E-marketing has become a major movement among many businesses and industries, and has had a huge impact on how consumers go through the buying decision process. Buyers are influenced by social media sites, search engines, and basically anywhere on the internet that allows you to make a purchase of some kind. In my personal experience, iTunes gets me every time. I usually plan on buying about a couple of albums or so, but then they have this entire section where there's recommendations just for me. They even list about 10 songs that they think I'll want to buy based on my purchases in the past. Suddenly, I'm back in the problem recognition stage and I want more music. This kind of e-marketing influences more than just the first stage of the buying process. There's also the alternative evaluation and purchase decision. When you're presented with so many options, you then have to decide which item you want to buy right away. You can save some choices for later, or eliminate them altogether. Once you've come to a decision, you proceed with your actual purchase. iTunes is an example of how online stores make the best use of e-marketing to influence the buying decision process.
Facebook and Twitter contribute to the major breakthrough of e-marketing, by allowing businesses to connect directly with consumers (B2C). It builds relationships, by getting more and more consumers to visit their fan pages and spread the word of their business. But what about business to business (B2B) companies, can they still use social media as a marketing support? According to the Top Rank Marketing Blog there's a few tips that will help B2B corps succeed with e-marketing. The tip that I found most interesting is "Cross Promote Content". It encourages B2B corps to re-use promotional content that's been created elsewhere by posting it on Facebook. Not all audiences engage with every marketing effort, so the more it's put out there the greater the chances of boosting their business relationships. With Facebook fan pages and gaining followers on Twitter, industries give consumers more options in the information search stage and the alternative evaluation stage. Social media has become a huge part of the decision buying process.
This was a great read Claudia. Thanks for the additional reads!
ReplyDeleteIt's crazy to see how the e-marketing world has changed. That instead of relying on our friends opinions we go straight to our social networking sites, our NEW best friends. With this new relationship business have taken advantage to have a direct contact with their consumers.
I know this at hand, with my own personal blog. I have set up a twitter account to have a direct relationship with my readers. Since I write about different restaurants, I want to know what my readers like and what they suggest. I also use this as an opportunity for contests and etc.
I can only imagine with a larger company what great advantages the social networking sites offer them!
Very nice post Claudia! It's funny you mention itunes, I always come across the same problem when downloading music. It just gets me every time! Sometimes I just want to download one song and I end up uploading a whole bunch.
ReplyDeleteI love Facebook and Twitter because they give you the opportunity to build a relationship with consumers. I think every company should be involved Social Media it's the biggest trend right now and if you want to be heard it's the way to go!