Social media provides opportunities for brands to connect with customers and influence purchasing decisions. Companies use social media to build brand awareness through sustained messaging that reaches customers both when they are actively shopping and at the time of purchase. Consumers research products online and through social media and are influenced by reviews and recommendations from friends and other consumers they view as trusted sources. Effective social media strategies create engaging content tailored to specific platforms and focus on starting conversations rather than just promoting products.

1. Social Media in Advertising &
Marketing
TEAM FOODIES
Gianfranco Leone, Darius Wideman, Corey Salej, Annabelle
Mazagwu, Joseph Brando

2. “Fifty-five percent of social network users reported they typically keep in touch by
visiting brands’ websites— the top method of staying connected to a brand.” —@
eMarketer (2013)

3. Advertising & Marketing Theories
“Success flows to organizations that inform, not organizations that promote”.
Products were marketed through commercial mass media (TV & Radio)
Online shift
Top of Mind Awareness- branding through “ a sustained level of marketing and
messaging” that influences customers at time of purchase
Frame of Mind Awareness - “reaching potential customers when they are active
shopping and buying mode”
Friend of Mind Awareness - “your prospective customers must consider you a
friend” to complete for their time attention and loyalty

4. Consumers
Consumers follow a social media marketing customer- driven path: Finding
sites and content, Learning through engagement & listening, Validating info
through reviews and content ,Using demonstrations or trials, Buying through a
sales process ,Advocacy after purchase
Companies announce through social media they have a new client
Customer may endorse product
Company may reward brand loyalty through program linked to social media
marketing plan
Strengthen public perceptions of brand

5. Branding
Corporate brand management may be seen as a PR function of “promoting and
protecting the reputation of the corporation. (Morley, 2009, p. 4)
Branding involves a bond, which has been described as a “powerful emotional
connection. Social media engagement creates real-time opportunities for brand
representatives to connect to the public.
Advertising agencies see that their work builds a strong distinctive, memorable brand.

6. Top 12 Advertisers
Samsung Nestle
Procter & Gamble Unilever
Microsoft American
Express
AT&T Walmart
Amazon Coca Cola
Verizon Starbucks

7. Promotions, Market Research & Segmentation
Customers use social network sites to create and distribute “brand centric” content and
media (Tuten, 2008, p. 101)
Simple consumer generated media is created without prior request.
Consumer solicited media or participatory advertising, occurs when brands ask
consumers to create, for example, their own advertisement.
Incentivized consumer generated media offers prizes for submissions.
Consumer fortified media results occurs when a professional advertisement sparks
trusted consumer conversation.
Compensated consumer generated media is a term used to describe paid bloggers and
other arrangements.

8. Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)
The IMC concept addresses a need to integrate brand-marketing communication
across previously separate industries of PR, advertising and marketing. IMC designed
to take a step back from specific messaging and employ integration of approaches to
achieve strategic goals.
Vaynerchuk describes his rule of engagement as:
Brands and small businesses want to look relevant, engaged and authentic, but when
their content is banal and unimaginative, it only makes them look lame. Content for
the sake of content is pointless. Tone deaf posts, especially in the form of come ons
and promos, just take up space, and are justifiably ignored by the public. (p.16)

9. IMC continued
Vaynerchuk defines outstanding content as:
1. Native to platform
2. Does not interrupt the social media flow
3. rarely makes demands
4. leverages pop culture
5. contains micro-nuggets of information, humor, commentary or inspiration.
6. stays consistent and self aware

10. Social Media Strategic Planning
An important distinction between social networking and social networking site activity
and social media is the role of social business models. Cha (2013) identified value
creation, sources of competency, target market and revenue as four business
considerations. Value is theoretically created through successful brand positioning
within the market.
Social media engagement is created through positive interaction within a specific
social media online space.
Example: Twitter’s real time information positioning is different from LinkedIn’s
professional and job seeker target marker.

11. Awareness & Engagement
Awareness begins with online impressions
An advertising buyer may bid on a sponsored search keyword that matches a user search and produces a high
page ranking. This creates a consumer point of entry
A click-through rate (CTR) may be measured as the number of clicks divided by impressions (p. 77). In other
words, advertisers are interested in how a sponsored search was observed by consumers and served as a
catalyst to drive a percentage of these users to a website for possible conversion.
Social media conversation is important as a means to either spark the initial search or generate traffic through
use of a direct link. CTRs appear to be in decline from the height of an era of searching for online content.
This is being replaced by content that is pushed out across social media sites. Awareness is a cognitive
processing of initial information about a product or service. Through engagement with other consumers,
paid brand managers or other representatives may increase motivation to learn more.

12. Cont.
Google (2013) studied rapidly growing mobile media usage. In a Nielsen study, Google explored the purchase path when
consumers use mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. The research team studied 950 people, as well as
a panel of mobile users over two weeks, and found the following points to be true:
Consumers spend time researching in mobile. Consumers spend 15+ hours per week researching on their
smartphone and, on average, visit mobile websites 6 times.
Mobile research starts with search. More smartphone users start researching about products or services on a
search engine vs. a branded mobile site or app.
Location proximity matters to mobile consumers. 69% of consumers expect businesses to be within 5 miles or
less of their location.
Purchase immediacy is key. Over half of consumers want to make a purchase within an hour of conducting
research on their smartphone.
Mobile influences purchases across channels. 93% of people who use mobile to research go on to purchase of
a product or service. Most purchases happen in physical stores (p. 3).

13. Cont.
The proliferation of smartphones and inexpensive tablets is leading marketers to focus on the mobile path to
purchase in order to strategically develop campaigns that start with a search trigger and end with
purchasing at a local store. A website visit is part of the process, but not all of it. In areas such as health
and nutrition (41%), automotive (38%) and home and garden (42%), more than one-third of consumers
begin the shopping process with a mobile search.
Branded apps are also important in beginning the purchase process in finance (36%), electronics (22%), and
apparel and beauty (21%)
For some areas, such as restaurants, a nearby location is very important to a majority of mobile consumers
(61%)
The desire for purchase immediacy means that the brick and mortar retail world remains important—83% of
mobile consumers want to buy within a day, although about half of those now make an online purchase

14. cont.
The social media component of the mobile path to purchase is the important role that consumer reviews play in
the process. Google talks about consumer research, with 93% of the people in their study using mobile
devices to help them decide. This is consistent with Stanford University research findings: “As you might
suspect, the research shows that a wealth of online product information and user reviews is causing a
fundamental shift in how consumers make decisions” (Richtel, 2013, para. 2)
Traditionally, consumers would pick a mid-priced option between three choices, but reviews now allow
consumers to dig deeper in determining value. This finding has important social media implications. It
means every consumer has the power to be an influencer through his or her reviews on sites such as
Amazon and Yelp. Advertisers and marketers that engage with consumers likely to be reviewers have an
opportunity to create positive experiences, brand loyalty and future purchasing persuasion.

15. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Online searches remain one of the most important methods for finding information on the Internet.
While information pushed out through social media is increasingly a factor, SEO literacy skills help practitioners achieve
successful reach with their messages
More people, for example, will see bloggers’ content, if headlines and tags are SEO-friendly. Likewise, an online press release
should be optimized with the SEO words that people associate with when thinking about the ideas.
A Google search begins with a person thinking about what they are looking for and then entering a word or phrase. Quickly,
Google begins to suggest keywords (also identified within computer coding of a site) that are popular, and continuously
changing computer algorithms, also driving Yahoo! and Bing, benefit some Web pages over others.
Website and content operators can control search engine result placements (SERP)
“Off-page optimization” is a function of links to a page from other popular and similar pages (p. 61). Social media may positively impact SEO
through profile links and rankings:
If you have a Facebook account it likely includes links of various kinds—links to books you’re reading, products and websites you recommend, and
hopefully links back to your websites and blogs. By the very nature of Facebook, it carries tremendous authority. If you are linking to your
own website, it passes that authority back to you.

16. Cont.
Google property YouTube, for example, is an important social media site for practicing great SEO. Through keywords and
links, video offers access to “one of the largest sources of traffic on the planet”
Kaushik (2010) offers a comprehensive model for understanding SEO. He uses clickstream data, multiple outcomes analysis, and experimentation
and testing to focus massive consumer data into usable customer information. Customer voice, competitive intelligence and insights help
businesses understand why products are purchased or not:
The degree of positive or negative engagement lies on a continuum that ranges from low involvement, namely, the psychological state of
apathy, to high. An engaged person is someone with an above-average involvement . . . Customers can be positively or negatively
engaged with a company or product
Kaushik (2010) views this involvement as connected to “emotional states and rational beliefs” . One can easily see how social
media conversation, with its use of trust, may elevate or lower involvement. For example, a company post might express
pride of winning an award, and this may be connected to an increase in trust levels. Likewise, a company representative
engaging with a complaining customer might express sympathy and offer to correct the problem.

17. Cont.
Google has an approved set of strategies to improve a page rank, and this is referred to as “white hat SEO” (Williams, 2013, p.
7). There also are “black hat” SEO strategies, such as “on-page keyword stuffing to backlinking blasts using software” . Google
and other search engines seek to point users to trusted sites, whether or not high search rankings are a function of payment. An
historically trusted site has a lot of positive SEO, and search engine algorithms allow for some negative SEO that would label a
new site as spam. Social media interaction is an important way to generate positive conversation: “. . . if they ask a question,
make sure you answer it as this starts a dialogue with your target audience and builds trust and authority”

18. Return on Investment (ROI)
Most of what we call advertising and marketing is predicated on the goal of converting consumers into customers of products
or services.
The consumer process may begin with an online search that leads to social media engagement.
The use of a search engine, such as Google, involves entry of a “term“ that may be linked to a “keyword,” an advertisement or
a “sponsored-search result”. For businesses, ROI measurement is related to the use of online platforms for generated
leads and conversions to sales:
The objective of the advertiser is to find the “sweet spot” of terms that will generate significant volumes of convertible
traffic. This set of keywords is advertiser-dependent. This selection can generally be done through concentration of
a few keywords in the head, a lot of terms in the tail, or a combination of both.
ROI can be achieved through alignment of social media terms used with advertising and marketing website keywords. In order
to be effective, these keywords must surface in specific screen locations identified through “eye-tracking patterns”
research

19. Cont.
ROI can be achieved through alignment of social media terms used with advertising and marketing website keywords. In
order to be effective, these keywords must surface in specific screen locations identified through “eye-tracking patterns”
research, In general, paid search is most effective when it appears at the top of a page or on the left side of it. These are
hot areas of screen viewers for those using languages that read left to right, such as in the United States.
There is ongoing debate about whether or not ROI can or should be computed for social media activities. Initially, there was an
interest in justifying social media to the C-suite managers who did not understand it by making an ROI argument.
ROI social media measures, though, tended to be secondary and indirect. Current thinking focuses on clear social media
benefits: “the new metrics evaluate social media strategies in terms of audience-building, brand awareness and customer
relations” (Heggestuen, 2013, para. 3). Marketers moved away from revenue per customer metrics, at the same time as
they increased social media budgets.
From this perspective, “audience reach, engagement, and sentiment” are most important (para. 9). A Facebook friend’s
share, for example, is more likely to be seen in news feeds (29–35%) than brand pages (para. 10). According to Business
Insider, “Post reach is the most fundamental indicator of reach on Facebook, but it’s important to track it relative to the
number of page fans and enrich it with complimentary indicators” (para. 12).

20. Cont.
Fans and likes alone are seen as “feel good” or “vanity measures” that do not reflect meaningful marketing context (para. 16).
Social media probably have more in common with traditional personal influence than advertising or marketing impact. Still,
advertising media buyers now seek to develop integrated marketing campaigns in which social media components reinforce
other messages.
At the same time, social media have the potential to spark negative sentiment within social network conversations. Brand
managers must tune in on regular and systematic conversation monitoring and engagement in order to avoid missing important
moments of influence.

21. Cost of Ignoring(COI)
MacLean (2013) identified the cost of ignoring as a measurement of social shyness
Companies need to respond to customers communicating with them through social
media
Social Listening & Engagement are a very important strategy for customer service,
reputation management, crowdsourcing, collaboration, and recruitment
Engagement may drive customer loyalty & manage anything negative expressed by
consumers
Being apart of social media communities can help build credibility

22. Advertising & Marketing Case Studies
The University of Chicago is located in an area that has few restaurants and stores
Food Trucks find this as a haven to offer College students and faculty accessible food
Food truck concept is interesting because you are not stationed in the same location everyday
Food Trucks use twitter as a means to identify locations and cuisines

23. Real Time Social Marketing
Social Media marketing often happens in real time without delay between initial
conversation and commercial response.
Smartphones give us the ability to check in locations within specific amount of time
Applications like foursquare encourage users to check whats near them and to have
access to specials and coupons
Customer Relationship management (CRM)- measures customer satisfaction,
loyalty and retention

24. Successes: Wendy’s new marketing campaign
Wendy’s needed to find a way to shift the focus off the issues of fast food being
unhealthy
Wendy’s introduced the new pretzel pub sandwich; which was promoted
dramatically with soap opera youtube videos #pretzellovestories
Result was a positive reaction and helped promote wendy’s with the video being
shared more than 2,000 times

25. Failures
During early years of the social media communication era, many companies had
difficulty adopting the new form of branding.
Example: KFC’s #Iatethebones campaign
Hashtag backfired and resulted in memes of people choking on bones
Competition for attention within social media in some cases has led advertisers and
marketers to ignore risks associated with edgy content.
In digital world where everyone can respond, more creative teams must be able to
predict all possible responses

26. Example: Matt Mcconaughey Lincoln commercial

27. Lessons
Awareness > Opinion > Consideration > Preference > Purchase
Awareness, Advocacy and Sales
Non linear continuum should lead marketers to “shift from grabbing attention to holding attention”.

28. Discussion Questions: Strategies & Tactics
How can we better understand relationships consumers have with brands through
social media sites? What are the most important benefits and constraints within
these interactions?
What risks may exist for brands using native advertising and sponsored content to
drive media exposure within contexts that appear similar to traditional new
stories?
How can brands leverage the importance of social media interaction with
consumers to grow product sales through indirect effects from ongoing online
communication ?