Mahendra Heda 10th Dec 2013

Prof. Erin Karl Graduate Writing and Reading

Social Media Marketing : Economic tool of Marketing Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites and Internet marketing to company website or specifically to the product. Social media marketing is playing the key role in the field of marketing and business. 90% of businesses are using social media marketing as the marketing tool for their product or service. This clearly shows the importance of social media marketing. More than the one third of worlds population use the Internet frequently (http://www.internetworldstats.com). Over two and half billion of people are using the social media websites frequently

(http://www.statisticbrain.com). So the social media marketing is proving to be very convenient and economic way of reaching all these people in very short amount on time. Social media marketing had been the necessity of time. Its changing the face of traditional marketing and way of reaching to the consumer. In the marketing mix, we use different marketing tools such as Print Media, Television commercials, Sales Promotion and Social Media Marketing. Amongst all, Social Media Marketing is very economical and is the best way of building the brand name and brand loyalty in the short period of time. On average, 60% of marketing budget is spent on the Television Commercials, Print Media and Sales Promotion (www.searchengineland.com). However, the reach to the audience through these tools is limited and also not targeted. Only 20% of marketing budget is spent on the Social Media Marketing, which in turn reaches to a greater number of people and at the same time can be efficiently used to reach targeted consumers only (Ab Hamid, Noor Raihan, 2012). This type of budgeting for the marketing is not the most affective in the modern world. Companies should increase the spending on

social media marketing rather than traditional marketing tools which in term will help get more publicity and brand equity. However, the total spending of companies will be less even after increasing the budget of social media marketing than earlier when the company used to spend 60% on the traditional marketing ways. Social Media Marketing can also play the vital role in Viral and Buzz marketing. Viral and Buzz marketing creates very high brand equity in very short span of time. For example, for the company Lane Bryant, Social media marketing proved to be boon. Once channel Fox and ABC declined to air the advertisement of Lane Bryant Lingerie for the plus size woman stating that it's too sex appealing or exhibitionist (Examiner.com). As a result, Lane Bryants marketing manager started a social media campaign against the channel and it has gone viral. According to the marketing manager of Lane Bryant, she would have had to spend at least one and half million dollars to get so much publicity which company got for free using the Social Media Marketing campaign. In our study, we are going to expose the two groups of students from RIT to two different type of marketing for the same product. One group will be exposed only to the social media marketing while other to the traditional marketing. After 4 days of exposure to the marketing of same product, we will ask them to purchase the product and will calculate the conversion rate of consumer for the actual purchase for both the group for the comparison of effectiveness of marketing. Print media, Television Commercials and Sales promotion are the tools on which most of the budget of marketing is spent, but using these tools companies can only reach a certain amount of people. However, companies nowadays should be spending more on Social Media Marketing to create the digital awareness of company and reach the limitless number of people economically (www.mediabistro.com).

References : 1. World Internet Users Statistics Usage and World PopulationStats. (n.d.). World Internet Users Statistics Usage and World PopulationStats. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.html 2. Social Networking Statistics. (n.d.). Statistic Brain RSS. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://www.statisticbrain.com/social-networking-statistics/ 3. Plus size Lane Bryant lingerie ad banned by Fox and ABC, is it too racy? (videos, poll). (n.d.). Examiner.com. Retrieved December 11, 2013, from

http://www.examiner.com/article/plus-size-lane-bryant-lingerie-ad-banned-by-foxand-abc-is-it-too-racy-videos-poll.html 4. 93% Of Marketers Maintaining Or Increasing Social Media Ad Spend In 2014 [STUDY]. (n.d.). AllTwitter. Retrieved December 10, 2013, from

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/digital-ad-spend-2014_b50520 5. Column: Local Search Column." Search Engine Land. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. <http://searchengineland.com/smbs-spend-an-average-46-of-marketing-budget-ondigital-177502>. 6. Social Media : New Hybrid element of promotion mix Business Horizon (2009) 52,357-365 Retrieved from www.sciencedirect.com 7. If you love something,let it go mobile:Mobile marketing & mobile media Andreas Kaplan, Business Horizons (2012) 55, 129139 retrieved from www.sciencedirect.com