Introduction To SMM
Introduction to SMM:
Marketing has witnessed a paradigm shift in the last two decades. In the good old days the job of a Marketer was simple – find the tallest roof top and shout at the top of your voice about your product and drown out your competition by your LUNG POWER. This was the traditional village seller of goods. Then came the age of the suave suites who talked about ‘media plan’ and 4P’s of marketing. Lung Power got replaced with Advertisements, Hoardings and White papers etc. There were namesake reviews which used to be published in trade or business media. Times changed and internet happened, initially a tool for businesses to communicate with each other. Companies started websites and started posting information across the web for customer to reach out and access information.
Then came another turn and Web 2.0 and Social Media. A lay or naive customer started writing about his experience with a product or service. What was the exclusive domain of ‘experts’ or ‘vendors’ started getting swamped by the ‘ignorant users’. And lo and behold not just writing but people started taking these feedbacks seriously. To the extent that one of the agency surveys indicated that one negative Blog/Post could have a negative effect which would require 200 advertisements to counter. And remember here, the cost to the write of the NEGATIVE comment is ZERO. Flip side is also true but to a lesser extent a positive comment impact equals 20 advertisements.
Studies showed that 47% of buyers admitted to being influenced by Social Media and 26% said that they CHANGED their purchasing decision after reading on Social Media.
Suddenly the marketing budget was grossly inadequate to handle the all pervasive Social Media. How does one handle this? What is the Chief Marketing Officer supposed to tell his CEO. That a faceless entity who is earning zero and spending zero is wiping away all the good done by his marketing team which spent millions and earned thousands…