Peer-To-Peer Marketing: Social Media “Given that teens now spend so many hours surfing the Web, and far fewer hours watching television than previous generations, it’s not surprising that intense peer-to-peer promoting has emerged and flowered online” (Quart 39). These words of Alissa Quart from Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers perfectly describe the evolution of marketing, which is now known as social media marketing. Social media is an electronic communication system in which people create online communities to share information, personal messages, and other content. Even though social media enables the spread of unreliable and false information., social media is beneficial to today 's society, because sites such as, Twitter, …show more content…
Sharon Hurley Hall begins her article, “The Increasing Power of Peer Influence: Millennials and Your Business” by explaining the meaning of Millennial—people born after 1980. These individuals are now the prime target of advertising, especially because these are the people who are more connected to the internet. According to eMarketer’s research, “Almost 70% of Millennials are influenced by friends’ posts on social media when deciding whether to purchase products and services” (Hall). In addition to companies using peer-to-peer marketing now commonly known as, social media marketing, they also use a more specific method called, youth marketing. Youth marketing is a group of people broken down into small segments depending on their age, which includes tweens, teenagers, college students, and young adults typically around the age of twenty-four. By using this method of adverting, companies create advertisement campaigns and products specifically targeted to the age group, which then helps them determine their next targets and business partners on social media. As stated before, “young people are key to numerous markets, from mobile, fashion and technology to alcohol, snack foods and entertainment… This audience spends money” (Mitchell). Imagine shopping centers in the area …show more content…
This offers instant feedback and marketers automatically know that they are doing something right as responses are positive. Alternatively, modifications can be done if responses are negative. (Dzhingarov) This is beneficial for companies, because now and days consumers want a great experience, and expect speed, meaning everything must happen fast, especially having to deal with problems. A McKinsey Global Institute study projects that, “the communication and collaboration from social media could add $900 billion to $1.3 trillion to the economy through added productivity and improved customer service”
As might be expected, the millennial generations as a whole are passionate about the technological and communication advances in the past decade with the internet and social media. “A new Pew Internet Project report reveals that 93% of young adult’s ages 18‐29 are online” (Andrew January 14 to 27, 2010). This allows access for marketer’s access to the generation in a different way than previous generations.
Today's young people are generally unresponsive to traditional brand marketing messages. Teens spent $12 billion dollars last year according to a recent study of Teen Marketing Trends. Teens not only use their money on small purchases such as music, clothes and food but also have the power to influence high-end purchases of their parents. Every year younger teens are being marketed because that they are the future teenagers and brand loyalty is an important thing to many companies. If you can get an older child hooked on a product, they’ll generally love it for life. These younger age demographics are being marketed to because more and more kids have increasing spending power and authority over what is purchased in their household.
Social media has become widespread in the last ten years, Twitter has close to 700,000 users (Statistic Brain), Facebook has nearly 1.1 billion (Yahoo), and YouTube has over one billion users a month (YouTube). According to a 2012 survey documented by the PewResearch Internet Project, “95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online.” In order for teens to feel like they are apart of their community they must participate in social media. “Likes, follows, friends, retweets- they’re the social currency of this generation, Generation Like. The more likes you have the better you feel.” (Generation Like) To marketing companies, the more followers or likes a user has, the more exposure a company can get if the user promotes them. Companies target all teens, some who are looking for attention, like Tyler Oakley, some who are looking for fame and success, like Steven Fernandez, and some who are simply young fanatics, like Ceili Lynch.
The reason that the youth audience is so important to brands is because being able to advertise to the youth increases their overall influence, and, again, increases the amount of money that the brands are able to make. Another advantage to selling to the youth is that it reinforces the idea of buying things starting at an early age, and it allows companies to more easily market their products to the same audience later on when they are
Social media is also a great way to network for jobs, your own business and any number of things. Many businesses start on social media and expend beyond the internet. This is a great way for many people to see the goods for sales and a faster method of word to mouth. Social media has a large impact of today’s society both good and bad. Social media is driven by people’s needs to connect and interact with others on a more convenient way outside of a face to face, or a phone call.
Millennials tend to be more influenced by micro-influencers rather than by traditional ads and marketing schemes. One of the reasons micro- influencers are so successful is because they are likely to be more relatable. According to Venturebeat.com, micro-influencers are more likely to post about specific topics and niche areas (Venturebeat.com 2017). Many micro-influencers are experts on their topic and have die hard collections of people who share their same views.
The impact of social media on consumer behavior and marketing is very prevalent. Often times people will want what other people have, or try to have something better than the next person. For example if a lot of people in your social network posts something about the great new IPhone that just came out, you might possibly want the same IPhone for yourself. Also people are often times try to outdo each other. They want the latest shoes, fancy car, and stylish clothing in order to appear a certain way on social media. This makes it easy to market certain items on social media. Also I lot of times users will market the product or service themselves without the actual company having to spend any marketing dollars. Companies are monetizing this technology by using these platforms which will take away any marketing dollars spent. They are now able to reach a larger platform with social interaction with consumers as well as well placed
Today’s society revolves around social media and impacts each person in a different way. The occurrence of giving and receiving “likes” and the desire of today’s teens to increase views, shares, comments, and likes are not only helping improve someone’s profile, but also of the brands that they like. As companies observe the data collected, the social media marketers work together to carefully turn “likes” into profit for the brand. People have no idea what the value of liking something is. The more teens that utilize social media, the more money companies are likely to make.
Teens are an easy reach for advertisers. “Teens are jaded, bombarded by tons of advertising messages”(Winsor 1). There are advertisements at movie theaters, on television, and in teen magazines. Advertisers also reach teens through social media such as the internet and websites. Teens are constantly on Facebook and YouTube, whi...
This meaning that if a company can post something attractive, then this post will be shared from a person, to their friends, to friends of friends and so on. This creates a new environment for companies to work in. While certain mediums of communication are dying such as print and radio, social media is just beginning, a veritable ‘wild west’ if you will. The biggest difference between these old and new methods of communication is this; social media is effective at reaching multiple audiences. With radio and print, there is a specific audience, most teens don’t read newspapers and listen to their own music.
Social media in marketing is used as an apparatus that builds an identity for a brand and gives awareness that they thought they could have. It does not only respect buyers, but also customer allegiance. Social media is widely-ranged so it can be used in whatever way that best conforms to the strategy and wants of the business. In accordance to the social media marketing report of 2014, a considerable (64%) of marketers use social media for at least 6 hours or more and 41% for 11 hours or more weekly, more importantly nearly (19%) of marketers use up to 20 hours each week on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and many more. The report also showed 7 social media platforms that led in 2014 which are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Youtube, Pinterest and Instagram.
One of these benefits is the wide audience these organizations can now reach. Previously an organizations’ audience was limited to forms of media that were locally available, but social media networks now allow us to connect and share important information with an infinite number of people worldwide. Another benefit of communicating with social media is the speed at which information can be shared. It is now possible to have near instant updates on important information such as Amber Alerts, severe weather warnings, and even information on criminals. This is a vast improvement over previous forms of communication that could take hours or even days to provide updates on events.
Let’s be honest, in an ever rapidly changing society where technology is more accessible and more commonplace, marketing has become very versatile and efficient from major companies to small businesses capitalizing on the social media craze. Keeping up with trends is no exception when it comes to the marketing industry to promote and generate business for products such as movies and shows on Netflix to services provided by a small tax consultant firm trying to make a name for itself. The focus of this paper is to illustrate the different areas of marketing related to social media in today’s society in hopes of stressing the importance of how marketers conduct business with current technology and how it helps consumer interests. Aspects covered
Social media is the fastest communication platform… It is a two-way communication channel so we can communicate with our customers to provide solutions in the fastest manner. In contrast, traditional [media] is more of a one-way communication tool that the customers can only read without any [conversation to verify or compare the information]. – Participant 1D, an in-house practitioner with three years of experience.
Secondly, the social media has made it easier for businesses and business people such as bankers, business owners, brands, and even celebrities to communicate faster and to get things accomplished. Through social media interaction networks such as Twitter, Instagram, What...