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Since commerce began, businesses have always looked for creative and innovative ways to sell their products, using any meaner to convince potential customers that buying their product will help improve their lives. As society’s values change, marketing professionals have had to adjust their methods of communicating the value of a product or service to customers. In the 21st century, with the economic competition as high as it has ever been, marketing professionals have tapped into a goldmine of spreading their product: Social Media.
Social Media has had a tremendous effect on the world of marketing because it provides a less costly way of conveying a company’s message to masses of people all over the world. For an advertising professional, the idea of social media may seem too good to be true. Social media is used by individuals to interact with one another. When a company becomes part of a social network, it allows the customers to interact with them. These exchanges can feel personal to a customer, further building a long-term relationship between the company and the customer.
Social Media Marketing) Social media also acts as a form of word of mouth; if a customer likes something that a company posts on their page, they have the ability to “rewet” it, showing the post to everybody that follows them on the site. (Social Media Marketing) As the information is being repeated, the company is being exposed to more and more people, thus creating more potential customers and a greater financial return. Social networks, such as Twitter, promote a product in real-time, using short messages that customers are more likely to read.
The advantage that social media has that no other method of marketing can say is that it allows customers to personally engage with the company (Google Books). It allows everybody to express their opinion, positive or negative, along the business’ path to market. Each participating customer becomes a contributing member of the companies’ marketing team, as others consumers are exposed to their comments and reviews. (Google Books) If people see their friends posting about a certain product on a social media site, they are more likely to buy the product.
Thus, by spreading the rod about a product to masses of people, the social media users are doing free advertising for the company. (Google Books) The engagement process is then fundamental to successful social media marketing. A prime example of using social media in marketing is Darrel Mean of Queens, New York. At the end of the 2009 New York Mets season, Darrel made a tee shirt that stated “l survived.. ” With the woes of the previous seasons, for he and his friends to wear. The shirt gained popularity with fans in the stadium, so Darrel decided to turn his hobby into a business, calling the brand “The 7 Line”.
Darrel, a bartender in Queens, had little money to use on advertising, so he turned to social media to promote his t-shirts.. Darrel became a frequent poster on websites such as Twitter and Faceable, carefully combining his page with product promotion and his opinions on the team. The Mets bananas, which is heavily active on social networks, flocked to it. I talked to Darrel at a recent game, and he said “Social media has been essential to ten Dragon’s growth, I nee/Ellen NAS not spent a collar on overstatements, we simply post our opinions and the fans repost and spread the word. Telling ally took off in mid-2011 when Darrel started a twitter campaign called “Don’t Trade Rexes”, telling the team not to trade Jose Rexes, the Mets’ all-star shortstop. Mean said “Don’t Trade Rexes’ really was a turning point for this brand, people were all over twitter expressing their opinion, which drew a lot of attention to the brand and had the masses coming in and buying shirts. “. Telling now has over 13,000 followers on Twitter and has sold over 100,000 shirts. The use of social media as a marketing tool took Darrel Mean from a tee-shirt making as a hobby to a full- time Job that brings in six-figures.
The current economic market is a dog-eat-dog environment, and as times change marketing experts must adjust their techniques. In 2013, 27% of all US Internet time was spent on social networks. Sites such as Twitter have millions of users each day, which can be seen by companies as potential buyers(Marketing Land), The cost effectiveness of this way of conveying information to the masses is why social media is extremely critical to companies. As the social media networks grow, they will become even more essential to companies and continue to change the marketing game as we know it.