Social Media,IMC Strategies And Virality
In Brief, we are going to discuss the definition and the meaning about social media strategies, IMC strategies and how does Viral Media change the social media marketing landscape.
What is Social Media Campaigns?
Definition: "A socialmediacampaign is a coordinated marketing effort to reinforce or assist with a business goal using one or more social media platforms. Campaigns differ from everyday social media efforts because of their increased focus, targeting, and measurability."
Source
Social media campaigns are important to asses a brand's growth in the digital market and how to create new customers and as well as retain existing customers.
The main goals that social media campaigns are:
1- Getting feedback from users
2- Increasing website traffic
3- Improving overall brand management
4- Directly driving sales.
So while creating a goal we have to focus on what is the requirement of a campaign arises and ask ourselves the following question:
Why are we creating this campaign? What do we plan to achieve? How is it going to affect our website? How do we tap into new consumers? How does this campaign instill a notion of loyalty and how we are responsible in social media.
Coca Cola India Pakistan Campaign
The analysis for the following campaign
Now since we have answered the basic goals for social media campaigns we further dwelve into the next topic within this blog, that is Intergrated Marketing Campaigns.
What is Intergrated Marketing Campaigns?
It is a simple concept which ensures that all forms of communication and messages are carefully linked together. It simply ensures integration of all the promotional tools and creates a well oiled machine in the works.
The communication tools that you plan to integrate work better together, in other words they are better together rather than focussing on specific parts of the promotion.
The different Levels of integration that include are horizontal, vertical, Internal, external and data integration.
Horizontal occurs within department that support the overall concept of the marketing mix. Finance, Production, Marketing and distribution should focus on creating the right communication activities fit.
Vertical involves that your communication objective of your campaigns directly co-relate the the business goals and the head of the business.
Data Integration Involves departments such as sales, email marketing and advertising to tap each others resources through this form. A marketing information system helps share relevant data to different departments. A perfect example would be a Google analytics tool helping an ecommerce company.
Internal Integration requires all the staff to be informed and knowledge transfer from the marketing department to let them know regarding new products, campaigns, new partners and so on.
External Integration involves external partners to be invested in the idea and provide solution in order to reach a single seamless solution. The external partners include PR firms and advertising firms.
from the above video lets try and understand what are the elements for a successful integrated marketing campaign.
Who are your target customers?
The target customers are the families using the product.
What are the motivators?
Stripping away social awkwardness regarding certain stereotypical issues.
What channels do they mostly use?
Since it is a major company involved in this IMC, the customers range from social media to Paid Tv Advertisements.
The idea for this add is to create a consistent message across all media channels regarding Honey maid products and provide a customer a glimpse of their brand social message and responsibility that is to provide the product to all types of market disregarding social issues that surround specific communities.
The message that is integrated is ensured to create brand value and drive engagement on social media such as Youtube, Facebook and twitter. It also instills brand loyalty to a consumer so that it drives up the sale for the specific products under the Honey Maid chain.
Always track your campaigns and how they have affected your business.
For instance the above advertisement gained the following insights through youtube itself are below:
(https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/honeymaid/videos)
As you can see the video has generated of 8.3 million views and has over 91.6% rating which provides a solid proof of how a successful IMC works.
Viral Videos. What are they and how do they manage to succeed?
"A viral video is any clip of animation or film that is spread rapidly through online sharing. Viral videos can receive millions of views as they are shared on social media sites, reposted to blogs, sent in emails and so on."(www.techopedia.com)
The different types of viral videos are broadly considered in 3 types
Unintentional Videos are mostly those types of videos where the creator does not intend for the video to go viral. For instance on Youtube you will find several channels that compile a few videos of the week and make them viral and manage to get the maximum views.
For the above video its got a whopping 46,744,417 views and its just a 5 second video and the user has just 6100 subscribers at this very moment. Just do the math.
Humorous Viral Videos are intended to entertain people in forms of short animal videos, vines and comedic sketches. Also to add Buzzfeed does promote such types of videos as they slowly become viral. Enjoy this adorable Cat video.
The last and final type of viral video is promotional viral videos where organizations generate them keeping the IMC in mind and creating a brand value or portraying a brand message.
The above add complements both Jean Claude Van Damme and Volvo's vision for its Globetrotter trucks. This advertisement was all over social media and manage to get great amount of engagement through this. The Youtube add itself generated around 86 million views till today.
This article is to provide an insight towards Social media marketing and a guideline to reach a successful Integrated Marketing Campaigns and how viral videos can assist in reaching its goal.
If you have any question regarding this. Do comment on the post below.
Ricki. (2013). Coca-Cola connects Indians and Pakistanis together through a live communications portal via Leo Burnett Chicago and Leo Burnett Sydney. Retrieved from http://www.campaignbrief.com/2013/05/coke-connects-indians-and-paki.html
Learning, M. (2015). Integrated Marketing Communications. Retrieved from http://multimediamarketing.com/mkc/marketingcommunications/
Techopedia. (2017). Viral Video. Retrieved from https://www.techopedia.com/definition/26863/viral-video
