Let’s Taco ‘bout Snapchat

On Snapchat, there’s a small selection of companies that have permanent advertising under ‘Discover Story.’ This means they have a constant snap story that gives updates on different things companies are doing, or what they choose to share. This is a very effective way to advertise on social media, because it has a wide reach – everyone on Snapchat can see posts by these companies every day. Therefore, this marketing idea will appeal to businesses aiming for reach rather than frequency.

For example, The Food Network is one business that advertises via Snapchat using Discovery. They post anything from snippets of TV shows from their channel, pictures of dishes chefs have created, recipes, and cooking tips. They’re able to show their audience a wide range of information about cooking, and what their TV channel is all about. This way of marketing will is a great way to build their brand, as it draws people in, attracts people to their other social media platforms and websites, as well as get them to tune into programmes that broadcast on their channel.

Why SMM Isn't Everyone's Cup of Tea

It can be difficult to target a specific audience. Unlike more traditional forms of media such as TV, magazines, and radio, it is much more difficult to direct a product towards a specific target market. As such a wide demographic of users are on all forms of social media, selecting a single demographic to target is a challenge. A product/brand can be targeted to an extent – perhaps a café wants to target people under 25 who are interested in coffee. A large amount of users on Instagram are from a younger demographic, and therefore the café could choose that platform to market their product. However, there is no means to be any more exact in targeting to their audience, and therefore advertisements may be unrelated to the audience it actually reaches.

It’s a public place. All social media platforms mean that users have the ability to comment, and share their point of view. Therefore, people can comment negatively on the business, creating bad publicity. If a customer from Woolworths buys fruit and vegetables and finds a bug inside/in the packaging, they can post on the Woolworths Facebook page to get a response from the company and share their experience with other Woolies customers. Another customer could see this, and choose to then purchase their fruit and veggies from Coles or fruit and veg shop. Companies can censor such posts/comments, but this could create distrust within other social media users searching for reviews if they know the company is purposely hiding bad reviews.

It can be hard to measure the complete success of a marketing scheme. While posts from businesses often result in likes, comments, and shares, conversation on the product will generally continue offline. There is often no way to tell if people have gone on to talk to their friends and family about a business, so the methods used to measure the success of a social media marketing campaign doesn’t account for word of mouth, and the campaign may be more/less successful than a company thinks. For example, someone might see a post by Café Primo on Twitter advertising a new special, think its great value and talk about it with 5 of their friends. But Café Primo hasn’t registered any extra likes or views on their post, even though 5 extra people now know about their specials. Alternatively, someone might see the same post, not agree that it is a good deal, and forget about it completely. The Café still won’t have gained extra likes or views, but no extra people have heard about the deal. Therefore, there is no way to judge the exact success of a marketing strategy on social media platforms.

Why Social Media Marketing is A-PEEL-ing

Marketing on social media gives you the ability to reach a wide range of people, from multiple demographics. A great example of this is the use of hashtags. Hashtags allow people to view other posts connected linked with that tag. This is especially useful with restaurants and cafes marketing and promoting their businesses. It is very common, particularly among the younger demographic, to share photos of dishes they purchase when they go out to eat. This is specifically seen on Instagram and Twitter, though also on Facebook. If a restaurant has a hashtag that is known by people that dine there, they will most likely use this in their post, which will then be seen by every user following them.

It is easy to see whether your marketing has been successful. Unlike traditional marketing means, using social media as a platform to market a product makes it easy to monitor the success of a campaign. For example, Hungry Jacks fast food chains in Australia use their app to let people ‘check in’ on Facebook, and in exchange they receive a discounted or free item from the menu. Hungry Jacks is therefore able to track how many people have checked into stores and used the app as a result of their marketing. The success of other advertisements on different platforms can also be measured by the amount of time people from that platform click on their website or app download link.

It is cost effective.
Creating an account on social media is free. Companies of all different sizes can create accounts on multiple social media accounts free of charge, and then use these platforms to attract customers. This means marketing on social media platforms is particularly good for small organisations, for example, small cafes, that are just starting out and want to let people know about their business. Such a café might create an account on Twitter, and then share photos of the café itself, food products/dishes unique to their business, or events that happen at that café to attract consumers. Additionally, advertisements on social media are cheaper than running ads on TV, or in newspapers and magazines. Therefore if a company has only a small marketing budget, they can still afford to market their company/product on a platform seen by large amounts of people, but for less money.

Welcome to my Blog!

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my blog!

The purpose of this blog is to discuss how businesses market their brands/products on social media as part of assessment for a Social Media Marketing course at Flinders University.

I will be focusing on the theme of food - anything from TV shows (MRK anyone?), restaurants, and the food products themselves, and how brands market them on any social media platforms. Posts will include marketing that is done effectively, poorly, as well as relevant, interesting things I find along the way.