Marketers are increasingly using your Facebook, Twitter, and
social networking sites to advertise to you, the consumer, who will hopefully
glance at their product or offering and create business for their company.
Although advertising on Youtube, LinkedIn and other sites can lead to hits,
according to the TechJournal, “A recent study on social media conducted by
Relevation Research found that 52 percent of US online consumers, 16 years+
have liked, followed or subscribed to a company/brand via social networking.
But close to a third of these later turn around and dump the companies/brands
with which they initially forged a relationship” (http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2012/03/advertising-on-social-media-can-backfire-lose-customers/).
Thus, as much as the idea of advertising on a social network may appeal to a
firm, a business needs to appreciate its customers in a deeper way.
One of these ways is by creating
value-adding content that users can apply to their own lives or use while
shopping for other products and offerings. Interesting facts, pictures, and
content keep users engaged rather than pushing a product in front of users so
that they are forced to look at and examine a product. Social networking has a
large reach of audience members, so examining content so that it appeals to
every part of a market is sometimes difficult to do. Rather than forcing
content on users who will eventually abandon a firm’s advertising on social
networking, businesses need to create content that is appealing to various
market segments, establishes a community, and establishes credibility with
users (http://akhilesh89.hubpages.com/hub/Online-advertising-on-social-networking-sites-is-essential). Without this strategy, companies
will continue to fail in their advertising efforts towards consumers, and
advertising on social networking will go
the way of banner ads, with users ignoring content entirely in favor of other
forms of advertising.
What are your thoughts about
advertising on social networking? Could it be labeled as intrusive or
unnecessary? Is it effective to you personally as a student or consumer? What
are some potential flaws with this kind of advertising?
7 comments:
In my opinion, advertising on social networks is almost a right to the companies who do it. Since websites such as Facebook, and Twitter are free for users, then a minor drawback is having the advertisements. Personally, it's not effective, and has never been the reason why I bought a certain product... but many others are probably influenced by advertising on Facebook.
Honestly, it does not bother me at all. Just about every single website that you visit is jumbled with ads so I am at the point where I can just continue with what I am doing and not even look at them.
A good thing that Facebook does is they allow you to exit out of the ad and you can select if it is something that you are not interested in so that way they can better advertise to you personally.
Creating engaging advertising is key for success. A webpage such as facebook has promotions all over the page and most will not pay attention to it. I do not find it intrusive and just ignore it all together. Being able to obtain "likes" and "follows" will help companies create engaging advertising such as personal messages and individual feedback.
Matt - I think perhaps that these kinds of ads are going to be completely eliminated eventually. I think as users ignore them, eventually marketers will find more invasive ways to advertise.
Amanda - but what if marketers find a more invasive way to advertise towards you? Would you have anything to say then?
Andrew - This is very true and leveraging advertising properly is one way that marketers can create an effective fan/customer/clientele base. However without the ability to effectively expose themselves to a market, people will continue to ignore a business.
My thoughts on advertising on social networks are that I feel they are okay until the pop-ups and the advertisements from websites you just left come the social network. It has not effected me as a consumer at all because I never looked to the advertisement to purchase anything.
Advertising on social networking sites is not anoying if the companies doing the advertizing don't over do it. Its easy to just push advertisements at customers and not have to worry about how to do it in a reasonable way. Offering special deals to those who like a company's page is a great way to introduce new products rather than having to push adds in the faces of consumers when they are ocupied with other matters at the time.
I agree that pop-ups and over-advertizing can be sometimes overdone. However, if customers have to spend less time to research a product through ads informing them of that particular product, then perhaps this is a good thing? It takes the burden of research off the consumer perhaps...
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