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The Keys To Successful Social Marketing Strategies

Guest post by: Daniel Lacey

Article Overview: Social marketing's concentration is primarily on consumers' wants and needs rather than trying to convince them directly of the necessity to buy products and/or services. It is social marketing that is communicating with consumers, not the products. This category of marketing utilizes a mixture of marketing techniques to effect the sale of a product and/or service. The four P's of social marketing are summarized below:

The Keys To Successful Social Marketing Strategies

Social marketing's concentration is primarily on consumers' wants and needs rather than trying to convince them directly of the necessity to buy products and/or services. It is social marketing that is communicating with consumers, not the products. This category of marketing utilizes a mixture of marketing techniques to effect the sale of a product and/or service.

The four P's of social marketing are summarized below:

Product

Social marketing offers awareness of a product's existence and its intended function for an eventual consumer. What makes a product viable in this scenario? The aim is to convince consumers to think that a specific product answers a need that they have. Clearly, to achieve this, in-depth market research is important to social marketing given that it's designed to indicate consumers' likes and dislikes, product preferences, also consumers' views on products.

Price

This usually refers to the method or thing that the consumer needs to do to acquire a product or service. While this usually involves the exchange of money it could include intangibles such as effort and disapproval. When costs outweigh benefits, sales values tend to be reduced since consumers are reluctant to try new products. In contrast, if benefits outweigh costs, consumers are more willing to try something new and prices can be maintained at a higher level.

Place

This describes how the consumer receives a product or service. In the case of tangible goods, this is the "distribution system" which could include a sales force, transportation and retail outlets. For intangible goods, how the consumer place receives the product is unclear as it focuses on channels for training and information such as mass media, shopping malls, or in-house demos. Place also ensures access to quality and offering of service delivery.

Promotion

Most often, this social marketing element is mistaken for the whole marketing strategy. However, this is only one phase of marketing products. Promotion utilizes the combination of public relations, media advocacy, entertainment vehicles, and personal selling. That is to say, this is where advertisements become essential. Further, to gain critical knowledge of your target audience and their increasing demands in order to craft an effective social media campaign, it is highly recommended that companies conduct solid market research prior to product launch.

For maximum results, each one of these four P's needs not only careful consideration for the successful social marketing of products and services, but they should be carefully integrated to formulate a winning sales strategy.

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Article Tags: marketing techniques, social marketing



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Re: Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Kevin, Like GT suggested, I also think you can add Internet Marketing as a sub category in the Marketing section and also a Social marketing as subcategory. Online marketing/internet marketing/online promotion are the same, and it will be best to use the common term - Internet marketing. I can't think about someone to moderate a Social Marketing category. We all use it, we all know how to make it work and we all have our own different experience with it.
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Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Everyone, 2009 is a new year and I'd like to create a new forum category to jazz things up! In the past, there's been some interest voiced about adding a "Social Media Marketing", "Online Marketing", "Internet Marketing" or "Online Promotion" category. I'll implement [u:1g2tv6tf]ONE[/u:1g2tv6tf] of those new categories, but can someone first tell me what the difference would be between the existing "Marketing" section and one of those new options mentioned above? Thanks
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Just as an update, Evan has extended the poll's expiration date and says he'd like to see at least 25 "yes" votes before implementing the new category. Moreover, it would probably be called "Online Marketing" instead of Social Media Marketing".


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