Today, many organizations use a combination of traditional and digital marketing channels.
Examples of traditional marketing and advertising are TV commercials, printed flyers, direct mail and telephone marketing campaigns.
Digital marketing and advertising is about marketing using electronic devices to reach stakeholders. So for example using PC’s, laptops, smartphones, tablets, smart TV’s but also game consoles for marketing purposes.
For companies it’s important to be aware of the new way of using marketing and advertising: Digital using social media channels.
It is important because if they understand the difference between traditional and digital marketing they can reach today’s customer on the right way. But nowadays, many big firms are stuck in a routine of printed collateral and should be reallocated marketing money to online efforts for more success and ROI.
The case “United Breaks Guitars” is a very good story about a firm (United Airlines) who did not take the right decision using social media. United’s staff broke Carroll’s guitar during a transfer, but they did not compensate him. So he wrote a music video and posted it on YouTube. It was a great success; millions of viewers and lots of journalists were talking about the story. As a result United’s stock price fell with 10 per cent.
This case is clearly an example of a company that has not good understood the difference between traditional and digital marketing. The music video was in fact a negative marketing video for United.
Researchers found out that people who have good service experience lead to tell 3 people, but a bad experience they would tell 14…. So as a company you need to focus to get positive reviews from your customers. And if you get a negative review from a customer take immediately action to stop the negative spiral.
The article “Social spending: Managing the social media mix.” Says that there is not a best way in using traditional or digital marketing. I agreed with that, not every company is the same. They act on different markets, have different clients etcetera. So every situation has an other outcome using a right social media mix.
One other study “For mobile devices, think apps, not ads.” Shows us that people don’t like ads on their mobile devices. Ads like banners are very bad because they frustrate the users and did not get the right effect of getting new customers. It’s better to make mobile apps, like airlines do. There’re special deals in the app only, so it’s worth full to download the app. Also supermarkets like Albert Heijn are using the app to give customers special deals. That’s what customers wants, not frustrating pop-up banners, but in app deals! They’ll be very loyal to the company.
So overall looking at this week’s subject, it is good for companies to use digital marketing and advertising. But companies do need to pay attention for their customers because 1 bad review is told to 14 others and 1 good review only to 3 others.
References
John Deighton, Leora Kornfeld. 2011. United Breaks Guitars. Harvard Business Publishing. Publication Date: January 6, 2010. Revision Date: August 11, 2011.
Hoffman, D. L., and Fodor, M. 2010. Can you measure the ROI of your social media marketing? MIT Sloan Management Review 52(1) 41-49.
Weinberg, B. D., and Pehlivan, E. 2011. Social spending: Managing the social media mix. Business Horizons 54(3) 275–282.
