May we use social media for advertising?

This week inspiration is drawn from a great piece of reading “Interact with me on my terms: a four segment Facebook engagement framework for marketers”. The article provides a good background of information about the key segments of Facebook users, which help marketers in their way of finding successful marketing strategies to target their consumers.

I found the article is very beneficial for users especially who desire to set up their advertising page on Facebook. Advising users to pay very careful attention before putting their money out. Noted by Needleman and Marshall 2014, Facebook advertising continue to become increasingly expensive, whereby negative result also continue to goes up. From the real life example, General Motors decide to drop out of Facebook advertising due of the loss of $10 million for ineffective marketing. Hence, this will trigger marketers to question themselves “ is the investment worth?”.

Writer recognise the importance of brand page that require create emotional ties and social bonding over along time with their online community which in hand will achieve more brand commitment. Given these values, marketer will need to identify what segment of consumers they are targeting so that they could adopt the right strategies. Facebook marketers need to recognise 4 segment frameworks include: attention seekers, devotees, entertainment chasers, connection seekers.

Writer recognise the importance of brand page that require create emotional ties and social bonding over along time with their online community which in hand will achieve more brand commitment. Given these values, marketer will need to identify what segment of consumers they are targeting so that they could adopt the right strategies. Facebook recognise there are 4 segment frameworks include: attention seekers, devotees, entertainment chasers, connection seekers.

The first identify segment is entertainment chasers, their motivation for using Facebook is escape from their boredom by finding and consuming burst of entertaining content. It is recommend that the marketers need to combine entertainment with advertisement by having: quiz, video or games to spark the interest within entertainment chasers. The next segment is attention seeker, they are motivate by Facebook because it able to let them tell every story to the followers. They think of themselves as everyday celebrities of their circle. Marketers who targeting this segment can perhaps gain consumers attention by providing faster or exclusive brand information, new products, exclusive deals.  

Devotees are motivated by finding relief from their friends support on Facebook on whatever might stress them out. This segment is ideal brand ambassadors as they spend large amount of time on Facebook and has strong connection to their Facebook social network. Marketers would serve by tapping these individual to create post their own related content on the brand community or their own wall. Lastly, connection seeker is driven to connect with others and create their strong social group. Brand marketers might need to create space for consumer to consumer rather than consumer to brand interaction ( Smith et al, 2012).

Although Facebook has more active users and it is a great platform for marketing.

However, in my perspective I think using twitter would probably achieve better result. For example: Twitter has younger based users than Facebook ( Stephanie Miaki, 2019). These users interest in new contents and trending topic (sport, news, product and services updates). In contrast, Facebook users are there to keep connected with their family and friends. According to Adweek “Twitter ads id perform much higher than Facebook” (Larry kim, 2018). Average CTR of twitter is 1-3% while Facebook has 0.119% where twitter ads are in stream, rather than push off to the side. But of course, it all up to marketers to think and judge which social media is a better option for them.