Social Media Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

We learnt a lot of things about social media in lecture 4 and 5, such as example platforms in social networking, social marketing and commerce, and social multimedia. Before these lectures, I just thought that the social media was only for entertainment or people relationships build up tools, never know that social media also can used by commercial purpose. Customers can interact with company, provide feedback, and learn more about company culture, products and service through social media marketing. In lecture notes, I read that “Social media has changed the way to do traditional marketing and even online marketing.”, so I am very curious about the difference between traditional marketing and social media marketing, and what advantages of social media marketing. To help the analysis, I read thought the lecture notes again and did some online research.

Ok, let's talk about what is traditional marketing and social media marketing first. Traditional marketing is advertising through TV, radio and print such as newspapers, magazines and leaflet mostly. Users are forced to get the latest information most of time, which interrupt their focus, such as watch their favorite TV show, listen to their style of music or read the latest news of their interest. Unfortunately, company can only attract 1-2% people using this way.

Social media marketing put effects on create attractive content and encourage readers sharing with their social networks. Usually, it's much more convinced when a friend tells you about it not the company itself. So we can say this kind of marketing is driven by word-of-mouth. There are many social networking websites such as facebook, twitter, google+, youtube, blogs and so one nowadays. Everyone can interact with each other and build relationships through these platforms. When products or companies join those social tools, peoples can share products experiences. These social media allow users to copy the promoted products information including comments post on their own websites, which is sharing to their friends. By repeating message, more and more users see the message, more and more potential customers created, more and more traffic brought to products or company.

For traditional marketing, it is always the hardest part to keep your customers, hope them will come back and bring more customers to you. But for social media marketing, it is opposite. It is about recognizing that your existing customers are your best assets. You can reach your existing customers to remind them to come back and make word of mouth by using social media.

Social media differs from traditional marketing that it involves two-way communication. After watching a video about social media marketing (as following video), I list the advantages of social media marketing as following:

·         Customer acquisition: reach much more customers and networks of people.

·         Brand awareness: brand much easier and faster; less competition yet.

·         Targeted Marketing: easily targeted, tracked, and quantifiable. can be tracked on real time. Inexpensive.

·         Customer intention: communication with customers about new products, special promotions, or merely education on your business.

·         Immediate results: increased site traffic, lead acquisition, ultimately increased sales.

Although there are so many benefits of social media marketing, you cannot throw other marketing tactics away. In fact, social media marketing works best when combined with other marketing activities especially email marketing. At last, I read a good blog written by Dr Vikram Venkateswaran really want to share here - How Social Media Marketing complements Traditional Marketing: Oprah Winfrey Example. It uses Oprah interview as an example to explain the social media is not replacement of traditional media but a very impotent component of the marketing mix.