Marketing Plan - Social Media Marketing

1. Introduction

Social media marketing has given businesses the opportunity to connect with their clients like never before. Whether you are building a community to support your customers or running a blog to keep the public informed, social media services can position your company at the forefront of this marketing opportunity. Sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to evolve, and there are many ways a company can employ them to deliver a message, manage your reputation, or encourage brand loyalty. Big name companies like Skittles and Dell have successfully used social media to increase their sales, brand, and the community around their products. Small companies like Kogi BBQ are using social media to increase their sales and dominate the late night food craze in Los Angeles. No matter your company size, social media can be used to start a conversation with your target market and elevate your brand.

For this work I’ve chosen to talk about A Vida e Bela. A Vida é Bela is an innovative company supplying “life experiences” to their clients, from planning special evenings to air balloon travels or parachute jumps. Selected as “Marketing Innovation of 2010” by Marketer’s magazine readers, Vida é Bela became the fastest growing company in the dynamic Portuguese tourist sector.

How it works: the gift giver purchases an experience card from A Vida E Bela, which looks like a personalized credit card and can be redeemed for an experience of the gift recipient’s choice, depending on the card’s value. Experiences can be selected from the company’s website or via its call centre, and range from a professional photography session (be a top model for a day) to flying fighter jets over Moscow (top gun for a day).

Experience cards or vouchers can be bought as presents, but also make great promotional giveaways and incentives. A Vida E Bela is distributing pre-paid versions by the thousands daily, through incentive programs and nationwide promotions with partners like BP.

2. Conceptual framework

2.1. What is Social Media Marketing?

According to Wikipedia, “Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one too many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use.”

This can be broken down in 3 main components:

a. Publishing - Social media is unlike any other technology in history. It has created a modern-day renaissance because: Social media is something that takes place online Social media is user-generated Social media is highly accessible and scalable

b. Information diffusion - No other existing media is capable of diffusing information faster than social media

c. Relationship building - Humans are interesting in that the way they build relationships is through sharing.

2.2. Common mistakes companies make with Social Media

Some of the most common mistakes companies make with social media revolve around making decisions that aren’t consistent with having good business sense. Because social media tools are free, some companies tend to take the pasta approach: throwing noodles at a wall to see what sticks. Here are some of the most common mistakes to avoid with social media strategy:

• Not developing a social media strategy - Because social media is the hottest trend in marketing, companies assume that all they have to do is set up a Twitter account and a Facebook fan page.

• Perfecting a social media strategy

• Gathering followers rather than building a network - There are no shortcuts in social media, and the bottom line is companies have to build relationships with their customers before they can sell anything. Social media may seem free, but the hidden time costs to build relationships.