Social Marketing is quickly becoming one of the most important aspects of digital marketing, which provides incredible benefits that help reach millions of customers worldwide. And if you are not applying this profitable source, you are missing out an incredible marketing opportunity, as it makes it easy to spread the word about your product and mission.

1. Improved brand awareness

Social Marketing is one of the most stress-free and profitable digital marketing platforms that can be used to increase your business visibility. To get started, create social media profiles for your business and start networking with others. By applying a social media strategy, it will help you significantly increase your brand recognition. By spending only a few hours per week, over 91% marketers claimed that their social marketing efforts greatly increased their brand visibility and heightened user experience. Undoubtedly, having a social media page for your brand will benefit your business and with a regular use, it can also produce a wide audience for your business in no time.

2. Cost-effective

For an advertising strategy, social marketing is possibly the most cost-effective way. Creating an account and signing up is free for almost all social networking platforms. But if you decide to use paid advertising on social media, always start small to see what you should expect. Being cost-effective is important as it helps you attain a greater return on investment and hold a bigger budget for other marketing and business payments. Just by investing a little money and time, you can significantly increase your conversion rates and ultimately get a return on investment on the money that you primarily invested.

3. Engage with your customers

Social Marketing is a good way for engaging and interacting customers. The more you communicate with the audience, the more chances you have of conversion. Set up a two-way communication with your target audience so that their wishes are known and their interest is catered with ease. Moreover, communication and engagement with customers is one the ways to win their attention and convey them your brand message. Thus, your brand will reach more audience in real terms and gets itself established without any hassle.

4. Improved brand loyalty

When you have a social Marketing presence, you make it easier for your customers to find you and connect with you. By connecting with your customers through social media, you are more probable to upsurge customer retention and customer loyalty. Since developing a loyal customer base is one of the main goals of almost any business. Customer satisfaction and brand loyalty typically go hand in hand. It is essential to often engage with your customers and start developing a bond with them. Social media is not just limited to introducing your product, it is also a leading platform for promotional campaigns. A customer sees these platforms as service channels where they can directly communicate with the business.

5. Healthier customer satisfaction

Social Marketing plays a vital role in networking and communication platform. With the help of these platforms, creating a voice for your company is important in improving the overall brand image. Customers appreciate the fact that when they post comments on your page, they receive a modified reply rather than a computerized message. A brand that values its customers, takes the time to compose a personal message, which is perceived naturally in a positive light.

6. Marketplace awareness

One of the best ways to find the needs and wants of your customers instead of directly communicating with them is Marketplace awareness. It is also considered as the most valuable advantage of social media. By observing the activities on your profile, you can see customers’ interest and opinions that you might not know otherwise if you didn’t have a social media presence. As a complementary research tool, social media can help you get information and a better understanding of your industry. Once you get a large following, you can then use additional tools to examine other demographics of your consumers.

7. More brand authority

For making your business more powerful, brand loyalty and customer satisfaction both play a major role, but it all comes down to communication. When customers see your company posting on social media, especially replying to their queries and posting original content, it helps them build a positive image in their minds. Regularly interacting with your customers proves that you and your business care about them. Once you get a few satisfied customers, who are vocal about their positive purchase experience, you can let the advertising be done for you by genuine customers who appreciated your product or service.

8. Increased traffic

One of the other benefits of Social Media is that it also helps increase your website traffic. By sharing your content on social media, you are giving users a reason to click-through to your website. On your social account, the more quality content you share, the more inbound traffic you will generate while making conversion opportunities.

9. Enhanced SEO rankings

Social Marketing presence is becoming a vital factor in calculating rankings. These days, to secure a successful ranking, SEO requirements are continuously varying. Therefore, it is no longer enough to simply optimize your website and regularly update your blog. Businesses sharing their content on social media are sending out a brand signal to search engine that speaks to your brand validity, integrity, and constancy.

There is no denying that Social media marketing has many advantages for startups and established brands. By regular updating the right social media marketing strategy, it will lead to increased traffic, better SEO, improved brand loyalty, healthier customer satisfaction and much more. Your competition is already increasing on social media day by day, so don’t let your competitors take your probable customers. The earlier you start, the faster you see the growth in your business.

Social marketing has the primary goal of achieving “social good”. Traditional commercial marketing aims are primarily financial, though they can have positive social effects as well. In the context of public health, social marketing would promote general health, raise awareness and induce changes in behaviour. Social marketing has been a large industry for some time now and was originally done with newspapers and billboards, but similar to commercial marketing has adapted to the modern world. The most common use of social marketing in today’s society is through social media. However, to see social marketing as only the use of standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals is an oversimplified view.

Evolution of Social Marketing

Many scholars ascribe the beginning of the field of social marketing to an article published by G.D. Wiebe in the Winter 1951-1952 edition of Public Opinion Quarterly. In it, Wiebe posed a rhetorical question: “Why can’t you sell brotherhood and rational thinking like you can sell soap?” He then went on to discuss what he saw as the challenges of attempting to sell a social good as if it were a commodity, thus identifying social marketing (though he did not label it as such) as a discipline unique from c mmodity marketing. Yet, Wilkie & Moore (2003) note that the marketing discipline has been involved with questions about the intersection of marketing and society since its earliest days as a discipline.

A decade later, organizations such as the KfW Entwicklungsbank in Germany, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in The Netherlands, UK Department for International Development, US Agency for International Development, World Health Organization and the World Bank began sponsoring social marketing interventions to improve family planning and achieve other social goals in Africa, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere.

The next milestone in the evolution of social marketing was the publication of “Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change” in the Journal of Marketing by Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman. Kotler and Zaltman coined the term ‘social marketing’ and defined it as “the design, implementation, and control of programs calculated to influence the acceptability of social ideas and involving considerations of product planning, pricing, communication, distribution, and marketing research.” They conclude that “social marketing appears to represent a bridging mechanism which links the behavior scientist’s knowledge of human behavior with the socially useful implementation of what that knowledge allows.”

Craig Lefebvre and June Flora introduced social marketing to the public health community in 1988, where it has been most widely used and explored. They noted that there was a need for “large scale, broad-based, behavior change focused programs” to improve public health (the community wide prevention of cardiovascular diseases in their respective projects) and outlined eight essential components of social marketing that still hold today:

• A consumer orientation to realize organizational (social) goals
• An emphasis on the voluntary exchanges of goods and services between providers and consumers
• Research in audience analysis and segmentation strategies
• The use of formative research in product and message design and the pretesting of these materials
• An analysis of distribution (or communication) channels
• Use of the marketing mix—using and blending product, price, place and promotion characteristics in intervention planning and implementation
• A process tracking system with both integrative and control functions
• A management process that involves problem analysis, planning, implementation and feedback functions.

Speaking of what they termed “social change campaigns”, Kotler and Ned Roberto introduced the subject by writing, “A social change campaign is an organized effort conducted by one group (the change agent) which attempts to persuade others (the target adopters) to accept, modify, or abandon certain ideas, attitudes, practices or behavior.” Their 1989 text was updated in 2002 by Philip Kotler, Ned Roberto and Nancy Lee. In 2005, University of Stirling was the first university to open a dedicated research institute to Social Marketing, while in 2007, Middlesex University became the first university to offer a specialized postgraduate programme in Health & Social Marketing.

In recent years there has been an important development to distinguish between “strategic social marketing” and “operational social marketing”.

Much of the literature and case examples focus on operational social marketing, using it to achieve specific behavioral goals in relation to different audiences and topics. However, there has been increasing efforts to ensure social marketing goes “upstream” and is used much more strategically to inform policy formulation and strategy development. Here the focus is less on specific audience and topic work but uses strong customer understanding and insight to inform and guide effective policy and strategy development. Social marketing in most cases stands in contrast to business marketing and serves for society wellbeing. The techniques of this marketing are used for change of attitudes and behaviours of different audiences in public life.

Social marketing is also being explored as a method for social innovation, a framework to increase the adoption of evidence-based practices among professionals and organizations, and as a core skill for public sector managers and social entrepreneurs. It is being viewed as an approach to design more effective, efficient, equitable and sustainable approaches to enhance social well-being that extends beyond individual behavior change to include creating positive shifts in social networks and social norms, businesses, markets and public policy.

Many examples exist of social marketing research, with over 120 papers compiled in a six volume set.). For example, research now shows ways to reduce the intentions of people to binge drink or engage in dangerous driving. Martin, Lee, Weeks and Kaya (2013) suggests that understanding consumer personality and how people view others is important. People were shown ads talking of the harmful effects of binge drinking. People who valued close friends as a sense of who they are were less likely to want to binge drink after seeing an ad featuring them and a close friend. People who were loners or who did not see close friends important to their sense of who they were reacted better to ads featuring an individual. A similar pattern was shown for ads showing a person driving at dangerous speeds. This suggests ads showing potential harm to citizens from binge drinking or dangerous driving are less effective than ads highlighting a person’s close friends.

Social marketing is an essential part of every digital marketing strategy. No wonder, as nearly half of the planet’s population is active on social media (over 3 billion users). As social media marketers, we are lucky to reach even a fraction of the userbase with any of the posts we share. Furthermore, the industry is changing and maturing while your daily work can still feel chaotic even if you’re doing everything right. Social media strategies need to keep up with the evolution of how social media changes.

It may seem to you, like all the big companies and brands, haven’t figured out everything on social media and that you’re falling behind.  What are you doing wrong? We hope this list of the most common social media marketing challenges will help you find out.

1. Creating a Modern Social Marketing Strategy

Are you planning to “attack?” Yes, then you need to have a strategy. Otherwise, you won’t reach your objectives, even if you know what you want to accomplish. A social media marketing strategy is a roadmap that will bring you to your accomplishments in the shortest time. Before you start planning your social marketing campaign, you need to determine three key things:

• Why are you on social? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you there for the sake of it? Then you should know that you’re burning your resources and time.
• How are you going to succeed? Are you planning to Partner up with influencers? How will you set up a paid advertising budget? You also need to choose the right social media channels, let alone create original visuals and write compelling content.
• How will you measure it? Use data to drive your decision-making. Determine the goals and key metrics, and break the process down into the months, weeks, and days. Focus on daily activities but always revisit the big picture.

2. Cutting through the Noise

There are thousands of brands competing for user attention on social marketing. All of them are talking at the same time, and that generates so much noise. The noise makes it more difficult to stand out, whether you’re using paid or organic placement means to put your content forward. To make your content stand out, try using the video format to your advantage. Its popularity has been on a constant rise in the last few years. You can go with live streams, Stories, 360-degree videos, and GIFS. With video, you’ll make sure that you’re putting out attractive, exciting, and fresh content for your users.

3. Authentic Connections

Today, users can see right through a robotic voice and a corporate brand that’s trying to push their sales up. They want to connect with a humanized voice. Therefore, one of the challenges brands are facing today is connecting with their target audience on a personal and individual level.

One of the ways to do it is by using a social media inbox. You can segment your audience, and:

• Send them personalized messages.
• Maintain conversations.
• Improve the customer experience.
• Add context to each conversation.
• Generate qualified leads

A social inbox allows you to manage all your conversations in one place and respond to every single message and comment on your social media. Also, you can decide to create and build your group on LinkedIn or Facebook, and engage with users in your community.

4. Expanding Your Reach

Creating and publishing content is not enough to get people to follow you. Without promotion, the chances that it will collect dust on your website blog are much higher. Promoting your content, partnering up with influences and other brands, and generating attention is an entirely different challenge. You need to get it to the audience, but more importantly, to the right one. Be proactive and get people to share your content. Visit your industry influencers and follow their followers. Email your coworkers, partners, and followers. Direct message influencers on social media, too. Share your content to relevant LinkedIn and Facebook groups, and republish it on other websites and blogs that accept guest blogs.

5. Maintaining Originality

Social marketing management is a process that requires you to dedicate yourself to it. It consumes your time, and as your business grows, it slowly becomes a full-time job. That’s why one of the most difficult social marketing challenges you’ll face is staying original and creative. Luckily, there are some great tools and hacks that are at your disposal.

Show the behind-the-scenes of your company. People like to have a name and a face to build a trustful relationship with a brand. They want to know who’s the real person behind everything. Give them a look. For example, publish photos or videos of your staff in their working environment.

Original imagery. Posts with images receive a lot more engagement than the ones containing plain text. Visuals directly draw more attention, indeed. They “tell” a lot more and create deeper connections, and are more memorable. You can also consider visualizing your content and translating it into a well-designed infographic.

6. Creating High-Quality Visuals

Now, the visual challenge is a story for itself. Quality visuals are the second most crucial success factor. It takes time and skills to create them. On the other hand, with visuals, the chances that they will get shared on social media are much higher. So, you can decide to create original images or use high-quality stock materials.

For stock photos, go to a website that offers excellent stock photography. For original photos, have your team ready with a camera. To optimize your images for social media, you can use tools like Canva or Pablo. Make sure that each image is sized for a specific social network. Even more, you should avoid stock photos that are overused, and design everything with your consistent brand logos, colors, and palettes.

7. Getting People to Share

If a social marketing manager finds a tactic that works and keeps using it over and over, they can get into a creative rut. However, the results start declining after a while, and you need to switch your tactics. Your content, even though valuable and relevant, could use a creative boost.

Social media is all about relationships. People share to bring entertaining, informative, and valuable content to their peers. Firstly, you can consider using different formats. Secondly, you can create more exciting content by using emotional appeal and telling great stories.

As a vibrant social media management tool with diverse features, eClincher can help you optimize your social media efforts. Do you need a social media inbox? To track, analyze, and optimize? Did you know you can effectively engage your audience from a single dashboard and leverage tools like automated-posting?  We have designed eClincher as a social media productivity platform with you in mind and with accelerated end-user engagement as the outcome.

The massive industry known as eCommerce in fact spans many different sub-industries from apparel to electronics and everything in between. Just about anything you can think of is currently being sold on one eCommerce site or another.

Despite the tremendous amount of diversity that exists in the world of eCommerce, one thing can be said with near certainty of every single eCommerce store out there no matter how unique the product is that the store sells, there is probably another store out there selling the same thing (or something very similar) to the same target market!

If that is the case, then you have to be asking yourself, how can I set myself apart from my competitors?

Don’t get too upset though, because I have the solution for you, and it is called a “Unique Value Proposition.” Your value proposition is essentially an answer to the following questions – what value does your service or product provide that is unique to your business, and how does your service or product benefit your customers.

A good unique value proposition can be used to make any homepage, product page, or ad better and more likely to convert. In this post we will go over the steps to creating and writing a unique value proposition, as well as a few examples of value propositions.

Step 1: What is Unique about Your Brand or Product?

In this step you have to focus on the first part of the phrase “unique value proposition” namely, unique. What is it that sets your product or brand apart? If you really believe in what you’re selling (which is probably a good idea if you’re running a business) then it shouldn’t be too hard for you to think of this.

Start by asking yourself questions like: What was it that made me want to start my business in the first place? How do I produce my products?

There are many different aspects of your business that can set you aside from other businesses. It could be you use better raw materials, you use a new production method, or even that you have a unique story related to your business and company culture.

Step 2: What is the Value of Your Uniqueness?

Now that you’ve thought about what sets you apart from other businesses you have to think about how that uniqueness actually benefits your customers – what is the “value”?

For example, you could be the only sweater producer in the world using alpaca wool rather than sheep wool, but if you can’t tell me why that is a good thing I definitely won’t care.

Step 3: Make Sure Your Proposition is Clear and Conveys Your Message

You can be the most unique merchant in the world, with the best value to offer, but if your customers can’t understand your unique value in two seconds then that will all mean nothing. So the final step of the process is making sure your proposition itself is written very clearly, and conveys the message of your value.

The importance of social media in business is growing at warp speed. With more and more people joining social media sites and using them regularly/efficiently, the social media industry is bound to become bigger in the coming years. It’s booming like never before.

No, the social media wave isn’t ending anytime soon. And your business should take advantage of it if you want it to survive.

With such amazing growth, every business today needs to leverage proper social media channels in the best possible way. Not because it’s the “in thing”, and not because it sounds simple, but because their target audience is hanging around the popular social networks. And they’re engaging with their favorite brands and connecting with them on different levels.

By giving your business brand the social media touch, you not only generate more business but also connect with your customers better and serve them on a higher level. It actually makes your digital marketing easier.

According an infographic published by Ambassador, 71% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand to others if they have a positive experience with it on social media.

1. Leverage Social Advertising

Social media advertising may be the new kid on the block, but it’s growing faster than imagined. Take Facebook Ads for example. Even though the social network launched ads in 2005, it managed to reach 9.16B in ad revenue in the first quarter in 2017. This just goes on to show that social advertising is here to stay for a long, long time.

As more and more businesses successfully experiment with digital advertising, they’re realizing that taking the social media advertising route makes total sense. Here’s why:

• Lower ad costs: When compared to traditional advertising methods such as print media, TV and radio advertising, social ads are not only dependable, but also cheaper. What’s more, you’re allowed to engage on various social media channels for free before scaling with paid ads. You’re free to grow on your own, at your own pace.
• Targeted reach: Traditional advertising doesn’t give you the luxury to reach out to your target audience the way social media ads do. It simply doesn’t work that way. When you’re doing offline advertising, you’re taking the blind, shotgun approach where your returns are dismal even if you’re making big investments. Using social media ads you reach out to targeted prospects, increase your conversions and ultimately get a higher return on investment.
• Real-time performance analysis: Knowing if your ad is working or not is integral in order to improve it. When you’re doing any type offline advertising, you’re unable to analyze the performance of your ad campaign. Which cripples massively cripples your efforts. Social media ads on the other hand allow you to constantly keep track of how well (or how bad) your ad is performing. You’re able to change your ad on the fly and instantaneously see the results.

Last but not the least, it’s important for businesses of all types to understand that social media ads are only getting bigger and smarter. Social media advertising is where the future is headed. It’s the new wave. The question is, are you a part of it?

2. Boost Brand Awareness

Social media proves to be a powerful tool when it comes to growing your brand awareness. There are businesses who dismiss it as a way to build a brand, but by doing that, they’re leaving an open ground for competitors. On the other hand, many reputable chief marketing officers agree that social media has a definite impact on brand awareness.

Increasing your brand awareness via social media isn’t rocket science. Here are a few tips on how you can do so.

• Find Your Audience: Before you start focusing on a particular social platform, find out whether your target audience is on it. You can do this by searching for relevant conversations about your product or industry. For example, a B2B company may find their audience on LinkedIn rather than Facebook. Don’t just assume or follow other brands.
• Use Visuals: Once you know where your target audience is, it’s time to grab their attention by using eye-catching visuals with your content. Images and videos play a big role in helping you grow your brand awareness on social media channels. Because they not only increase engagement but also boost social shares.
• Create Conversations: Social media is all about building conversations. If you use these social platforms for one-way communication, you’ll only grab so much attention. Instead, talk and listen. Get involved. Showcase your personality by conversing, tagging and mentioning others.
• Measure Your Efforts: Don’t just aim in the dark. Use the tracking tools provided by the platforms (eg: Facebook Page Insights) along with other external tools such as URL shorteners, Google Analytics, etc. to measure your social media activity. Use the insights you gain to understand what’s working so that you can optimize your efforts and build a stronger brand with social media.
• Build Authority: If you want a higher engagement rate along with better brand awareness, then work on building your authority by sharing real value. Along with borrowed content, your content you post should also have something original, as it adds to your credibility.

Remember, every single step that you take to increase brand awareness with social media will impact the overall growth of your business in the long run.

3. Increase Inbound Traffic

Inbound marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate targeted traffic to your website. It’s the kind of traffic that actually converts because it’s super relevant. However, if you leave you ignore the importance of social media in business, you will be limited to your inner circle of customers or the people that are already familiar with your market or brand.

By putting in more effort in social media promotion, you create a whole new channel to draw in laser targeted inbound traffic and get more inbound links.

4. Improve Search Engine Optimization

Every seasoned social media marketer knows that there is some connection between social media and search engine optimization. While Google has clearly stated that it does take “social signals” into consideration when ranking a page, there’s more to it.

Here’s how understanding the importance of social media in business and working on it can help improve your SEO.

Higher Chances to be Found via Web Search According to Matt Cutts, the former spam head of Google, social shares have no impact on your website’s ranking. But, it’s a fact that social media properties do dominate the front of the search engine result pages for brand names. Which means, social media profiles indeed have the power to rank in the top 10 results. Social media profiles are a great way to connect to your prospects and customers. They work as a doorway to your business website because they show your human side. They not only inform the searcher about your business, but also help them become a part of your conversations.

By optimizing your social profiles and by keeping them fresh with the right content, you create a stronger presence on the web. You get more exposure. And you have multiple channels to draw people towards your business.

Ability to Reach More People Via Social Media Search People are no longer dependent on Google search when they need to connect to something or someone. Today, search is not limited to the mighty web search engines. It has moved beyond, which is why social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are the new search engines.

There is massive amounts of content being created and shared on the social web. This content can easily be discovered by users with the help of keyword search, hashtags, etc. When people search for the type of content you’re publishing on your social media page, you may win new fans that want to follow, connect and do business with you. It’s just not about the content, but also about the content producer, which is you. When people see great content being created and shared, they’re curious about who’s behind it. This may lead them to look you up on LinkedIn and learn more about your business. Being a business it’s important that you take the necessary steps to stand out from other competing social media profiles and avoid have duplicate accounts.

The social media world is evolving and is so is the SEO arena. And there are high chances that social signals may start having affect on your rankings. So why not be prepared by building your social media presence with valuable content?

5. Increase Conversion Rates

Another importance of social media in business is the fact that it is great for capturing targeted leads for your business, but it doesn’t stop there. Getting quality leads is only one part of the equation. The other part is converting those into sales.

6. Satisfy Your Customers

Losing a customer is hard, and gaining a new one is harder. But retaining an existing customer is 10 times easier. Which is why customer satisfaction should be your topmost priority.

By using social media to connect with your customers, you have the opportunity monitor what they want, the problems they’re facing and how you could serve them.

In order to truly satisfy your customers and make their life easier, you need to offer them customer service that is more personalized and effective. And social media helps you do just that.

Customers these days know that social media is a lot more approachable and friendly than a call center executive, thousands of miles away, who has a hard time resolving your problem. In other words, customers want superior service without the hassle.

Increasing customer satisfaction with social media includes:

• Monitoring conversations to see if your customers are talking about your brand and in what context.
• Broadcasting important messages, announcements and offers to customers via a social media platform such as Twitter.
• Offering prompt customer service to customers who are facing genuine problems or need some help with the product or service.
• Holding regular question & answer sessions with customers to understand their concerns, get real feedback and see how things can be improved.
• Connect and build a relationship with power users or customer advocates so that they can help serve other customers.

Regardless of what social media platform you’re using to help your customers, it’s important to speak their language, give them personalized service and respond to them without much delay.

7. Enhance Brand Loyalty

A lot of businesses are stuck on their follower count, which is nothing but a vanity number. It doesn’t serve a real purpose if the followers aren’t loyal to your brand. There’s a difference between a random follower and loyal one, because the latter adds real value.

If you want to get the most out of your social media marketing efforts, it’s crucial that you focus on increasing brand loyalty. Having a loyal following means better engagement and better conversations.

Ask any loyal social media follower about their trusted brand, and they will speak positive about it without the need to push. Which leads to natural word of mouth marketing.

Successful marketing depends partly on the ability of a company to manage its marketing programs within its social environment. Social environmental forces are those forces that involve attitudes and shared beliefs of the population. Marketing managers are increasingly finding their tasks hard due to the fact that consumer values, lifestyles and beliefs are changing much more rapidly than they used to. For example, gender roles have been reversed, as indicated by the rising number of men who shop for groceries.

Population Demographics

Demographics involve the study of population factors such as the percentage of the population who are of a given occupation, gender or race. This is besides general factors such as population density, size of population and location. Demographic changes can have adverse effects on marketing efforts of companies: the declining birth rate in most Western countries, the U.S. included, has an obvious effect on sales of baby products. Changes in age, ethnic and gender composition can also influence the demand for certain products within a given area.

Time Consciousness

Many people are now working longer hours than before — almost 50 hours a week compared to just over 40 hours several decades ago. This has resulted in limited available free time for shopping and leisure activities. Time-short people seek to gain or maximize their free time. From a marketing standpoint, this means that many people, especially two-income households, with more income but less time are more willing to pay for convenience. Thus, you should market products that help consumers save time or make full use of it. One example is the yogurt drink, Nouriche, which allows consumers to multitask by driving and eating at the same time.

Shifting Gender Roles

For reasons such as the rising number of two-income families, male-female roles related to families, jobs, recreation and buying behavior have changed significantly. For example, a growing number of “house husbands” are staying at home and taking primary responsibility for child care and homemaking while their wives work full time. Employed women are also seeking a better balance between work and family. This makes them opt for time-saving products such as prepared and frozen foods and more efficient appliances and cleaning products.

Environmental Consciousness

Consumers are increasingly becoming conscious of environmental conservation. Savvy marketers have responded to these rising levels of consumers’ environmental consciousness with products that highlight this fact. One notable example is the development of hydrogen and electric-powered vehicles by motor companies such as Tesla and Honda. Such vehicles release non-toxic waste to the environment such as water.

The first steps on the pathway to sustainability can often be seeen in initiatives that seek to reduce waste and pollution, increase water and energy efficiency, improve people’s health and change car-based transportation patterns. Social marketing is a key approach whose aim is to influence and support constructive change in environmental, social and health campaigns. Social marketing is an adaptable approach, increasingly being used to achieve and sustain behaviour relevant to a range of social issues and topics. It is significantly different from commercial marketing despite the fact that its basis lies in the borrowing of the latter’s concepts and tools. One of the main differences is that social marketing is charged with increasingly complex and ambitious goals often with the provision of very few resources. The accompanying site blog (above menu) looks at one underlying framework Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion. More on this and other frameworks and guides that support social marketing campaigns that work are provided through the links below.

Using the Six Principles of Persuasion to Promote Travel Behaviour Change This paper by Rita Seethaler & Dr Geoff Rose shows how social psychology offers a series of six specific persuasion techniques that are able to reach beyond the mere raising of awareness and knowledge. Appealing to deeply seated human needs, the six persuasion principles of Reciprocity, Consistency, Social Proof, Authority, Liking and Scarcity can be translated into practical communication strategies that will increase the personal involvement of a target population and secure a lasting change in behavioural patterns.

Fostering sustainable behaviour Numerous initiatives to reduce waste and pollution, increase water and energy efficiency, and alter transportation patterns are first footholds in the transition to sustainability. This site by Doug McKenzie-Mohr was developed for the people who design these and other programs to foster sustainable behavior. Its purpose is simple: to provide information that can enhance the success of their efforts. The site consists of six resources:an online guide which illustrates how to use community-based social marketing to design and evaluate programs to foster sustainable behavior; searchable databases of articles, downloadable reports, graphics, and case studies on fostering sustainable behavior; and a listserv for sharing information and asking questions of others.

Quick Reference

Community-based Social Marketing This short paper by Doug McKenzie-Mohr discusses community-based social marketing as an alternative to information-based campaigns for conservation. It is based upon research in the social sciences that demonstrates that behavior change is most effectively achieved through initiatives delivered at the community level which focus on removing barriers to an activity while simultaneously enhancing the activity’s benefits. A four-step process is presented for carrying out community-based social marketing initiatives

Tools of Change

Proven Methods for Promoting Health, Safety and Environmental Citizenship This Canadian website, founded on the principles of community-based social marketing, offers specific tools, case studies, and a planning guide for helping people take actions and adopt habits that promote health and/or are more environmentally-friendly. This Web site will help you include in your programs the best practices of many other programs practices that have already been successful in changing people’s behaviour.

The “Seven Doors” social marketing approach

The “Seven Doors” social marketing approach was developed by Les Robinson, a former campaign director and now consultant for Social Change Media. This paper was originally presented by Les to the Waste Educate 98 Conference.This model allows us to identify which elements are already being fulfilled, and so concentrate resources on the gaps in our marketing campaigns. The seven elements are knowledge, desire, skills, optimism, facilitation, stimulation and reinforcement.

Social media is a vital marketing channel for businesses of all sizes. The common question a few years ago, “why should our business use social media?”, is now being replaced with, “how can our business grow with social media marketing?”.

As a social media marketer, this makes me very excited. What doesn’t make me excited is how many businesses are still trying to market on social media without a documented strategy.

Step 1: Audit Your Current Social Presence

“Know thyself. Know the customer. Innovate.” – Beth Comstock

Before you strategize about where you are headed, take a quick look at where you are. A few areas to consider when auditing your business’s social media presence are:

• Which networks are you currently active on
• Are your networks optimized (photo and cover images, bio, URL, etc.)
• Which networks are currently bringing you the most value
• How do your profiles compare to your competitors’ profiles

Step 2: Document Who Your Ideal Customer Is

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker

You will want to get as specific as possible with this part. For example, if you identified your target market as parents it would be ok. However, if you identify your ideal customer as a parent that lives in the United States, is between 30 and 50 years of age, earns over $70,000, primarily uses Facebook and has an interest in outdoor activities you will have much more success.

Even the best marketers will fail if they are marketing to the wrong audience. Answer the following questions to help you come up with a highly focused buyer persona:

• Age
• Location
• Job Title
• Income
• Pain Points (that your business can solve)
• Most Used Social Network

Step 3: Create A Social Media Mission Statement

“What makes you weird, makes you unique and therefore makes you stand out.” – Dan Schawbel

Your social media mission statement will drive your future actions, so make sure you put some thought into it. This statement will make it clear exactly what you plan to use your social media presence for and should reflect your brand identity. Keep in mind your ideal customer when trying to create this statement.

An example mission statement might be “to use social media to educate current and potential customers about digital marketing, with a focus on social media marketing.” Once you have this statement documented, it will make it simple for you to decide what to share and create.

If it doesn’t align with your mission statement, forget about it. Businesses that post randomly without a guiding mission will fail. People follow experts, not generalists.

Step 4: Identify Key Success Metrics

“If you cannot measure it you cannot improve it.” – Lord Kelvin

How will you determine if your social media marketing efforts are successful? I am not just talking about gaining more followers, I am talking about making money. Afterall, it is hard to rationalize spending time and money on something that isn’t improving the bottom line.

A few metrics to consider measuring are:

• Conversion Rate
• Time Spent on Website
• Reach
• Brand Mentions
• Sentiment
• Total Shares

Step 5: Create and Curate Engaging Content

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet.” – Bill Gates

Sadly, many businesses jump straight to this step. Hopefully, this post has made it clear that there are several vital steps that you must take before you start creating and curating engaging content to share on your social media channels.

Let’s now discuss the fun part, posting to social media. You know who your ideal customer is and you used that information to create your social media mission statement. Armed with this information it should be easy for you to begin creating and curating content. So, what exactly is considered content? Here are a few examples of content you could create:

• Images
• Videos
• Blog Posts
• Company News
• Infographics
• eBooks
• Interviews

The list of content ideas goes on and on, but make sure you focus only on forms of content that align with your mission statement, as well as your skill set. Content is what fuels social media, so it is crucial that you consider creating high quality, engaging content as a top priority. It is trongly recommend that you create a content calendar that outlines how often you will post to each network, which topics you will share and when you will share them.

Step 6: Invest In a Social Media Management Tool

“We live in times in which ordinary people can do amazing things using the right tools”

Most marketers have a secret, they leverage tools to boost their productivity. Ok, maybe it isn’t a secret, but without tools, marketers would face constant burnout (many do even with tools). When it comes to social media, having a social media management tool allows you to scale your efforts with ease.

One of the main benefits of a social media management tool is the ability to schedule posts ahead of time. Remember that content calendar you created? Make sure your scheduled posts in your social media management tool align with your content calendar.

Step 7: Track, Analyze, Optimize

“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.” :Ronald Coase

This may be the most important step when it comes to succeeding on social media. Even the best social media marketers rely on trial and error. It might seem basic, but tracking your results, analyzing the data and then making tweaks to optimize them is crucial.

Each previous step should be re-evaluated after you have had time to analyze the results of your marketing efforts. Let the data drive you. If it is telling you Facebook or Twitter is your most effective channel, consider doubling down.

A great social media strategy is never set in stone. It is a constant work in progress that changes when necessary. So get out there, create a strategy and start optimizing it as you continue to grow and learn more about your business and your audience.

All organizations whether it is the government, a private business or small businessman require planning. To turn their dreams of increase in sale, earning high profit and getting success in business all businessmen have to think about future; make predictions and achieve target. To decide what to do, how to do and when to do they do planning.

Planning can be defined as “thinking in advance what is to be done, when it is to be done, how it is to be done and by whom it should be done”. In simple words we can say, planning bridges the gap between where we are standing today and where we want to reach.

Planning involves setting objectives and deciding in advance the appropriate course of action to achieve these objectives so we can also define planning as setting up of objectives and targets and formulating an action plan to achieve them.

Another important ingredient of planning is time. Plans are always developed for a fixed time period as no business can go on planning endlessly.

Keeping in mind the time dimension we can define planning as “Setting objectives for a given time period, formulating various courses of action to achieve them and then selecting the best possible alternative from the different courses of actions”.

Importance of Planning

1. Planning provides Direction

Planning is concerned with predetermined course of action. It provides the directions to the efforts of employees. Planning makes clear what employees have to do, how to do, etc. By stating in advance how work has to be done, planning provides direction for action. Employees know in advance in which direction they have to work. This leads to Unity of Direction also. If there were no planning, employees would be working in different directions and organisation would not be able to achieve its desired goal.

2. Planning Reduces the risk of uncertainties

Organizations have to face many uncertainties and unexpected situations every day. Planning helps the manager to face the uncertainty because planners try to foresee the future by making some assumptions regarding future keeping in mind their past experiences and scanning of business environments. The plans are made to overcome such uncertainties. The plans also include unexpected risks such as fire or some other calamities in the organization. The resources are kept aside in the plan to meet such uncertainties.

3. Planning reduces over lapping and wasteful activities

The organizational plans are made keeping in mind the requirements of all the departments. The departmental plans are derived from main organizational plan. As a result there will be co-ordination in different departments. On the other hand, if the managers, non-managers and all the employees are following course of action according to plan then there will be integration in the activities. Plans ensure clarity of thoughts and action and work can be carried out smoothly.

4. Planning Promotes innovative ideas

Planning requires high thinking and it is an intellectual process. So, there is a great scope of finding better ideas, better methods and procedures to perform a particular job. Planning process forces managers to think differently and assume the future conditions. So, it makes the managers innovative and creative.

5. Planning Facilitates Decision Making

Planning helps the managers to take various decisions. As in planning goals are set in advance and predictions are made for future. These predictions and goals help the manager to take fast decisions.

6. Planning establishes standard for controlling

Controlling means comparison between planned and actual output and if there is variation between both then find out the reasons for such deviations and taking measures to match the actual output with the planned. But in case there is no planned output then controlling manager will have no base to compare whether the actual output is adequate or not.

For example, if the planned output for a week is 100 units and actual output produced by employee is 80 units then the controlling manager must take measures to bring the 80 unit production upto 100 units but if the planned output, i.e., 100 units is not given by the planners then finding out whether 80 unit production is sufficient or not will be difficult to know. So, the base for comparison in controlling is given by planning function only.

7. Focuses attention on objectives of the company

Planning function begins with the setting up of the objectives, policies, procedures, methods and rules, etc. which are made in planning to achieve these objectives only. When employees follow the plan they are leading towards the achievement of objectives. Through planning, efforts of all the employees are directed towards the achievement of organisational goals and objectives.

Segmentation means to divide the marketplace into parts, or segments, which are definable, accessible, actionable, and profitable and have a growth potential. In other words, a company would find it impossible to target the entire market, because of time, cost and effort restrictions. It needs to have a ‘definable’ segment a mass of people who can be identified and targeted with reasonable effort, cost and time.

Once such a mass is identified, it has to be checked that this mass can actually be targeted with the resources at hand, or the segment should be accessible to the company. Beyond this, will the segment respond to marketing actions by the company (ads, prices, schemes, promos) or, is it actionable by the company? After this check, even though the product and the target are clear, is it profitable to sell to them? Is the number and value of the segment going to grow, such that the product also grows in sales and profits?

Segmentation takes on great significance in today’s cluttered marketplace, with thousands of products, media proliferation, ad-fatigue and general economic problems around the world markets. Rightly segmenting the market place can make the difference between successes and shut down for a company.

Segmentation allows a seller to closely tailor his product to the needs, desires, uses and paying ability of customers. It allows sellers to concentrate on their resources, money, time and effort on a profitable market, which will grow in numbers, usage and value.

Criteria for Evaluating Segments

There are following criteria for an effective segmentation:

1. Measurable and Obtainable

The size, profile and other relevant characteristics of the segment must be measurable and obtainable in terms of data.

It has to be possible to determine the values of the variables used for segmentation with justifiable efforts. This is important especially for demographic and geographic variables. For an organization with direct sales (without intermediaries), the own customer database could deliver valuable information on buying behaviour (frequency, volume, product groups, mode of payment etc.).

2. Relevant

The size and profit potential of a market segment have to be large enough to economically justify separate marketing activities for this segment. If a segment is small in size then the cost of marketing activities cannot be justified.

3. Accessible

The segment has to be accessible and servable for the organisation. That means, the customer segments may be decided considering that they can be accessed through various target-group specific advertising media such as magazines or websites the target audience likes to use.

4. Substantial

The segments should be substantial to generate required returns. Activities with small segments will give a biased result or negative results.

5. Valid

This means the extent to which the base is directly associated with the differences in needs and wants between the different segments. Given that the segmentation is essentially concerned with identifying groups with different needs and wants, it is vital that the segmentation base is meaningful and that different preferences or needs show clear variations in market behaviour and response to individually designed marketing mixes.

6. Unique or Distinguishable or Differentiable

The market segments have to be that diverse that they show different reactions to different marketing mixes. If not then there would have been no use to break them up in segments.

7. Appropriate

The segments must be appropriate to the organization’s objectives and resources.

8. Stable

The segments must be stable so that its behaviour in the future can be predicted with a sufficient degree of confidence.

9. Congruous

The needs and characteristics of each segment must be similar otherwise the main objective of segmentation will not be served. If within a segment the behaviour of consumers are different and that they react differently, then a unique marketing strategy cannot be implemented for everyone. This will call for a further segmentation.

10. Actionable or Feasible

It has to be possible to approach each segment with a particular marketing programme and to draw advantages from that. The segments that a company wishes to pursue must be actionable in the sense that there should be sufficient finance, personnel and capability to take them all. Hence, depending upon the reach of the company, the segments must be selected.

11. Some general considerations

Apart from the above-mentioned characteristics, the segment must have some other features:

• Growth potential
• Profitable
• Less risk prone
• Less competition intensive