Advantages of Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing advantage is influenced by several situational factors including industry characteristics, type of firm (e.g., size), extent of differentiation in buyers’ needs, and the specific competitive advantage(s) of the company designing the marketing strategy. The core issue is deciding how, when, and where to compete, given a firm’s market and competitive environment.

The purpose of the social media marketing targeting strategy is to select the people (or organizations) that management wishes to serve in the product-market. When buyers’ needs and wants vary, the market target is usually one or more segments of the product-market. Once the segments are identified and their relative importance to the firm determined, the targeting strategy is selected. The objective is to find the best match between the value requirements of each segment and the organization’s distinctive capabilities. The targeting decision is the focal point of marketing strategy since targeting guides the setting of objectives and developing a positioning strategy. The options range from targeting most of the segments to targeting one or few segments in a product-market. The targeting strategy may be influenced by the market’s maturity , the diversity of buyers’ needs and preferences, the firm’s size compared to competition, corporate resources and priorities, and the volume of sales required to achieve favorable financial results. Deciding the objectives for each market target spells out the results expected by management. Examples of market target objectives are desired levels of sales, market share, customer retention, profit contribution, and customer satisfaction. Marketing objectives may also be set for the entire business unit and for specific marketing activities such as advertising.

The marketing program social media positioning strategy is the combination of product, value-chain, price, and promotion strategies a firm uses to position itself against its key competitors in meeting the needs and wants of the market target, the strategies and tactics used to gain a favorable position are called the marketing mix or the marketing program.