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In-Depth Information
engagement, action and loyalty. It assumes an active audience of prosumers (Toffl er 1980) who
want to interact with marketers beyond the immediate sales transaction. It further acknowledges
that loyalty in social media cannot be assumed, but must be actively assured (Kozinets 1999).
Social media marketing thus falls within the new marketing logic described by Vargo and Lusch
(2004), which, instead of focusing on tangible resources, embedded value and transactions, fully
embraces intangible resources, co-creation of value and relationships.
Social media marketing is essentially about building relationships (Barefoot and Szabo 2010).
In order to build those relationships, it needs to enable and shape conversations (Safko and Brake
2009). Social media marketers are therefore conversation managers who develop methods to
strategically infl uence conversations (Mangold and Faulds 2009). Consequently, social media
marketing is concerned with how conversations can be prompted, promoted and monetized
(Safko and Brake 2009). Consumers are active participants and equal partners in these
conversations who co-create value together with marketers by exchanging resources and
information (Vargo and Lusch 2004). It is important to note that this means marketers cannot
control these conversations but can only try to infl uence them. User generated contents can
either reinforce marketing efforts or beat marketers at their own games (Evans 2008). It also
implies that marketers need to obtain an intricate understanding of how meaning creation
happens in a particular social media type and what use conventions have emerged so that they
can manage conversations in a way that is appreciated rather than seen as intrusive by the
consumers.
Social media marketing is based on traditional marketing but adopts a fundamentally different
philosophy in terms of the way interactions with potential and actual customers are structured.
Birch (2011) describes social media marketing as being focused on 4 Rs rather than the tradi-
tional 4Ps (
Table 36.1
).
Similarly, Gunelius (2011) calls for well-planned, active and continuous
engagement with infl uential consumers. This requires intricate knowledge of the social media
types and their users, a long-haul commitment and continuous engagement through interesting
content.
Reputation management is an important aspect of social media marketing as much of the
consumer-generated content consists of opinions/reviews. Given the focus on conversations
and reputation, social media marketing has a lot of similarities with public relations. However, it
would be naive to narrow it down to just that. As illustrated by Yoo and Gretzel (2010), social
media marketing functions span across all elements of marketing (
Table 36.2
).
Therefore,
social media marketing efforts should be seen as all-encompassing and as complementary
extensions of other marketing efforts instead of a replacement (Evans 2008). It is important to
note the much greater emphasis on research. This is the case not only because of the participatory
culture and high trackability of interactions on social media but also the greater need to inform
targeting to cut through the clutter and encourage viral spread.
Table 36.1
Marketing paradigm shift
Classic marketing
Twenty-first-century marketing
Social media marketing
Product
Experience
Relationship
Price
Exchange
Return on engagement
Place
Everyplace
Reach based on relevance
Promotion
Evangelism
Reputation
Source
: Adapted from Birch (2011)
