Advertising has evolved remarkably during the last
years. Everything started on 1941 with a watch advertisement from Bulova during
a boxing broadcast; but current advertisements go much further. We can find different
types of advertising which open a range of possibilities for all companies, that
is the reason why traditional advertising has been forced to adapt to new
standards to continue achieving its goals.
Internet’s emergence and evolution supposes a barrier
fading, which enables us to be informed from anywhere on the entire world. This
allows advertising to be reached easily and so to increase sales, creating a
harder relationship between the consumer and the company. Both of them find
benefits on this relationship, as the consumer can contact the company easier
and the company finds lots of advantages, such as:
- Knowing the other companies.
- Having a high corporate presence.
- Strengthen the company’s position and its products, as well as increasing its market notoriety.
- Data transmission enables the Internet to be useful for advertising.
- Internet decreases communication costs.
- Helps obtain a potential customer database.
- Companies are worldwide known.
- Stretches the relationship between company and consumer, as they can contact directly.
- Enables sending offers, catalogues, news... to consumers.
Internet clearly benefits this process because of its
properties: it’s quick, immediate and economic. It’s been a real important
change for SMBs as they have a great scope and brand identity. McKinsey
Institute upholds that SMBs which have Internet presence have a double growth
compared to the ones that are not, and so, they create double workplaces.
The web has been really important for advertising during those years, that’s
why we can’t avoid comparing it to the one we had before: television. Tv has
been the main way of worldwide advertising for years, nevertheless, this
unidirectional emission got superseded when Internet emerged. Television is
still very important for advertising, as the world population watches it a huge
amount of time, although currently the amount of time spent on the Internet and
on Tv is getting to be the same.
On the Internet every company uses a different advertising
strategy. New technologies, in constant evolution, offer companies a wide range
of opportunities to spread their brand, and one of them is social networks. Currently,
one of the most worldwide known is Twitter, and that’s the reason why it
deserves to be analysed as an advertising tool.
A social network is basically a social structure where
people interconnect to share their interests. Due to the different types of
interests that exist, which go from friendship to professional orientation, we
can find various networks with a specific objective. Some examples could be G+,
Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. Those networks enable users to get connected so
they can share their information, to the extent that they need to check it
periodically, so it becomes part of their daily routine. Social networks have
modified our daily habits and have created the need to belong to a virtual
group. People, and companies, need to be part of a social network to feel they “exist”,
because almost everyone is present on these and they’re a great disclosure tool
which clearly benefits companies and consumers. We can find some evident
examples such as:
- Pepsi: destined 20 million dollars to a social media campaign.
- Dell: earns 6.5 million dollars in sales through Twitter.
- Nike+: gives a benefit of 56 million dollars.
- Starbucks Argentina: created a social network called “My Starbucks Idea” to encourage consumers to express their own view about the company.
 |
| Image from: forbes.com |
Those are just some examples of big companies which
use social media to achieve their goals, but we can find lots of them using the
same strategy. Companies use them to create a user community, get them to be
loyal, attract new customers and increase their sales; and it works. Results are
not just visible taking a look at their sales, companies also have an ace in
the hole: meters. There are lots of different
statistic functions which enable the company to see how much influence it has.
Studying these statistics has empowered Twitter’s
benefits against other companies’. A research done by Twitter and Compete
called “Tweets in Action: Mobile/Tech" has revealed the following:
·
Users exposed to
brand tweets are more likely to visit the official web page than those who have
no Twitter.
·
Users tend to
search information about brands if they are connected to them through social
media.
·
Users exposed to
tweets of specific brands tend to learn more about them by reading articles.
With these three statements we could declare that
companies should use Twitter in a proactive way to maintain their users informed,
they should include some links just to give more information to potential
buyers and post interesting contents to awaken consumer’s curiosity about the
brand.
Concluding, we can confirm social networks are really
useful for communication, but above all for advertising. Technology has benefited
lots of companies and consumers, empowering and improving worldwide
communication. So it is important to remember that the emergence of the web 2.0
has meant a step forward for society. Because social networks are the future,
and the future is already here.
