SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Lecture 12

Gabriele Pizzi
 ONLINE COMMUNICATION
how to create an high web presence and website preference

‣ Objective:
‣ To be the top-of-mind website/e-tailer in a given category
‣ e.g. which service e-tailer do you patronize if you have to make a search on the web? which retailer do you patronize
if you need a new handbook?
‣ Different tools to be present on the web:
‣ storefronts; flat ads; content sites; yellow pages, web traffic controllers
‣ Difference from traditional advertising:
‣ Content: no space and time constraints; hypertexts and multi-media information
‣ Interactivity: information is available whenever the browser is re-directed to it
‣ Selectivity: each customer can choose which hypertext to follow
‣ Efficiency: different from mass-marketing approach; self-selection --> what about “unaware” customers?
‣ Awareness:
‣ browsers can be “made aware” of the existence of the site. How?
‣ a) virality
‣ b) paid sponsorships
‣ c) SEO (Search Enginge Optimization) --> they are often paid!
‣ Easier to track and measure advertising effectiveness
 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Set of conversations and interrelationships among individuals

and firms mediated by the Internet technology and, in particular,
by the social media networks that can be established online

Then, it is not a very distant concept from WOM

It helps companies to create relationships with individuals that

might potentially translate in contacts and sales.
WHY IS IT RELEVANT?
WHY IS IT RELEVANT?
 FROM BROADCASTING TO
UNICASTING
‣ POTENTIAL MISTAKE: Using social media as a
broadcasting tool AS IF they were traditional mass media.
‣ Social Media Marketing does NOT mean to be merely
present and communicate something on social
networks
‣ RATHER:
‣ Social Media should facilitate the creation of new
contact opportunities for actual AND potential
customers in order to nurture an individual relationship
(unicasting) with the customers:
‣ Contests, community, surveys, games;
‣ Contents should trigger interactivity and allow the
company to stimulate an individual response from
the audience.
 FROM BROADCASTING TO
UNICASTING
1. ENCOURAGING CUSTOMERS TO ADHERE:
‣ Following IS DIFFERENT FROM participating actively
‣ The passage from broadcasting to unicasting can take place only
as long as the fan/follower is willing to be actively involved in the
marketing programs of the company; HOW?
2. OBTAINING CONTACT INFORMATION:
‣ One aspect the significantly increases the probability that the fan
will provide some basic contact information is avoiding the use of
apps that require the total sharing of the customer’s personal
profile --> name and email can be enough to start
‣ The remaining information can be gathered later
3. USING THE RIGHT CHANNEL:
‣ The “one-size-fits-all” approach (=broadcasting) is inappropriate
‣ Better to identify the channel preferred by each customer
‣ If possible, integrate information on the same customer from
multiple channels --> each channel has its own peculiarities and
different facets might emerge from different channels
 COMPARING SOCIAL MEDIA

‣ TARGET: mainly females, age 18-29

‣ Variegated social: chat, images, groups, events, file sharing,
content promotion
‣ MAIN USAGE MOTIVATION:
‣ Sharing (M= 42%; F= 50%)
‣ Observing what other people share (M= 35%; F= 43%)
‣ Look at pictures/videos (M= 39%; F= 54%)
‣ Obtain information (M= F = 31%)
‣ Receive feedback / support (M= 16%; F= 23%)
‣ CONTENTS:
‣ No technical language
‣ Social medium dedicated to leisure --> scace decodification effort
‣ FOR THE FIRMS:
‣ Corporate page to share brand-related contents
 COMPARING SOCIAL MEDIA

‣ TARGET: modal age 18-29, with a steep penetration rate in the range
55-64.
‣ More specialized social: mainly news sharing
‣ MAIN USAGE MOTIVATION:
‣ Obtaining or communicating news in real time
‣ After few minutes, news on Twitter become obsolete
‣ CONTENTS:
‣ Language more technical and specified than Facebook
‣ Careful keywords selection in order to give higher visibility to news
‣ Re-direction to an apposite landing page
‣ Significant number of followers and followings
‣ FOR THE FIRMS:
‣ Rapid and instantaneous interaction with the customer
‣ Customer Care --> better with a dedicated account
 COMPARING SOCIAL MEDIA
‣ TARGET: extremely transversal.
‣ Extremely specialized social: video (from multiple categories)
‣ MAIN USAGE MOTIVATION:
‣ Leisure
‣ Curiosity
‣ Scarce interaction among users
‣ CONTENTS:
‣ Relevance of the video
‣ It does not matter the number of registerd users much, but rather the number of unique
views
‣ Usage of appropriate keywords in the title to make the video more visible
‣ Virality of the contents to obtain high visualizations and sharings on other social media
(NOTE: YouTube is part of the Google group...)
‣ Attention to copyrights and control over the contents published (e.g. User-generated
Contents)
‣ FOR THE FIRMS:
‣ Advertising videos to be associated to the most popular videos/channels of the
moment
‣ Creation of a proprietary channel to publish the contents of the company and/or the
brand-related user-generated contents
 COMPARING SOCIAL MEDIA
‣ TARGET: trasversal, continuously enlarging to Google users (e.g. Gmail).
‣ Poliedric Social: initially positioned as a social for nerds, nowadays it is a
platform hosting several communities
‣ MAIN USAGE MOTIVATION:
‣ Support from other specialized users from the community
‣ Help giving
‣ CONTENTS:
‣ Less informal than Facebook
‣ Sharing documents and multimedia files
‣ Creation of seminars and or events by exploiting the powerful hangout for
streaming
‣ FOR THE FIRMS:
‣ Corporate webpages integrated with other Google tools (e.g. Maps, Place,
Search, Drive)
‣ Allows firms to have a strong visibility within the Google tools ...see SEO...
 COMPARING SOCIAL MEDIA
‣ TARGET: vertical social media, specialized on a particular area (e.g.
TripAdvisor for hotels and restaurants, Instagram and Pinterest on pictures)
‣ These social media can be extremely useful because they are based on
experiences/contents produced by other users
‣ MAIN USAGE MOTIVATION:
‣ Sharing a common interest
‣ Express/read peer evaluations
‣ CONTENTS:
‣ Highly specialized and vertical
‣ The most important feature is not the quality of the contents, but rahter their
perceived “neutrality” and “genuiness”
‣ FOR THE FIRMS:
‣ Monitoring: learning from the voice of the customer
‣ Incentivate customers’active participation in brand-related activities (e.g.
RedBull and Puma publish the nicest Instagram pictures taken by their
customers in relationship with the brand)
‣ Display products/services, like in a virtual shelf.
 THE POTENTIAL OF INSTAGRAM
STORIES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86XpRJbxfVs

Ephimeral Memorable Experiential Flexible

250M users per day

COMPARING SOCIAL MEDIA
 TRAFFIC SOURCES
Where does traffic on my webpage come from?

‣ Organic Search
‣ Paid Search
‣ Paid Advertising
‣ Referral
‣ Direct Traffic
 ORGANIC SEARCH

‣ SEO

‣ Selection of an appropriate domain

‣ Contents and tags

‣ Back links:
‣ Link pointing to the webpage from other websites
‣ Not about their quantity, but rather their quality and relevance
‣ Remove back links from scarcely reliable websites
 PAID SEARCH

‣ Allows the visualization of the weblink when it is the user

itself searching for that information.
‣ Only the actual visits are paid.
‣ It is the fastest way to be immediately visible on search
engines.
‣ Perfect tool for a targeted and temporally bounded
communication. (e.g. visibility of an event, promotions, etc.)
‣ Give visibility to new websites, thus poorly represented in
organic searches from search engines.
‣ Examples:
‣ Google Ad Words
‣ Bing Ads
‣ Yahoo Search Advertising
‣ Yandex (in Russia)
 PAID ADVERTISING

‣ Direct relationship with the hosting webpage:

‣ high consistency needed

‣ Social

‣ Agencies specialized on Ad Placement

 REFERRAL
‣ Traffic activity NOT ascribable to search engines
‣ Link or bookmarks created purposely by the firm toward its own webpage:
‣ Posts on Social Media
‣ Partner Websites
‣ Blogs
‣ It should be important to measure the bounce rate (# individuals that reach the
website but do not perform any action)
‣ This information can be traced thanks to web browsers that store the
information about the webpage from which the page request to the server
arrived
 DIRECT TRAFFIC

‣ Derives from the visibility and spontaneous notoriety of the

webpage that can be influenced also through other communication
tools:
‣ Radio/TV
‣ Billboards
‣ Fliers
‣ Printed Advertising
‣ Business Cards
‣ WOM
‣ It can NOT be traced from other websites, but only from the http
addresses type directly by users or copied and pasted from
external documents
‣ Importance of website name and URL simplicity
‣ NOTE: The traffic generated by mobile applications belongs to this
category
ANALYTICS ON SEMANTIC
CONTENTS
 CONVERSIONS

‣ A channel can play three roles in the conversion funnel:

‣ Last interaction is the referral immediately preceding the conversion
‣ Indirect interaction indicates referral in the conversion process, excluding the last
‣ First interaction indicates the first referral
‣ Google Analytics examines all the conversion paths:
‣ Indirect conversions and monetary value of conversions ---> the higher these values, the more
important the contribution ascribable to the channel;
‣ Last-click conversions and monetary value of conversions ---> the final click is acknowledged as
last interaction for a conversion;
‣ First-click conversion and monetary value of the first click ---> considering the value in starting
the funnel.
‣ A value proximal to 0 indicates that the channel has obtained more sales and conversions than
those favored by that channel. A value proximal to 1 indicates that the channel has favored and
completed sales and conversions in the same measure.