Social Media Marketing

Source: Evans (2008)


Desribing social media marketing is not easy. Although there are a number of books and articles published, I had difficulties summarizing the concept of social media marketing. Personally, I found the book by David Evans (Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day) very useful.

Evans summarizes that social media marketing “involves a natural, genuine conversation between people about something of mutual interest, a conversation built on the thoughts and experiences of the participants. It is about sharing and arriving at a collective point, often for the purpose of making a better or more-informed choice.”

From this description it becomes clear that the main task of social media marketing comprises to encourage conversations by creating ‘talk-worthy’ events that result in word of mouth. The WOMMA defines word of mouth as “the most honest form of marketing, building upon people's natural desire to share their experiences with family, friends, and colleagues”. This sort of conversation can spring naturally through the so-called organic word of mouth, or companies can enhance it through ‘talk-worthy’ campaigns that foster the buzz, which is called amplified word of mouth. In my opinion applified word of mouth is the main objective of social media marketing. Another social media marketing author, Larry Weber, describes two tasks in his book Marketing to the social web: how digital customer communities build your business how amplified word of mouth can be created:

1. by creating customer experiences consumers would want and talk about, and
2. by participating in various social media services to take part in the conversations about a company

Based on the concept of this word of mouth, Evans Social Feedback Cycle (above) illustrates how this could generate in higher sales. Evans used the purchasing funnel model, explaining how consumers purchase products and services steered through marketing activities, and extended the funnel to include post purchase experiences of the overall marketing process. These post purchase experiences are generated by the user of the product, leading him or her to form an opinion and talk about it. Subsequently, this ‘talk’, influences the consideration of purchase of potential other buyers.

A very interesting McKinsey study showed that social media marketing oversimplified said results in 25% increased awareness, 19% higher consideration of purchases, 17% greater conversions from online registrations to actual purchases, and 30% higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

From this point of view, social media marketing looks like a benefical instrument to market a company and ist products, if done rightly ...