The Secret Formula: Crossing Over From Social Media to Social Marketing

Many organizations have embraced online marketing and e-commerce, thanks to the advancement in technology. To make things even better, they are now going all out in using social media as one of their tools to sell and market their brands.

Many consumers also use the social media as a sharing tool.

They can share the items they have purchased with their friends and there are several companies out there to help customers do this. The companies make this a free service – one will just need to sign up and one can adjust their privacy settings to ensure that the price of the items they are buying is not disclosed. So all the buyers need to do, is to share what they are buying with their friends and where they will make the purchase.

Using social media is not rocket science.

In fact it is user friendly. Sadly there are some businesses out there that are struggling to adopt this great marketing tool. This is simply because they try to link the relevance between the social customer relationship management and social media.

There are three stages that should be focused on when organizations decide to make the move to social commerce. They are the recruit stage, the engage stage and finally the convert stage. These have been seen to be the shortest path in achieving true social commerce.

Stage 1: Recruit

The first step that such organizations must take is to try and understand how these social channels will work for them in terms of marketing and selling their brands and products, making them first among their equals in the market. The recruit stage deals with of the authored content and giving rewards and some incentives to their customers.

Stage 2: Engage

The engage stage on the other hand uses rich media, participatory contests and email sign ups. This social marketing stage can help all those in social media explore the benefits they may accrue due to moving on to social commerce.

Stage 3: Convert

The convert stage has several points under it such as the end to end reports, customer relationship management and e-commerce integration, making public offers.

Social commerce focuses on a general path that includes a sort of outreach followed by sharing of information, starting up conversations, allowing people to share their experiences making offers and finally the good old fashion word of mouth sales. Following this path can help the businesses use the modern communication methods to their commercial benefit.

What challenges have you found?

Related articles

• Are companies listening to their social media accounts? (socialmediatoday.com)
• Ideas To Make Social Media Part Of Your Marketing Mix (webguild.org)
• How to Measure Social Media’s Impact on Customer Retention (socialmediaexaminer.com)