The New Tendencies of Social Marketing

With the popularization of mobile internet and the rapidly development of socialized media, a lot of traditional industries are under high pressure of transition. At the same time, social marketing filed is facing more challenges and adjustment also. 

Then what would happen in social marketing filed? “There are three new tendencies of social marketing,” said by Dongliang Shen, CEO of a leading digital marketing company in China.  

Trend one, normalization hot spot marketing, creativity is coming back

The popularization of mobile internet made people become deep engagement users of socialized media. Users not only are the receiver of social information, but also the source of it. The whole thing made more and more ads serving inefficient, which made one-way output of traditional marketing model useless.

Then marketers have to feed users with more creativities more quickly. Under this condition, brands find out easier a way to do marketing---hot spot marketing. 

There are lots of hot spot marketing cases emerged in mind these days. Such as “I want to explore the big world” wrote on a resignation letter from a Chinese teacher who has never left her hometown, or Pluto event, Uniqlo event and so on. Marketers are addicted to the prosperous illusion of occasion marketing, calling it social marketing. They prefer chasing hot spot as quickly as possible, which bring hyped up too much without relationship with creativity. 

Now, users follow their heart within the communities of socialized media. They desire excellent ideas urgently if they get numb of hyped events. The truth is that effectiveness marketing cases are based on good creativities.

Then what is the criterion of good creativity under social marketing environment? The changed communication channels changed ideas evaluation criteria.

The evaluation criterion is changing. 
At the era of print media dominating the world, the idea creations and performances are surrounded by “client like it or not”. Today, multi-media platforms, uses voice free on social media made the evaluation criteria turn to “users like it or not”.

Content form is changing.

Clients prefer that their products print ads are high in style, in taste and in quality. But the features of social marketing ads are short, adoptable, quick, humor, mainly in similar tipping point.

Effectiveness prediction is changing.

The ads costs are enormous at the traditional era, having no way to monitor the effectiveness and convert ratio. But it is easy to understand the marketing effectiveness through big data and social CRM in social media era.

Trend Two: wemedia Ads becoming part of the mainstream

During the past couple of years, the wemedia has been underestimated and used in the wrong way. Nowadays, in the mobile Internet era, wemedia has become an indispensable platform with most enormous influence ever. Some famous wemedia platforms have distinguishing features, strong viewpoints and their own loyal fans. These made wemedia influential and promising.

According to a survey, there are already over 8.5 million public accounts that can be searched on WeChat, over 157 thousand writers work on them, and over 30 billion views everyday on WeChat. Data shows that wemedia platforms are building a new business model of “Group Economy”.

From the perspective of social science, groups gather people with similar characteristics. That means a group should be individualized and personalized, rather than standard and patterned. It also meets the Internet concept of vertical market. Brands should choose appropriate wemedia that can endorse them in the right market or toward the right group of people.
                                                                                                 Once brands reached the right people, it is easy to turn them into future customers or fans of the brands.

Trend Three: Socialized Media is forming a close circle, making profit

Due to the development of communication environment, socialized marketing is facing challenges from creativity to channels. Many used to believing that socialized marketing looked much more efficient than it actually was. Brands were running multiple social accounts with large amount follows, but hardly to turn them into actually customers. However, the environment has become mature. With advanced technologies, abundant data and convenient channels to reach customers, the advantage and efficiency of socialized marketing are now showing.

So, how to achieve the marketing goals through socialized media? The answer probably is to form a closed social media marketing circle.

Firstly, positioning the customers. Fully taking the advantage of big data to find out the consumers’ needs, and digging out the potential customers.

Secondly, making specific strategies. Brands can work out particular strategies for the targeted group of people after positioning them, according to the analysis of big data.

Thirdly, reaching the customers precisely. Choose the right media platforms, KOLs and channels, according to the analysis, to influent the positioned audience and deliver the given information efficiently.

Fourthly, taking action. Build the O2O business mode to make the transaction happen, turning the brand followers into real buyers, meanwhile collecting first-hand data of users for the brand.

Fifthly, remarketing and CRM. Input those detailed and authentic data into the CRM system, and keep improving the user profile, preparing for the next sale and remarketing.

In the above closed socialized marketing circle, we are working on the entire chain from data analysis to sales achieving, more than merely making voice for the brand on social media.

It would be better to treat all of above as “should-be” rather than new trends. Creative content, influential channels and fully functional strategies are the real power to make brand keep moving on in the Internet era.