Social Media Marketing Notes

Unit 1: Determining Marketing Requirements

  • This unit introduces social media marketing (SMM).

SMM Assessments

  • CA1: Group Project (40% weightage)
    • Involves producing social media marketing content including storyboard, video production, analytics, and individual presentation.
  • CA2: Exam (50% weightage)
    • Interactive Assessment System – 30 MCQs
    • Due Date: Refer to Assignment Brief Slides (9 June, Monday, 09:00am-10:00am TBC)
  • BAA (Business as Usual) Weightage: 10%

BAA Components

  • Attendance
  • Punctuality
  • Teamwork & Collaboration
  • Workplace Safety & Housekeeping
  • Work Ethics & Professionalism

Needs & Wants

  • Needs:
    • Necessary for a person to live and get the job done.
    • E.g., air, water, food, socializing.
  • Wants:
    • Desires that improve quality of life.
    • People cannot afford everything and look for affordable alternatives.
    • E.g., wanting the latest iPhone 16 Pro.

Target Market & Audience

  • Target Market:
    • A particular group of consumers at which a product/service is aimed.

Target Audience

  • A business must define its target audience to connect with the customers they want to reach.
  • Distinct groups/segments of customers.
  • Why target a specific group of people:
    • Costs too much to target everybody.
    • Different people have different needs & wants.
    • Can be profiled using demographics & psychographics.

Demographics & Psychographics

  • Demographic Information:
    • Categorize people by age, occupation, gender, and income.
    • E.g., Age range, education, income range, occupation, housing, gender.
  • Psychographic Factors:
    • Define people based on their attitudes, aspirations, etc.
    • E.g., Special Interests, Hobbies, Values, Lifestyles, Opinions, Attitudes, Beliefs, Personalities, Social Class.
    • Customer preferences are always changing.
    • Businesses must adapt to these changes.

4Ps of Marketing

  • The Marketing Mix: Tool for business owners to understand & plan a successful product/service offering.
    • Product
    • Place
    • Price
    • Promotion

4Ps - Product

  • Item that satisfies the consumer’s needs/wants.
    • Tangible: Physical items (e.g., Handphone).
    • Intangible: Services, ideas, experiences (e.g., Haircut, Tour package).

4Ps - Price

  • Amount customer pays for a product.
  • Customer willingness to pay to acquire a product.
  • Involves both monetary & psychological costs.
    • E.g., Time & effort spent in acquiring the product.
  • Businesses need to consider various factors when pricing their products:
    • List price
    • Price discount
    • Special offers
    • Payments by credit
    • Credit terms

4Ps - Place

  • Providing access and convenience for the consumer.
  • Businesses need to make decisions to setup a physical location to carry out the business, storage, distribution etc.
  • Can be virtual locations (online).

4Ps - Promotion

  • The marketing communication used to make the offer known to potential customers.
  • Persuade customers to consider the product/service.
  • Includes advertising, public relations, direct selling, sales promotion.

Digital Marketing Mix

  • Using digital technology.
    • Product/Service/Solution
    • Can be tangible/intangible.
    • Intangible products can be virtual products in the digital space.
    • E.g., STEAM games, Netflix streaming platform, Spotify.

Price/Value (Digital Marketing Mix)

  • Advantages:
    • Pricing changes can be adjusted in real-time digitally.
    • Internet enables consumers to make a comparison of real-time prices before they make a purchase decision.
    • Consumers’ pov: saves time & effort, price transparency.
    • Pricing becomes competitive – minimised on rent, labour, utilities.

Place/Access (Digital Marketing Mix)

  • Sell online through an e-commerce platform.
  • Provide cheaper alternative compared to physical retail places.
  • Allows companies to distribute products/services without the need of a physical store.
    • Common e-commerce platform: Shopee, Lazada, Amazon.

Promotion (Digital Marketing Mix)

  • Display ads
  • Search marketing: SEO (search engine optimisation), PPC (Pay-per-click), SEM (search engine marketing)
  • Opt in email advertising
  • Online public relations: managing positive/negative online comments
  • Interactive advertising
  • Social media marketing (unit 3)

Marketing Process for a Business

  1. Use the traditional marketing mix
  2. Perform market research & analytics
  3. Select a marketing strategy: social media marketing, direct response, media advertising
  4. Execute, monitor & adjust social media marketing strategy

Traditional Marketing Mix

  • Use 4Ps to decide the marketing strategy that best suit your product/services
    • Product: Fit the task consumers want, work & expect to get
    • Price: How much the target consumers are willing to pay for the product. Determine & set the price
    • Place: Where the product should be made available
    • Promotion: Determine the message to promote the product/service. How to use the product/features are common messages

Market Research & Analytics

  • Before you start marketing a product/service, you need to understand your target customers. Find out:
    • Where they frequent
    • What websites they visit
    • How long they stay on a webpage

Google Analytics

  • Provides insights into how your customers are behaving when visiting your website
  • Show which products they viewed, what they purchase/did not purchase
  • What social media channels they are responding to

Google Keywords Tool

  • Provides information into the behaviour of consumers when searching online for products/services similar to what you are offering

Google Trends

  • Data gathered from its search engine
  • Provide instant snapshot of consumer social media & search behaviour
  • Can be used for comparative keyword research, discover event- triggered spikes
  • Provides keyword-related data such as search volume index, geographical information

Surveys

  • Perform surveys to obtain information about your target customer
    • Online tools (e.g. Survey Monkey) to run digital survey
    • Traditional printed survey
    • Street survey
    • Telephone survey

Select a Marketing Strategy

  • After gathering data & performed analysis, choose a suitable marketing strategy to meet your goals
    • Social Media Marketing: Content Marketing, Affiliate Marketing
    • Direct Response: Email Marketing (opt-in), Direct Mailers
    • Media Advertising: Print, Broadcast

Marketing Strategies – Social Media Marketing

  • Use of social media platforms/websites to promote a product/service
  • Provides focus & targeted audience to the advertiser
  • Have a clear objective
  • Select right social media platform to reach your audience
  • Define & find your target audience on the platform you have chosen
  • Decide on the best type of content to reach your audience
  • Select the best-paid type of advertisement on the platform

Marketing Strategies – Content Marketing

  • Marketing & business process for creating & distributing relevant & valuable content
  • To attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience
  • Objective: drive profitable customer action
    • E.g. Coca-Cola “Share a coke” campaign
    • Customers can personalise their own bottle with their own name
    • Campaign went viral – consumers started posting images online with their personalised drinks
    • Allow consumers to create their own content & draw them to the brand while making a sale
    • E.g. Hootsuite
    • Capitalise on Game of Thrones TV series
    • Viral with fans of the TV series, spark emotion & curiosity about their social media management application

Marketing Strategies – Affiliate Marketing

  • E.g. You run a website reviewing Toasters
  • You include links to various resellers of each toaster you reviewed supplied by the Affiliate
  • When visitors come to your website, read your review & click on the links you provided
  • They are brought to the specific affiliate websites selling the toasters they just read about
  • If they make a purchase, you will earn a commission from the sale
  • Affiliates track these sales via cookies
    • Cookies are small files that reside in your computer to track your movements as you surf the internet
    • Enables the Affiliate to track your affiliate marketing effort & pay your commission

Marketing Strategies – Direct Response Email Marketing (opt-in)

  • Advertisers create a message & email their database of customers, usually with a promotional message to purchase
  • Consider spam – customers find it nuisance
  • Laws introduced to manage email marketing – require permission from customers to send email

Marketing Strategies – Direct Response

  • Direct Mailers: Use database of potential customers; Created & mailed using postal service
  • Print: Printed communication - considered mass communication. E.g. newspapers, brochures, billboards
  • Broadcast: Paid tv advertising; Companies buy airtime (usually up to 120 seconds) on tv to communicate with target customers through advertising messages

Execute, Monitor & Adjust Strategy

  • Once a marketing strategy & social media platform have been determined, execute the campaign
  • Monitor campaign by tracking meaningful metrics; Depend on what your original goals are
  • Analyse the data & examine efforts
  • Adjust the strategy accordingly
  • Social Media Metrics: Engagement
    • How is the audience interacting with your message/content?
    • Likes
    • Comments
    • Shares
    • Clicks
  • Social Media Metrics: Awareness
    • Impressions: how many times a post shows up in someone’s timeline
    • Reach: potential unique users have seen your post (message/content)

Distribution Channel

  • Business to Consumer
    • Traditional Channel: retail store
    • Online Channel: online store
  • Business to Business
    • Traditional Channel:
    • E.g. Foxconn operates a B2B distribution channel where they assemble iphones and macbook for Apple
    • E.g. Advertising agency operates a B2B distribution channel where they offer marcom services for companies
    • Online Channel:
    • E.g. Suppliers advertise their products on Alibaba to reach out to companies who make bulk purchase for their business
  • Consumer to Consumer
    • Traditional Channel:
    • E.g. Flea market where people sell unwanted things from their home to other people
    • Fleawhere – a company that takes a percentage of renting space to consumers who sells their 2nd hand goods
    • Auction Houses – Christies
      • Facilitate in selling personal goods of value via an auction and takes a commission of the final auction price
      • Focus on goods of high value since low-value items are not profitable due to space & logistical constraints
    • Online Channel:
    • E.g. Carousell, eBay
      • Provide online platform to facilitate consumer-to-consumer transactions
      • Allows consumer to sell their items at any value
      • No constraints on logistics and space
  • Consumer to Business
    • Consumers (individuals) create value for businesses
    • E.g. content creators/influencers
    • Usually has large following & viewership, thus companies are willing to pay these consumers to advertise their products/services
    • E.g Pewdiepie, aged 28, has networth of USD$$120million
    • Koocester

Promotional Mix

  • A combination of marketing methods to achieve specific marketing goal.
    1. Advertising
    2. Sales Promotions
    3. Direct Marketing
    4. Personal Selling
    5. Public Relations
    6. Branding

Promotional Mix - Advertising

  • A means of communication between an organization & consumer of a product/service
  • Messages paid to inform/influence people who receive the message
  • E.g. TV commercials, newspaper, magazines, radio, websites, billboards, buses, endorsements by celebrities/professional/influencers

Promotional Mix – Sales Promotion

  • Short-term tactics to persuade a potential customer to buy a product/service
  • Used to boost sales
  • Not suitable for building long-term customer loyalty

Promotional Mix – Direct Marketing

  • How content creators/small business owners use online platforms to conduct direct marketing:
    • Etsy – creators sell their creations and advertise their stores as top search
    • YouTube/TikTok/Xiao Hong Shu – creators create content and get paid based on viewership
    • Canva – creators create specific templates and sell
  • Online payment led to ease of using digital platforms
    • E.g. Paypal, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Paynow, Paylah, GrabPay, ShopeePay
    • Consumers can pay creators directly through an online platform or transfer to their mobile phone-linked bank account

Promotional Mix – Personal Selling

  • Using people to sell their products/services meeting the customer face-to-face
  • Seller promote the products through their attitude, appearance & specialist product knowledge
  • Aim to inform & encourage customer to buy/try the product
  • E.g. Insurance sales, property sales, car sales, door to door sales

Promotional Mix – Public Relations

  • Strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organization and public
  • Provides an organization/individual to maintain a favourable public image
  • Big corporations, celebrities, political leaders use public relations agencies to maintain their public image

Introduction to Branding

  • An effective brand strategy gives you an advantage in your market.
  • Informs customers what to expect from your product/service
  • Differentiates products/services from competitors
  • Your brand describes who you are, whom you want to be and how people perceive you to be
  • E.g. communicate a lifestyle/image/aspirations/attitudes to a customer

How To Create A Brand

  1. Create a logo to represent your brand
    • A good logo is easy to remember, simple & conveys a brand personality
  2. Create a brand message
  3. Develop a tagline
    • Memorable, meaningful & concise statement to capture the essence of your brand
  4. Integrate your brand
    • E.g. stationery, how phone calls are answers, staff uniform
    • Select a colour scheme, brand templates
  5. Deliver your promise
  6. Brand consistency

Traditional Marketing Strategy - Print

  • All advertisements & communications involving the printed medium
    • E.g. newspaper
    • Advertisers purchase advertising space from newspaper & advertise their products/services
    • Undergo a major transitional shift to digital
    • Common strategy: drive-to-web, traditional newspaper media move their readership base to newer digital platforms
    • Magazines: sell advertising space
    • E.g. onboard Singapore Airlines, SilverKris magazine
    • Flyers
    • Narrow readership profile based on interests & hobbies, companies can leverage to advertise their products/services
    • Direct Mailers – aka Direct Response Marketing
    • To communicate an offer to a pre-selected database of customers based on their demographic and psychographic profile
    • E.g. banks use direct mailers to reach to their potential customer base to promote their credit card services
    • Flyers
    • Distribute in public space to individuals – high foot traffic
    • Mail to individual homes
    • Brochures/Pamphlet
    • Informative paper documents
    • Catalogues
    • Publication produced by a business containing a list of products for sale
    • Customers will receive the publication in their mailbox and place an order through the reply form or go to the company’s website to place an order
    • Billboards – aka Out-of-Home (OOH) or Outdoor Advertising
    • Found in high-traffic areas
    • Digital/3D/interactive billboards are common in major cities

Traditional Marketing Strategy - Broadcast

  • Transmit via radio/television
    • Television
    • Radio
    • Cinema
    • Streaming – Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+