Boosting your business!

Just a few weeks back founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new mobile platform which will let local merchants offer promotional deals to customers who use the new places feature on Facebook. Will it help me? Yeah! Suppose if I am walking down the street and decide to eat pizza this application will show me not only the places but also the offers and deals nearby pizza places have. This will help me save a few bucks. I won’t mind that for sure. GAP, a apparel retail store gave away pair of jeans to customers who checked in with the facebook application. The sales of the company have gone up since then. Social media is about C’s of marketing, connections and convenience of the customers. As internet usage has changed from desktops to pocket PCs and mobile phones, social media strategies have become must in today’s business world. Social media makes it easy for businesses to get the message out to the customers and get feedback from the consumers and build customer relations t low cost.  Whenever I have to buy something, I do read reviews and discussion forums about the product and the company.

Social media can make it easy to spread the world for small businesses but it takes a lot of resources to keep the consumers engaged all the time. I have come across the facebook pages or blogs which have not been updated or there have been no activity since long time. My perception towards those companies has changed dramatically due to this. It is kind of mandatory to reply to queries and comments of all the users. Therefore it is really important to keep up the pace. An interesting comment by Anthony Miyazaki, professor of marketing at Florida International University about the time commitment businesses have to make, to take care of thousands of contacts. As the networking makes it easy to share and spread the word faster, it can backfire when negative news spreads faster it is impossible to control social media in these cases. Since it is about customer behavior I do believe there is certain amount of risk involved.

There are few concerns, but businesses can not afford not to be part of these advances in marketing. After what happened to Barns and Nobles ignoring Amazon and many more such examples. Also competitors engaging into these activities makes it even more necessary for businesses to be a part of it. I believe that these techniques are important for small businesses to compete with big giants and engage and form a core group of customers (target) who will make purchase and spread the word.

Peace.

Abhijeet

Source: 

Wall Street Journal