Social Media Marketing

Marketing industry in Kenya is catching up with the rest of the world as companies start to embrace the potential in social media marketing. However, many companies are not getting success on this field as their social marketing strategies flop. In their efforts to compete with large businesses in the country, small businesses are resulting to some unorthodox practices to get people to like their FanPage on facebook or follow them on twitter.

To succeed in social media marketing, small businesses has to understand that it is not about the number of likes or followers you have, rather, it is about the quality of likes and followers. As such, it is critical for any business to invest in building a reputation on social media through its social marketing campaign, rather than trying to get more likes.

What is Social Marketing?

Social marketing or social media marketing is the process of getting website traffic through social media websites. The aim of this type of marketing is to get people talking about your products in hope that the more they talk about it the more they are likely to buy it. To achieve this, social marketers should generate content that attracts and encourages social network users to share with their friends. Where a corporate message is shared among friends, it is more likely to have more impact than when it comes directly from the company. This builds trust and confidence in a company or brand, as its marketing takes the form of word of mouth resulting to earned media as opposed to paid media.

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Social Media and Marketing

Social media has been with us for a long time; however, it is only recently that its potential has been realized. It is a platform that is basically available to anyone with internet connection, hence making it the most popular and cheap way for companies to market their products and services. Social media has also influenced internal and external communications of many organizations. As more people join social networks, organizations are taking their marketing to where the people are, which has resulted in creation of new strategies to market products.

Marketing of any sort is aimed at making people aware of a company’s products and services –their benefits and usage. Therefore, when companies join social networks, they are looking for ways to use such media to market their products. Generating a good social media strategy is therefore critical, if any company is to integrate social media in its marketing.

Developing a Social Media Strategy

Social media strategy is meant to incorporate a company’s offline marketing strategy in social media sites. It is supposed to advance your marketing aims in such a way that it will be effective in social sites and blogs. An effective social marketing strategy will incorporate rich text media such as images, to effectively portray the company’s image. The strategy must ensure that customers and other stakeholders are participating in the conversation.

Social media marketers have realized that engagement is at the center of every successful social media campaign. When customers and other stakeholders are involved, they become part of the marketing department as every person on the social site is able to see the comments made. It is therefore important to keep your customers talking positively about your campaign on these sites.

Any strategy should be designed to succeed on twitter, facebook, blogs, LinkedIn, and YouTube. It is important to describe the message you want to deliver through those site and learning how best to write it or to deliver it on videos is critical.

Social Media Marketing Techniques

Targeting, Consumer’s Online Brand Related Activities (COBRAs) and Electronic Word of Mouth (eWoms) are the most effective techniques in social marketing. You can successively target your audience by analyzing the data provided by social site such as Facebook, twitter, and YouTube. These sites allow viewers to like or dislike certain comments, posts, tweets, or videos; helping campaign managers to accurately target what customers want.

COBRAs are used by advertisers to promote websites, products, or services by uploading pictures on sites such as facebook. These images should be well designed to carry the company’s message as they provide your clients with something they can relate with. Using eWOMs allow advertisers to get brand or company recommendations and appraisals through direct consumer-to-consumer conversation. These conversions can be in form of comments on COBRAs, posts, or tweets where customers engage each other. Effective social media campaign is therefore the effective use of these techniques.

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When Internet Marketing Does Not Lead to Sales

Most businesses in Kenya are doing all they can to market themselves on the internet. However, if your internet marketing is giving you leads and getting people calling you to inquire about your services or products but little is happening in terms of sales, then there are a number of things that you might not be doing right. Here is a list of pitfalls that might be causing this.
1. Promising what you cannot deliver: double-cross as most people would call it is causing many businesses to fail in their e-commerce businesses. Most businesses marketing themselves on the internet are promising one thing on their ads, promotional materials, and demos, only for clients to find something different when they start talking business.
Solution: you can fix this by focusing and refining your marketing message. Provide specific info about the services and products you are selling.
2. Omitting the Phone Number: after doing all the marketing and posting your promotional and advertising materials online, forgetting to provide a phone number will kill your sales. Research has shown that more sales are made from clients who call than those who fill in online forms.
Solution: Put phone numbers everywhere. On the photos you post on the internet, on your website, fanpage on social media and everywhere else where you have promotional or advertising material.

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3. Lack of a Working System: the most important question you are supposed to ask yourself to know whether your system is working is –how are leads handled in your company? Have you assigned a specific person who is responsible?
Solution: The best way to deal with this is to invest in a system. Internet marketers and webmasters are able to provide cheap services that will ensure your leads are contacted immediately with the information they want. Investing in such a service provider might prove helpful for you.
4. Customer Service Representatives: to be successful on the internet requires that you have swift sales representatives. Delays in responding to emails or calls can cost you potential sales. You should make sure that all the leads that have signed up are contacted either by calling or through email.
Solution: enhance your sales skills and response time. The most effective way is to call every lead you get immediately.

Common Forms of Internet Marketing in Kenya

As the internet becomes the most used platform in communication, companies require a strong internet marketing approach. There are numerous forms of internet marketing used in the world; however, very few are being used in Kenya. Internet marketing in Kenya is rising in demand as marketing managers become acquainted with its potential. Being a developing country, the mostly used form of internet marketing in Kenya is individual websites. But as most companies and businesses have realized, this is not enough to market products and services on the internet. Consequently, online marketing experts are needed to coordinate strategic internet marketing practices that will bring business to any online business.

In this form of online marketing in Kenya, a business owner contracts a website developer to create a website for the business. This website is used to advertise products or services provided by the business. While this form of online marketing is powerful, it lacks the necessary ingredients that ensure its visibility on the internet. This is why more elaborate efforts should be taken by the website owner to make sure that the website is visible to as many internet users as possible. The process of doing this involves writing articles about the products and services that are Search Engine Optimized to help in the ranking of the site. It has been proven that about 90 percent of online users visit the sites that appear on the first page on the search engine results.

Another form of internet marketing that has taken over in the recent years is the use of social media. By far, facebook.com is the most use in social media marketing in Kenya. This form of social media has been very effective and efficient in fashion industry. Twitter is the other social media platform used by companies to communicate and advertise products. In this form, companies are opening social media pages where they solicit for fans. Social media is a powerful tool as it gives companies a human face where potential clients can get information straight from the company representatives. As companies become more aware of this form of marketing, having a page on a social media site does not suffice to earn you business, hence the importance of learning how to do effective social media marketing.

These forms of internet marketing in Kenya are mostly used because they can reach many people who are using the internet. However, a big challenge lies ahead. As companies and businesses get online, doing business online will require better marketing and presentation. There are very essential ingredients that online customers are looking for. In most cases, internet in Kenya is used to get information, as such providing this information to potential clients is essential. This can be done through SEO article writing, press release, online advertising, and use of emails.

My Dad Has Ditched the Nation

The means of communication and dissemination of news has changed drastically in the last two years. Most people are using the new media to get daily news they used to get from news papers, radio, and television. I didn’t appreciate this fact until recently.

As far as I can recall, my dad, being in the generation that valued carrying a news paper –it was a sign of class- has been buying the nation news paper. I mean, he has been buying nation news paper since he was employed right after independence. My father prefers the Daily Nation, which he claims to have leveled headed news and political views. Every day as he came home, he would have a copy of the daily news paper that he would read from front page to the last page. But I was shocked recently when he came home without one.

My father came home without the news paper! Well, at first I thought maybe he left it in the office. But when he came home the second day without it, I had to ask. And this is where I knew, my father has ditched the Nation. He talked of internet connection in the office as the management tried to boost the way they do business.

He had learnt to use the Google or gologolo as he would call it. He also gave me his email address and he thought it was the opportune time we closed our private mail box at the post office, which I fervently opposed. As we engaged in politics and other national issues (his favorite subjects), I discovered he had been to wikileaks and other site where he got a lot of information.

After talking and watching him as he excitedly talked about his sources of information, I realized that companies that are still deluded about the impact of the internet access in Kenya are really going to have it rough in coming years. Advertising in the news papers, TV, and radio will no longer be worth the money they are paying. The internet is the new media where people have to learn how to advertise and do business. Having a website is not enough; your online presence is required for your business to reap the benefits on the internet.