Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Definition & Goals

What is SMM ?
Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of Internet marketing that utilizes social
networking websites as a marketing tool. The goal of SMM is to produce content
that users will share with their social network to help a company increase brand
exposure and broaden customer reach.

Importance of targeting in social media marketing
It is a technique to provide business with a “target audience” . After all, marketing is for the purpose of
attracting consumers. Information relevant to user’s likes can be obtained from the social networks. It is
made available to advertisers and marketers; who can then advertise as per the requirements of the
business and hence it is a very crucial technique.
COBRAs:
Consumers Online Brand Related Activities (COBRAs) is another technique which is used by the
marketers to promote their products. It involves activities like uploading a picture of your new branded
watch to instagram or facebook. It facilitates spreading awareness of that particular product on the social
media platform thus gaining responses and demand for the product.

eWOM:
Electronic word of mouth(eWOM) is another technique which can be carried out for effective social media marketing. With
the use of this technique, electronic recommendations and suggestions help to promote a product effectively through
consumer-to-consumer interactions. A good example for the same would be online purchasing. A good service will include
good quality and early delivery which will earn a positive review which gives that site free advertisement via social media. A
bad review will make a negative impression which will make that site undesirable.

Ramification of Social Media Marketing on Traditional Advertising
With the growing use of social media marketing, the traditional advertising and
marketing techniques are lagging behind. Print and Television advertising are the
traditional techniques of advertising/marketing. Internet has already bypassed
television as the largest advertising market. It is not necessary that the social
networking sites show ads and pop ups. But the products marketed on social
networking sites have entire pages for them and can help in active interaction
among users interested in them. Introduction of other techniques like bar code
scanner, which can be scanned by mobile phones and computers. These
barcodes send the users directly to the product website or webpage.

Goals of Social Media Marketing
1. Drive Traffic to your Website
One of the more obvious goals of social media is to drive traffic directly to your website. Because social
media provides a simple way to link those who are engaging back to your site, it has proven to be one of
the most successful ways to drive new traffic to your website. What does driving traffic to your website do?
Aside from potential purchases, the increased traffic to your website increases your overall brand or
company visibility, and in turn allows consumers to become more familiar with you and keeps your name
fresh on their minds. It also provides the opportunity for increased activity within the site, such as
interaction with the blog, a look into pricing and services and the potential to like and share the page.
While traffic to your website shouldn’t be the end-all be-all to your social media marketing goals, it
definitely is a very important one that shouldn’t be ignored.

Develop Relationships
Even more so than with traditional forms of marketing, a huge goal of social media marketing is to foster
and maintain relationships with important people, such as key influencers as well as target audiences. By
keeping up to date with people through social media, one can gage what another’s interests are, where
they could use help and what their own brand or company can do to provide assistance to them. When
developing relationships with key influencers, be sure to pay attention to their interests and talents, and
create a relationship that each party can benefit from. When creating and maintaining relationships with
your target audiences, make sure that your communication is two-way, so that not only are you getting the
information out that you need to, but that you you are also learning from their wants and needs, so they
feel that you care and that their voice is being heard.

Flourish Your Brand
An extremely important opportunity that social media provides for a company is to really let the public see
their brand’s personality and what they stand for. Social media is a great place to let your public get to
know you a little bit better by sharing things that you wouldn’t otherwise get the opportunity to share.
These will let the crowd get a better idea of who the company is, what they’re all about and what’s
important to them. The best way to develop your brand, and to maintain a consistent brand image, is to
make sure that everything that you put out there for the public to see remains consistent and true to your
brand’s beliefs and values. Don’t post anything that would confuse consumers about who your brand is.
For more information on developing your brand, you can refer back to our blog “Social Media Brand
Building.”

Inspire Interest
Another huge goal of social media marketing is to develop interest among your audience. Always keep in
mind what will keep your target interested when creating content for your social networks (while remaining
true to your brand, as discussed earlier). People generally tend to gravitate towards posts or pieces that
they identify with, so knowing your target audience well will help. In addition, intriguing graphics and
design are another way to really draw the crowd in. Back that up with killer content, and you’ll have
consumers sold. Also, just by developing a brand “personality” as we have discussed, more people will be
able to relate to, and in turn will be more interested in your brand.

Advantages of SMM -
1)Increased brand awareness
2)More inbound traffic
3)Improved Search Engine rankings
4)Higher Conversion rates
5)Better customer satisfaction

SEO vs SMM ?
SEO refers to the techniques and strategies used to increase the likelihood of a website appearing on
search engine results, namely as close to the top of that list as possible.
SMM does not involve search engines, but does play a key role in a website's exposure and online
marketing efforts. Whereas dealing with search engines requires a delicate and constant adjustment of
subtle factors (SEO) or costly premiums (SEM), working through social media is relatively cheap and
holds the promise of incredibly lucrative growth, if done properly.