our culture through the use of technology. As a result, it creates new challenges and benefits through each innovation that enters the market.
Consumers gain more power through their use of each new digital communication channel. In addition, there are greater opportunities for content creation and consumption. This is extremely important for both businesses and consumers. However, as these social media channels create additional opportunities for marketers, they also make the role of a marketing manager more difficult.
According to Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast, global internet information traffic is expected to increase by 215% by 2020. (Hofacker & Belanche, 2016).
The Phenomenon of Social Media Through 3 Approaches
- Sociological Approach: regarding global networks for interaction
- Economic Approach: regarding the value a firm holds
- Marketing Approach: regarding a system with buyers and sellers exchanging content in complex ways
More importantly, all three of these approaches link challenges social media offers to managers in the marketing world. They continue by explaining how managers use social media within 4 mental models. These include: “business to customers with a transactional focus to promote and sell”, “business from customers with an informational focus to listen and learn”, “business with customers with a relational focus to connect and collaborate”, and “business for customers with a communal focus to empower and engage” (Hofacker & Belanche, 2016).
Their research shows us that the 8 challenges below are influencing todays marketing managers. Additionally, they are forcing them to adapt to the ever-evolving technology culture.
8 Social Media Challenges for Marketing Managers
1) The Liquification of the Economy:
Information barriers are much less stable in todays society. Regulations, copyrights and terms are all much more complicated than they were 10 years ago. These differences lead to a greater number of online site and database hacks.
2) Adjusting to Reactive Marketing Management:
Businesses must be quick and responsive with all customers and posts that require attention. They must understand that with customers having more power in their hands, they are not in charge anymore. Comparatively, businesses must also adjust to the amount of growth occurring in the social media world. With such a large amount of users, companies now need big data analytical skills to process information for decision making.
3) How to Manage Customer Creation and Engagement:
For the most part, today’s creation of content shifts from the business to the customer. This means that businesses should regularly promote user-generated content and recognise important users in order to maximise their reach (Hofacker & Belanche, 2016).
4) Managing Multi-Sided Markets:
Tech jobs are growing and research predicts that“65% of children currently in primary school will work in jobs that do not exist yet” (Hofacker & Belanche, 2016). Multi-sided markets are a rapidly developing concept. They create a complex marketing mix for both sides of the market. Companies must understand both the seller and the buyer side of two-sided markets.
5) Adjusting to the Changing Customer Purchase Journey:
This concept sprouts from the idea of the traditional 5 step purchase journey with users that are now consuming through social media channels. Mobile usage allows customers to do much of their purchasing journey in one place. Also, “post-purchase engagement is becoming sufficiently critical to be considered a step” including sharing, or writing a review. (Hofacker & Belanche, 2016).
6) Understanding the Dynamic C2C Sender-Receiver System:
Social media word-of-mouth now focuses on more than just the receiver’s purpose. Businesses must also consider the “antecedents and consequences of posting a review on the reviewer” (Hofacker & Belanche, 2016). Additionally, managers should also consider the likely outcomes for both sides of WOM including belief, attitude, knowledge, memory, and purchase behaviour. In addition, research needs to focus on the economic and socio-political value of information sharing.
7) Creating Compelling and Profitable Gamified Interaction:
Firm-generated point systems use money to compete in today’s market for customers’ attention. Companies are now releasing customer information, using approved advertising formats or exchange behaviours to get ahead of other companies. One example of this is BitCoin. (Hofacker & Belanche, 2016). In this sense, gamification is useful but requires much progress and lacks essential psychological insights.
8) Adjusting to a Changing Marketing Skill Set:
Data mining takes expert knowledge to break down information and transform it into meaningful insights. Businesses are no longer only dealing with text data but are also dealing with pictures, videos and interactions. In essence, we assume that these are complex to analyse and require different operative skill sets.
Ultimately, marketing managers must regularly examine research that is related to these social media challenges regarding their own industry in order to maximise their results.
