Marketing on a tight budget

Traditionally, marketing communications consisted of a single message sent to as many people as possible (the higher the number of viewers, the greater the cost of the advertisement) in the hope that a small percentage of them would actually buy the product – this is known as ‘the marketing funnel’. Social media marketing works in reverse – by sending an initial message at negligible cost to a core group of supporters who spread the word through their networks via re-tweets, comments, likes, favourites etc. More and more potential customers therefore get to hear about the brand from personal contacts that they know and trust. This is known as ‘flipping the funnel’.The inter-connected nature of social media means that it is easy to share marketing messages, then listen and respond to customer feedback – often on a one to one basis – and all in public view. This means that other customers can see if someone else has raised a complaint and how well (or badly) it was dealt with.Social media now have a role to play in a wide range of marketing activities, for example:

• Engaging with prospects and customers in real time to build relationships and encourage recommendations
• Showcasing relevant content to raise brand awareness, encourage interaction and build community
• Resolving customer service issues quickly and publicly
• Effective, real time internal communications across the enterprise and hierarchies
• Tracking trends and testing the “zeitgeist”
• Crowdsourcing of new product development or market research
• Networking to source expertise or business partners
• Improving search engine visibility of a website through regular supply of new and engaging content

Can you think of a good example of a successful social media marketing campaign? What in particular made it stand out for you?