Interactive Marketing
Interactive marketing attracts and engages customers, gathers data, keeps customers coming back and makes the relationship between business and customers more personal.
What is interactive marketing? Exactly what it implies. It is the interactivity between companies and their customers. Unlike traditional marketing that just places ads on TVs, radios and print, interactive marketing reaches its current customers and potential customers through social media websites such as Facebook, twitter and even the new social media Instagram. Through interactive marketing, companies can enhance their service or product delivery, engage customers to become advocates for their company/ brand and help customers and businesses interact with each other unlike traditional marketing outlets.
PROS
Engage and Interact In this social media generation, it is crucial for a business to be actively involved in social media and to keep customers interested and engaged. According to Remi Carlioz, senior head of digital at puma, he states that "It is undoubtedly necessary to find and engage with this demographic where they digitally reside, rather than relentlessly, always trying to usher them back to a brand’s owned platform. Brands are too self-centered and must boldly act on the desire that the consumer possesses the desire to transparently experience and interact with a brand online." Examples of ways that businesses have been doing this are through Quick Response codes (commonly known as QR codes) that give customers options to scan a code on their smart devices to receive discounts and/ or special messages from the company. In 2011, Nike launched a campaign in Austria, Germany and Switzerland to promote their "Vapor Flash" jacket, a completely reflective running jacket. They named the campaign "catch the flash" where they had 50 Nike runners "The Flash Runners" with the numbers 1through50 on the back of their jackets running around a town for 90mins. The task was for Nike customers and enthusiasts to take a picture of as many runners wearing the Vapor Flash jackets. The winner of the Flash campaign received a ten thousand Euro platinum bar. Nike benefited from this campaign by receiving an immense amount of publicity on hundreds of blogs, news stations and social media websites. The $350 jacket (yes that's $350 dollars for a running jacket) completely sold out within hours of being available for purchase.
Customer Service: Here are some facts I found on why customer service in social media is crucial to keeping customers happy, coming back and engaged in your brand/company.
Crisis Communication- Listen, Engage and Respond
Through social media, companies could better handle crisis response to their customers quicker than before.This is a positive thing for the company because it gives them an easier and faster way on clarifying issues, complaints or company crisis.
CONS
Consumer interactivity is not always a love affair between costumers and businesses. When customers experience a bad service or product from a company, they are now most likely going to complain on the company's social website for the whole world to see. Customers are now publicly airing out company's dirty laundry, and we all know bad news usually gains more momentum quicker than good news. A great example of customers' public complaints is one of a carribean airline named LIAT. LIAT is an airline that many Americans, unless traveling in the carribean, might have never heard of. This summer, a customer who experienced horrible service from the airline, published their sarcastic complaint letter in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) newspaper. The letter went viral to millions within a month and a half when Richard Branson, the king and founder of Virgin Airlines, found the letter hilarious and posted it on his blog of 3million followers. The letter was definitely not good publicity for LIAT, comments on the blog ridiculed the airline, dissecting every negative aspect of the airline. Some customers ridiculed the company's name saying that LIAT stood for "Leave Island Anytime" or "Luggage In Another Terminal". So what can businesses do to turn this negative into a positive? Understand what they're doing wrong, what their customers are expecting and change their business for the better. Any feedback should be seen as good feedback.
Another Negative aspect of interactivity is that it is harder to reach out to all of your customers. Many, if not the majority, of comments on social websites get replied by companies leading customers to a FAQ page or getting a computer generated response. The sense of having a personal relationship with the company could get lost. Although free, interactive marketing on social medias take a lot of time and dedication to maintain a strong audience (Time is Money!).
With the amount of users social media draws in from around the world, all businesses should become more involved in social media outlets to engage customers, have a better company image and to help their business thrive. With 850million active facebook users, 175million daily tweets and the billions of Google users its only smart for a company to become involved in the social media scene.
What other outlets, besides the ones I've mentioned, do you guys think businesses should utilize in interactive marketing?
Jessica Decatrel
Interesting articles, videos and facts that will tickle your brain:
Branson, Richard (2013), "How to Write a Complaint Letter", Virgin (June 10), https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/how-to-write-a-complaint-letter
Grenoble, Ryan (2013), "LIAT, Caribbean Airline, Receives Hilarious Complaint Letter From Passenger Arthur Hicks", Huffington Post (July 1), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/liat-complaint-letter-arthur-hicks-branson_n_3529385.html
Honigman, Brian (2012), "100 Fascinating Social Media Statistics and Figures From 2012", Huffington Post (November 29), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-honigman/100-fascinating-social-me_b_2185281.html
Schnitzer, Erika (2012), "The Modern Brand’s Biggest Challenges", Digiday (August 13), http://digiday.com/brands/the-modern-brands-biggest-challenges/
Vong,Katherine (2012), "3 Key Advantages of Interactive Marketing Campaigns", TrendReports (August 27), http://www.trendreports.com/article/interactive-marketing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g98nDUg7yxU
http://blog.getambassador.com/social-customer-service-infographic/
Awesome job Jessica, you went in to great details. I love the fact that you did the pros and cons and mentioned some examples. I also think that consumer interactivity has its ups and downs, I couldn’t agree more with your point about bad news spreading way quicker than good news. We see this happen all the time, a company can be doing amazing things but we never hear about them. Then on the other hand one customer can write a complaint and the whole world hears about it, much like your airlines example. This is a disadvantage for interactivity, but I feel as though companies should use this as motivation to please their customers as much as they possibly can therefore it can’t happen to them. Bad publicity is the worse thing that can happen for a company, but if I owned my own company I would use it as incentive to make all my customers happen no matter what.
ReplyDeleteAlso in regards to other outlets businesses should utilize, I think emails are very effective. Most people check their emails everyday and even multiple times a day. I can only speak for my self, but whenever I see a company has emailed me about sales or certain new products, it always stimulates me to want to go on their website and shop. Therefore I think it is another outlet that can become very profitable for companies because it’s a way to remind and inform customers about your business.
Jessica - I really enjoyed your blog, especially the infographics. I think the statistics that the infographics provided are powerful i.e. "71% of customer who have a positive experience via social media are likely to recommend that company" is a VERY high percentage. That alone shows how important social media and personal interaction via those channels are in helping spread the word about a company. I think Twitter is a great resource that companies can use to provide "social customer service," and I have seen it used many times on my own timeline from people that I follow. I think even apps like Instagram or Vine are cool new ways to interact with customers on a non-customer service level, and a more "personal" level. Companies can take pictures of what people are doing in the office to give a face to the corporate name, or create mini-videos of the behind-the-scenes efforts of bigger offline marketing campaigns to connect the physical with the digital realms. As far as the negative side of interactivity - I think businesses should use the very social media techniques that can crush their image to rebuild their image. So for example, the customer who wrote a complaint letter about the airlines: the airlines should in-turn write a public letter (albeit sincere but with a sarcastic twist) to the customer and let social media run with that to show that they care about their customers and have a personality too.
ReplyDeleteGreat Blog! I loved that picture you found about social media in customer service. That is exactly what I did my blog about and I talk about companies and the time they take to solve customer inquiries online. Did you know that most companies take an average of 12 hours to reply? Social media customer service needs some improvement. Interestingly enough most airline companies are really good at providing these types of services, they have even become known through it. Even our own troubled American Airlines is considered one of the top 10 companies in the US with better social media customer assistance as described by socialbaker.com
ReplyDelete