SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Challenge #1: Drafting the social media plan. How do you plot the roadmap to your goals?
Your Solution: Create a solid social media marketing strategy by putting these together:

Challenge #2: Establishing real connection with your viewers. Are you connecting with your audiences on an individual and personal level?
Your Solution: Use monitoring tools. There are free or low-cost brand tools you can use to respond to every comment.

Challenge #3: Growing your organic reach.
Your Solution: Consider paid social media advertising.

Challenge #4: How to encourage sharing.
Your Solution: Bring value and entertainment. Tell stories, use emotional appeal, make your viewers look smart, create contagious content.

Challenge #5: Making quality visuals and graphics.
Your Solution: Create your own images using fun and easy to use tools .Authentic connection with the audience.

·         Monitor all additional social media channels and respond to each comment in an authentic way. You can do this by asking questions, linking to other blog posts, providing insights, or offering help with a problem.

·         Creating a solid social media marketing strategy doesn’t have to take weeks to put together. For me, it helps to have three key things written down on paper:

·         Why we’re on social: Simply being active of social media channels for the sake of being there is one of the quickest ways to burn valuable time and resources. First, answer the question of ‘why’ your business is on social and what you would like to accomplish.

·         Use a combination of Facebook Audience Insights and Twitter Audience Insights to learn about your audience and create personas. Once you have an idea of who they are, use those insights to create highly targeted ads that will resonate with users.

·         For some brands, the way to cut through all of the noise on social media is to simply post more. While this tactic may work for some, for many it has the tendency to irritate followers.

People will naturally follow your brand over time from posting great content, not posting more content.

·         Now that you have all of this great content for your blog and social media channels, people will surely follow, right?

As marketers know, this isn’t always the case. Promoting content, partnering with brands and influencers, and capturing audiences’ attention is a whole new social media challenge in itself.

·         The most important part is having one growth process and sticking to it no matter what.

·         Know your channels, your audience, and your market inside and out and make strategic experiment decisions based on what you know. Doing so will help to focus on the things that matter most.

WHY DO PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT FAIL AT TIMES?

Here are 7 key reasons major brands’ products fail on the market:

Reason #1: Failure to Understand Consumer Needs and Wants

Blinded by their own vision company ignores negative user feedback right from trials, and developed a product that failed to meet customers needs and wants.

Reason #2: Fixing a Non-Existent Problem

In 1990 Maxwell House launched Ready to Drink Coffee.

So why did it flop?

You see, turns out that you can’t microwave coffee in its original packaging. Instead customers had to pour the product from the packaging into a mug before putting it into the microwave… An activity no different than pouring yourself a cup of fresh coffee from the coffeemaker which is exactly what customers kept doing, forcing the company to abandon the product.

Reason #3: Targeting the Wrong Market

Microsoft admits that they were just chasing Apple and created a product that offered no reasons for customers to switch.

What’s the lesson from this mistake?

It’s hard to know how the market will react to a product and marketing messaging. Hence why it’s crucial to test these things beforehand. Ask potential users for feedback and test their response to the marketing message.And then, listen to that feedback.

Reason #4: Incorrect Pricing

A high price might suggest too sophisticated product to customer needs. And so, it could force potential buyers to look for alternatives they’d perceive more relevant to them.

Reason #5: Weak Team and Internal Capabilities

Lack of skills can limit any potential solutions your team can create. Similarly, lack of resources and internal support can hinder your efforts to produce a product that satisfies customer needs.

Reason #6: Prolonged Development or Delayed Market Entry

Taking too long to launch may also cause a product to fail. By the time it hits the market, customer needs could change, the economy could have taken a downturn, or the market segments may have evolved.

That’s the fate of Google Lively, the search giant’s answer to Second Life. After prolonged development, Lively finally launched in 2008, just as the recession started to take its toil.

Reason #7: Poor Execution

Bad design, poor user experience, sloppy implementation, feature creep, and lack of quality control all contribute to product failure.

It’s no surprise that 4 months after the launch, Microsoft allowed Dell to sell computers with an older version of Windows pre installed.

About 30 to 45% of new products fail to deliver any meaningful financial return. This typically happens due to a number of reasons, from poor product / market fit, failure to understand customer needs (or fixing a non-existing problem), to a lack of internal capabilities.

STEPS IN BRAND BUILDING

Branding is a process that allows an individual or a group of individuals the ability to provide a brand image and lettering to an idea. Upon doing so, one has a better chance of selling such items to a broader audience whether that be on a local or global level.

Step 1 : Determine your brand’s target audience.

The foundation for building your brand, is to determine the targeted audience that you’ll be focusing on.

You can’t be everything to everyone, right?

Step 2 : Define a branding mission statement.

Before you can build a brand that your target audience trusts, you need to know what value your business provides.

The mission statement basically defines a purpose for existing. It will inform every other aspect of your brand building.

Everything from your logo to your tagline, voice, message and personality should reflect that mission.

We all know the Nike tagline: Just Do It. But do you know their mission statement?

Step 3 : Research brands within your industry niche.

You should never imitate exactly what the big brands are doing in your industry. But, you should be aware of what they do well (or where they fail).

The goal is to differentiate from the competition. Convince a customer to purchase from you over them!

Step 4 : Outline the key qualities & benefits your brand offers.

There will always be brands with bigger budgets and more resources to command their industry.

Your products, services, and benefits belong solely to you.You have to delve down deep and figure out what you offer, that no one else is offering.

Step 5 : Create a great brand logo & tagline.

The most basic (and arguably the most important piece) of brand building, is the creation of your company logo and tagline.

Hire a professional designer or creative agency with branding and identity design experience, to help you build your brand.

Step 6 : Form your brand’s business voice.

Your voice is dependent on your company mission, audience, and industry.

It’s how you communicate with your customers, and how they respond to you.

Step 7 : Build a brand message and elevator pitch.

When brand building, tell customers succinctly who you are.

Use the business voice you have chosen.

Your message should be intricately associated with your brand, and conveyed in 1-2 sentences.

It goes beyond your logo and tagline to define the key aspects of who you are, what you offer, and why people should care.

Step 8 : Let your brand personality shine.

Customers aren’t looking for another cookie-cutter company who offers the same thing as everyone else.

They are looking for an experience tailored to their needs, backed by genuine personal interaction.

Step 9 : Integrate your brand into every aspect of your business.

Brand building never stops.

Your brand should be visible and reflected in everything that your customer sees (and doesn’t see).

Step 10 : Stay true to your brand.

Unless you decide to change your brand into something that is more effective based on measured consumer response, consistency is key.

Step 11 : Be your brand’s biggest advocate.

Once you have built a brand that works for your small business, you (and your employees) are the best advocates to market your brand.

Give your loyal customers a voice. Encourage them to post reviews, or share your content.

---

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MARKET ORIENTED AND MARKETING ORIENTED

In general, the phrase marketing orientation is a marketing term, whereas market-oriented is typically an economics term. Marketing orientation means a company operates with a market- or customer-first approach. Market oriented is used in marketing, but it more typically describes a free enterprise economy where businesses and consumers are able to buy and sell freely.

When a company has a marketing orientation, it makes meeting the needs or wants of its target customers its primary business motivation. This includes responding to stated consumer needs by developing new products, improving on exist products or improving services. Companies with especially strong marketing orientation may even detect consumer needs before the general market is aware of them. These companies are usually cutting-edge innovators that try to give customers what they want faster than competitors.

Market orientation is more than simply ‘getting close to the customer.’ An organisation can be market oriented only if it completely understands its market. Customer information must go beyond research and promotional functions to penetrate every organisational function.

·        Customers

Markets consist of consumers, competitors and regulatory organizations. If your business has a market orientation, you focus your activities on potential customers and competitors while complying with regulations. If your business is marketing-oriented, you have the same focus for your market-related activities, but you add other concerns.

·        Selling

Selling means persuading consumers to buy your product. Market-oriented companies may study their market to find out what sales strategy works best and use it to persuade potential customers. Marketing-oriented companies study the market to find out what consumers want, what price they will pay, where they want to make their purchases and how the company can reach them. If yours is a marketing-oriented company, you inform potential customers that the product they are looking for is available at a price they can afford in a convenient location. For your promotion, you use media channels that your potential customers favour.

·        Products

Market-oriented companies know what the customers want, but they may or may not focus on products and manufacturing. If you are executing a marketing strategy, product design, price and quality are key aspects of your planning and execution. Knowing your market is a first step in the marketing process. While a market orientation may lead toward the same goals, a marketing orientation forces you to follow the marketing process and develop products that meet the needs of your target market customers.

·        Customer Service

Whether you are in a market-oriented company or a marketing-oriented one, your primary goal in customer service is to ensure that customers are satisfied. Beyond that immediate objective, the marketing process regards customer service as an opportunity to interact with customers and obtain feedback on how effectively the company is implementing its marketing strategy. Based on feedback from customer service and other sources, a marketing-oriented company will improve the product and adjust its marketing strategy.

COMPETITIVE PRICING

Effective pricing is essential for a business. That’s the only way they’d know at what price they should offer a product, while maintaining a good profit margin and keeping up with the competition. A business can pick from a variety of pricing strategies and the selection depends on different factors.

Pricing is one of the most important components when it comes to creating marketing strategies. The price is one of the first things that a consumer notices about a product and is one of the deciding factors when it comes to their decision to buy it or not.

When a product is priced in accordance with what the competition is charging, it’s known as competitive pricing. It is one of the four major pricing strategies adopted by most companies. The other three include, cost-plus strategy, where a prefixed profit margin is added over the total cost of the product, demand pricing, under which the price is set by establishing the optimal relationship between volume and price, and markup pricing, where a percentage is added (as profit) over the wholesale price of the product.

When it comes to competition based pricing strategy, the purchasing behaviour of customers is an important criteria. Some of the factors that companies take into account are costs, competition, and price sensitivity. In order to ensure profitable sustenance of the business, managers have to set the price such that it covers the production cost, company overheads costs, and also offers suitable profits.

The concept of competitive pricing is best understood when there are only two competing parties. Suppose, two companies manufacture detergent for washing clothes. Both will charge the same price and if one company wants to compete with the other, will advertise saying why it’s product is better.

Even big corporate giants sometimes resort to competitive pricing strategy when they want to enter a new market. They have to set the price almost equivalent to their competitor, even if the production cost is high. In case the production cost is higher, they’d have to play around and adjust prices of packaging, advertising, and distribution.

When a company is unable to anticipate competitor price changes or is not equipped to make corresponding changes in a timely fashion, a retailer may offer to match advertised competitor prices. This allows the retailer to maintain a competitive price point for those who become aware of the competitor's offer without having to officially change the price within the retailer’s point of sale system.

For example, in November 2014, Amazon projected price changes to approximately 80 million items in preparation for the holiday season. Other retailers, including Walmart and Best Buy, announced a price-matching program. This allowed customers of Walmart or Best Buy to receive a product at the lower price without risking customers taking their business to Amazon solely for pricing reasons.

For many small businesses in particular, competitive pricing results in a narrowing of profit margins. This makes the business vulnerable to a sudden rise in costs. Therefore, independent retailers competing with high-volume, big box stores may choose an alternative pricing strategy that affords them a larger cushion on their profit margin and justify it on the basis of their niche advantage -- for example, being local and customer-focused.