Social media marketing has become an imperative need for every business organization irrespective of their size and resources. Social media marketing is a term used for collective intelligence in developing online collaboration, and it describes the approaches that any business may use to achieve organizational objectives by creating and communicating online value for stakeholders. Bob’s Bistro can also effectively use social media marketing strategies and platforms to communicate with their customers and to increase user engagement. Social media can offer Bob’s Bistro to generate attention for the brand or the product, generate online conversations to enterprise content, and to offer animation of users to share enterprise content with their network (Tuten & Solomon, 2014).
As a low cost option, social media marketing offers simple creation process and easy accessibility of tools for publishing and distribution of any kind of content that can be used both for businesses and for individuals. The frequently addressed stakeholder groups of Bob’s Bistro through social media may include existing and potential customers, bloggers, employees, and the general public. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are of high relevance for Bob’s Bistro, because being a small college town craft restaurant, its target market is comprised of college students that age between 18-25 years and are exceedingly keen on using Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook and Twitter can allow Bob’s Bistro to have an impact on the target audience even during the slow season. Through this, it can also offer indirect benefits to other potential customers in the town. It will offer Bob’s Bistro to communicate with a wide audience quickly and inexpensively, and also develop a direct link between the business and its customers. Bob’s Bistro can use social media to disseminate information related to its promotions, discounts, value added features, and for persuasive selling (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012).
John Wanamaker – the pioneer of marketing once coined this quote underpinning the significant allocation of advertising budget. The statement does still relate to the rich modern world of today even though a lot more have changed now. Earlier the statement was directed towards the difficulties that businesses faced in developing awareness for the products as there was vague segmentation of the target audience. However, today’s business world enables us to know the right time and right people to sell our products/services. Undoubtedly, social media rely exclusively on digital-based communication channels and applications, and have relatively low barriers to entry, which subsequently offers low cost, simple production processes, and easy accessibility of tools that can be used both for businesses and for individuals. However, the social media world is highly ubiquitous and pervasive, and it is very difficult to precisely categorize your required market niche.
The communication on social media is multi-dimensional and highly disseminated, which makes it very complex for a business organization to extract the precise information about sales and customer satisfaction in order to set objective, developing strategies, and implementing rational tactics to enhance profitability and goodwill. Therefore, although social media is a low-cost marketing medium, it yet does not offer all-inclusive rigorous information for strategy making process of business organizations (Tuten & Solomon, 2014).
In today’s modern business environment, social media platform have become an utmost necessity of every small and large business in order to develop social networking with stakeholders. In today’s marketplace, customer behavior, buying patterns, preferences and needs are changing rapidly and social media platforms enable business organizations to develop a closer relation with their customers to get a magnified and customized picture of their existing and future requirement and trends. I believe that Facebook is one of the most buildup social media platforms that has turn out to be a necessity in the contemporary business environment for various reasons. Facebook has become a necessity as it tremendously helps business organization to build a profitable relationship with people sharing activities, interest, and careers related to their products and services. This not only helps to develop and expand customer base but also help understand the existing and future orientation, preferences, choice of their targeted niche and therefore, crafting business strategies, as well as, making a precise projection about future trends and product development (Saravanakumar & Lakshmi, 2012).
For Bob’s Bistro, if I have to reach a specific target market of 18-25-year-old males, I would go for Facebook because among all the available social media platforms, more than 50% of the adults are the Facebook users and most of them are 18-25 years old. Facebook will allow Bob’s Bistro to create a distinguished corporate profile for displaying its commercial presence, as well as, groups for common interests. The profiles can be cross-linked among different users whereby an unlimited number of subscribers can be reached and communicated. Bob’s Bistro Facebook profile page would facilitate it to upload photos and videos on its wall, where the potential and existing visitors may leave publicly visible messages or post comments on their own contributions towards Bob’s Bistro. This would not only enhance brand visibility but would also help Bob’s Bistro to get the feedback of its customers that can be used in improving its product and service (Tuten & Solomon, 2014).
References
Saravanakumar, M., & Lakshmi, T. (2012). Social media marketing.Life Science Journal, 9(4), 4444-4451. Retrieved From http://www.lifesciencesite.com/lsj/life0904/670_13061life0904_4444_4451.pdf on June 24, 2016
Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2014). Social media marketing. Sage. Retrieved From http://www.pallacordarai.it/materiali/11.03.35_Social%20media%20Management%201.pdf on June 24, 2016
