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Marketing Practice
THE NEXT BIG THING FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
Gone are the days when “big bucks” marketing budgets determined success. In the world of new media, what matters is creative – not spending – power.
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By Yasmine Allam
Marketing Consultant
The phenomenal rise of social media in the past few years has transformed the rules of marketing and public relations, changing forever how organizations communicate with customers and leveling the playing field for businesses large and small. Thanks to new-media marketing, size really doesn’t matter. Small businesses in Egypt – especially those with niche products and services – should embrace these new media channels to reach out to audiences at home and abroad at very little expense.
What is social media?
The term “social media” refers to a new generation of web-based technologies that differ from the one-way (monologue) communication of traditional broadcast and print media by allowing rapid two-way communication between users. Simply put, social media consists of content published with a clear social interaction dimension. Unlike traditional media, social media encourages users to generate and share content; comment and recommend it to others; and rank information. Today, everyone is both a content publisher and potential consumer.
A array of social media tools are available online:
• Social networking sites:
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and others allow users to gather and network online by posting and commenting on text, photos, videos and other content. Facebook’s marketing motto sums it up well: “Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”
• Social news sites:
Digg, Reddit and others are online communities that allow users to submit and share stories, articles, videos and pictures. Articles attain visibility by exploiting such factors as the number of votes for each item. Digg promotes itself as a site where “people can collectively determine the value of content.”
• Social bookmarking sites:
Stumble Upon and Delicious, among many others, allow Internet users to share, organize, search and manage bookmarks of web resources. The resources themselves are not shared, only bookmarks that reference them. Descriptions can be added to bookmarks so other users can decide whether or not they want to download content.
What all these social media tools have in common is the two-way nature of the communications, the potential scale and breadth of their audience reach (Facebook has about 120 million users) and tools that are available at little or no cost.
The pace and immediacy of social media is staggering. With traditional media, for example, there can be considerable lag time of days or weeks. Social media are capable of rapid access response. Significantly, social media can pinpoint target audiences, reaching consumers interested in specific products or services and generating high-quality marketing leads for free. As for the misconception that social media are somehow only for college students, the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook is those aged 45 and older.
Content is king
Because the Internet and social media tools have transformed the way we search for and consume information, companies – to be noticed – must explore increasingly creative ways to maximize their online presence. Naturally, this has had a profound impact on the nature of marketing.
Today, the key to positioning products so they can be found by targeted consumers is simple: content. Unlike broadcast and print advertising, new media, or inbound, marketing is all about publishing unique and optimized content on the Internet, promoting that content, and actively monitoring and engaging in the online conversations that spring up around it.
It is less about pay-per-click listings on Google or advertising on Facebook than about raising the product visibility naturally and organically by creating unique content. Online audiences do not want to be “sold to”; they want to be pulled in and engaged in a dialogue. The aim is to raise both product visibility and the level of public engagement. That means understanding the value of brainpower – as opposed to “buck power” – required to develop unique, valuable and relevant content.
Good news
Small businesses, especially those selling niche products, have a new, exciting marketing asset at their disposal. Since the Internet is all about connecting supply with demand, a targeted online marketing strategy can help small businesses tap directly into a specialized segment of interested consumers in ways not possible with traditional media – and on a shoestring budget to boot.
By regularly publishing valuable content, niche businesses have the ability to attract a large following – and since potential clients cannot see the size of your brand online, social media facilitates competition with far bigger brands and marketing budgets.
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