Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
3
individuality for customers;
4
interaction with customers;
5
integration of customers; and
6
intention of a unique relationship.
These principles still hold true for social media marketing but the way they are defi ned and
implemented is fundamentally different. Information about customers is a fundamental
component but now not only includes basic demographic and transactional data but a massive
amount of opinions and social data that is readily available to companies. Marketers still need to
decide in which customers to invest but customer value needs to be redefi ned and customer
expectations of what an 'investment' in them looks like have changed. Also, the enormous
amounts of data available allow for different segmentation approaches and the nature of social
media allows for extensive behavioural targeting not possible before. Individuality through
personalization creating an aura of exclusivity is essential for traditional relationship marketing
while in a social media context customers are more concerned with relevance and social sharing
of offers. Interaction with customers and their integration into value-creation processes have
reached new levels in social media marketing with interaction being continuous and customers
being more than willing to provide inputs in a variety of ways (Sigala 2012). Both build
fundamentally on the data, segmenting, targeting and personalizing that represent the base of the
relationship marketing pyramid. Also, in addition to customer-company interactions, social
media marketing is about stimulating and supporting customer-customer interactions, a tactic
often referred to as tribal marketing (Pace, Fratocchi and Cocciola 2007). There is still an
intention to build a lasting relationship but companies cannot expect that this means customers
will not form similar relationships with competitors. Also, these relationships are now visible to
other customers and competitors (e.g. customers' 'liking' of a company is visible on their
Facebook timeline).
In order to design and implement successful social media marketing campaigns, it is essential
to understand the culture on which social media-based interactions are formed. The Social Web
Figure 36.1
Relationship marketing pyramid (adapted from Diller 2000).
