Modern Management

• From the scenario, prioritize the most significant components of a social media campaign according to the level of influence each could have on the new product launch. Examine both the social media tools that will provide the highest return on investment (ROI), and two (2) key performance indicators (KPIs) that one could use to measure success. Provide a rationale for your response.
• Use the Internet to research social media marketing strategies. Next, imagine that you are a manager of a retail store in a major mall with decreasing sales. Suggest two (2) ways that you can use social media in order to increase sales and promote your business. Provide two (2) examples of businesses that have used these methods and succeeded.

Remarks:  Please ensure you cite your references using the APA format.

Marketing Management
MKT500

Social Media

Welcome to Marketing Management. In this lesson we will discuss social media.
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Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:
Understand social media.
Understand social networks.
Understand the return on investment, key performance indicators, and web analytics associated with social media.

Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:
Understand social media;
Understand social networks, and
Understand the return on investment, key performance indicators, and web analytics associated with social media.
To meet this overall objectives we will cover the following supporting topics:
Social media defined;
Media trends;
Types of social media,
Social Networks and;
Social Media, ROI, KPIs, and Web Analytics.
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Social Media
Social media
People interacting and connecting with others via online software or alternative electronic access technologies
With social media, customers now have dialogue with brands
Customers post endorsements and vent
Traditionally, customers were recipients
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Generally speaking, the enormity of today’s media choices—the Internet alone—makes it a wonderful time to be alive. Media are part of the “social media” story. Social media can be defined as people interacting and connecting with others via online software or alternative electronic access technologies, such as smartphones or tablet computers.
The other part of the social media story is its social or human element. Belonging to different communities and interacting with different people in our social roles is part of our self-identity.
The most fundamental means of interaction is a dialogue. In social media, customers have become participants in a dialogue with marketers or brands. Traditionally customers had been mere recipients of “one-way” messages that had been shot out by marketers, but now they have means of talking back. Customers post positive endorsements about brands, and they also use the web to vent.
Mobile marketing is growing because our cell phones are particularly convenient: they contain our identities and those of the people we talk to frequently. They are our portals to email and Facebook, a primary means of sharing information and entertainment to many individuals today.

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Media Trends
Media trends
Social media & mobile marketing are growing
Newspaper & magazines are declining
The number of radio stations is growing,
but listeners listen less
The number of TV channels is growing, audience is fragmented
Facilitates targeting
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At the same time that electronic and information technologies are becoming more accessible and pervasive, traditional media are experiencing their own changes:
Newspaper circulations are declining, and while optimists continue to launch new magazines every year, their overall sales and circulations are down as well.
The number of radio stations has grown, boosted by satellite servers, but listeners are tuned in for less time each day than just a few years ago. Television channels also continue to grow. The bad news about this fragmentation is that with more TV channels, the audience for any given show is typically smaller. The good news is that targeting is a facilitated when the segments of viewers are somewhat more homogeneous.
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Media Trends, cont.
Social media facilitates word of mouth
Word of mouth is powerful; more credible
“Viral”; “buzz”
Word of mouth works well with
Exciting products
Clever ad campaigns
Humor, free give-aways, social causes
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A particularly important phenomenon for business is that social media facilitates word of mouth, or W.O.M. Consumers tend to view ads with some skepticism, knowing that the point of the message is persuasion. By comparison, if a customer hears the endorsement of a brand from a friend, that message is seen as more objective because the friend presumably has nothing to gain from making any claims. When a message has been repeated or shared across a wide audience online, the term “viral” is generally applied to it. These widely shared messages can also generate a lot of “buzz” around a given product or service.
 
Word of mouth works on inherently exciting products, where the notion of buzz makes sense. Yet creative brand managers have launched clever ad campaigns that get talked about even for pretty mundane products too, the key being that the product and the message are meaningful to the customer. Brand managers can achieve this through the use of humor, free give-aways, or associating the product or service with a social cause.
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Types of Social Media
Some social media
Offer very rich, vivid sensory experiences: e.g., Virtual worlds, video games, etc.
Are simple: e.g., Blogs, forums, etc.
Are primarily social: e.g., Facebook, etc.
Are industrious: e.g., LinkedIn, etc.
Vary in commerciality: e.g., social content & ads for revenue
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Looking at the types of Social Media, we discover that social media have the following properties:
Some social media offer very rich, vivid, sensory experiences with their dynamic sights and sounds that compel the user to interact and engage, such as video games or virtual worlds. By comparison, other social media seem relatively simple, such as blogs or forums.
Some social media are primarily social in nature, such as social network sites, which serve as places to asynchronously hang out with friends. Other media have more industrious goals. For example, many people seek jobs via professional sites, such as LinkedIn.
Lastly, social media vary with regard to whether the interactions are pointedly commercial or not. For instance, many social networking sites use social content and ads to generate revenue.
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Social Networks
Sociogram: networks in graphical form
The set of actors and relational ties
Actors may be customers, firms, brands, etc.
Ties can be symmetric
e.g., Joe and Sally are co-workers
Ties can be directional
e.g., Joe likes Sally
Ties vary in strength
Network analysis requires tabular representation (sociomatrix)
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A social network is defined as the set of actors, or nodes, and the relational ties that link them. Actors may be customers, firms, brands, concepts, countries, etc. The connections between the actors are relational ties, or links. Ties can be symmetric, as in Joe and Sally are co-workers, or directional, as in Joe likes Sally. Ties can also be binary or vary in strength.
Networks are often depicted in a graphical form, called a sociogram, but their analysis requires tabular representation, called a sociomatrix.
 
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Social Networks, cont.
Strong mutual link between actors B & E
Weak unidirectional link from C to B
F is isolated
B, C, and E form a group

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The figure shows a network for 6 actors and its corresponding matrix data.
The bold green double arrow indicates that there is a strong mutual link between actors B and E. You can see by the thin, dotted arrow, however that only a weak, unidirectional link exists from C to B. F is isolated with no connections to any other actors, and actors B, C, and E form a group.
 
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Social Networks, cont.
In social networks, some members are more connected & influential than others
Goal is to locate highly influential members, induce their trial of products; propel the diffusion process
Locating “central” members
Centrality indices are computed for each actor in the network to describe the position of that actor relative to the others
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In social networking sites, as in any social circle, some members are more connected and influential than others. Marketers would like to leverage these interpersonal group dynamics, ideally locating the highly connected influential members, to induce their trial of products, in turn initiating and propelling the diffusion process.
To do so, network marketers study how actors are embedded in their network to locate those that are relatively central. Centrality indices are computed for each actor in the network to describe the position of that actor relative to the others.
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Social Networks, cont.
Centrality: Number of connections each actor has with the others
Centrality index
Central = many links
Peripheral = fewer links
Cliques
Groups of people in a network
Common in brand communities, affinity groups, cell phone friends, etc.

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The easiest and most common way to characterize centrality is to count the number of connections each actor has with the others in the network. An index of “degree centrality” is derived for each actor—those with many links are said to be relatively central, and those with fewer links are more peripheral.
Another idea related to network analyses are cliques. Cliques are groups of people in the network. Cliques are common in delineating brand communities and can be a nice way to find homogenous segments of like-minded people.

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Social Media ROI, KPIs, and Web Analytics
Determine ROI
Must know the goal that the marketing action was intended to achieve.
Key performance indicators (KPIs)
Reach, frequency, monetary value of customers, customers’ behaviors, attitudes, memory, etc.
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As with traditional media, we can begin to answer ROI questions only if we know the goal that the marketing action was intended to achieve. Once we know the goals, selecting the media and measures is rather straightforward.
When estimating ROI, the primary expenditures might not be media buys or explicit budgetary contributions, so much as salary equivalents of people’s time allocations.
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, for social media are analogous to traditional measures for advertising effectiveness. Specifically, marketers are always interested in quantifying reach, frequency, monetary value of customers, customers’ behaviors, attitudes, memory, including both recall and recognition, and so on. In social media, measures for these marketing goals simply take on slightly different forms.
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Social Media ROI, KPIs, and Web Analytics, cont.
Pre-Purchase: Awareness
Reach can be achieved via
Traditional media
Online
Media that optimize reach
Reward current customers
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In the pre-purchase phase, marketers want customers to be aware of their brand, and consider their brand for purchase. Reach is the measure of the size of the audience that has been exposed to some brand information and who might therefore have some familiarity with the brand. Reach can be achieved via traditional media and measured via online capture, such as in a magazine ad that tempts the reader to learn more by going online and landing at a particular page associated with the magazine source. Reach can also be achieved wholly online, as a function of ads on popular sites, purchased status on search engines, even via click-thrus on annoying banner ads.
If marketers wish to enhance awareness, they seek media that optimize reach.
If there is an existing customer base, marketers can reward current customers with incentives to generate word of mouth. Word of mouth in customer networks is very rewarding to firms because they usually bring in new customers.
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Social Media ROI, KPIs, and Web Analytics, cont.
Pre-purchase: Brand Consideration
Offer more information to build knowledge & persuade
Use media that give more content
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Prime Web Analytics
Frequencies, rates, or durations
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Next, marketers want to offer more information to build customers’ knowledge of the brand, and more persuasion to make their opinions as favorable as possible. To do so, marketers need to use media that convey more content. They pay for search engine ad placement, post some information teasers in related brand communities, and provide podcasts containing product information and customer testimonials.
Many of the measures in this phase fall under the broad category of search engine optimization , or S.E.O. When customers have a preferred brand, they can go directly to purchase sites. However, when they do not, they will conduct a search. The search keywords depend on where customers are along the knowledge continuum.
At the stage of brand consideration, several measures are prime web analytics—they are frequencies, rates, or durations. Frequencies include the sheer number of visits and estimates of the number of unique visitors; that is, the second number is an attempt to remove the duplications from the first number. Durations are usually measures of times spent per page, and overall time spent on the site.
Rates include bounce rates—these are the percent of sessions for which a visitor lands on the website and needs only one page viewing to decide and click off the website altogether. Rates also include conversion rates—capturing when a visitor transitions from a looker to a doer.

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Social Media ROI, KPIs, and Web Analytics, cont.
Purchase or Behavioral Engagement
Induce any action that engages the prospective customer
Instead of “Contact Us” marketers prefer forms that capture specific information
KPIs
Number of posts, audience build
Conversion rates
Compare desired outcomes to number of visits
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Ideally, customers are moving toward purchasing. However, there are a number of steps that serve as precursors that nevertheless are hopeful signals toward ultimate purchase. Thus marketers speak of inducing any kind of action that begins to engage the prospective customer. Web analytics experts disdain the “Contact Us” buttons, instead recommending that a web visitor has to fill out a form, so the company can capture at least basic information on this customer and sales opportunity. In return, companies can provide exclusivity to web visitors. Brand fans may be asked to post opinions and reviews. Sales promos may be made available from site visits or Tweeted out to followers. Customer service can unfold in real time.
KPIs are pretty clean when measuring behaviors. Thus metrics include numbers of posts regarding the brand on blogs or social networks, audience build as measured by incoming links and the speed of that growth. Conversion rates are straightforward to compute. They consist of frequencies of web visitors to engage in the focal behavior, such as purchasing or signing up for email, relative to the number of visitors who come to the website. That is, the rates compare the desired outcomes to the number of visits or to the number of unique visitors.
Costs of the actions depend on the marketing goals: estimates of acquisition costs, payment for placement in search engines or banner ads, sending emails from a rented address database, etc. On the KPIs side, the effectiveness of those actions can be assessed by these frequencies, rates, and durations. Web analysts track the number of visitors coming via different routes, and they follow the customers’ traversal to the particular engagement behavior of interest.
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Social Media ROI, KPIs, and Web Analytics, cont.
 Post-Purchase
Satisfied customers
Customers may post positive reviews, give
endorsements, etc.
Dissatisfied customers
Company can read complaints, address issues, give incentives, etc.
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The wise companies care about their customers long after the purchase. If customers are satisfied, they may post positive reviews. If they are ecstatic, they may post extremely happy endorsements. The company may wish to reward these brand evangelists.
If the customers are unhappy, the company can at least read the nature of the complaint and work to address it. Companies can intervene to try for service recovery, bringing the customer back on board. Even grumbling customers respond to incentives—company apologies, problem solutions, and restorative benefits can help in retention, preventing customer defections, and turning a bad situation around.
It is not unusual for blogs, wikis, or lead user communities to be essential during product development, generating enthusiasm in the marketplace prior to launch.
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Check Your Understanding

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Summary
Social media defined
Media trends
Types of social media
Social networks
Social media ROI, KPIs, and web analytics

We have reached the end of this lesson. Let’s take a look at what we’ve covered.
 
First, we defined what is meant by social media which defined as people interacting and connecting with others via online software or alternative electronic access technologies, such as smartphones or tablet computers. 
Next, we discussed the media trends.
 
Then, we reviewed the types of social media, include rich, vivid sensory experiences, simple, industrious, and social.
 
Then, we defined social networks as the set of actors, or nodes, and the relational ties that link them.
 
Last, we discussed various methods that marketers use to measure social media, ROI, KPIs, and Web Analytics.
This completes this lesson.
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