In the past, the advertising was pretty
much through word of mouth. A product or a service would be used by a customer
and if he liked it, he would tell his family or friends about the product. Even
today a lot of advertising happens through word of mouth. In fact, word of
mouth is even now a more trusted source than any other form of advertising. It is
discovered that people are more likely to trust the word of someone they know rather
than an unknown entity. Advertising as we see it today – in the form of TV
commercials, print ad, radio commercials, etc. are a great way of making people
aware of the brand, product or service. But when you need that added push… the
necessary motivation for a person to actually want to try the product, the person is most likely to rely on the
word of someone he trusts.
Advertising has always been trying to
reach the people they are targeting where they are. So if an advertiser is
talking to a man in his late 30s who is a professional, the advertiser would
try to reach his message to this target with the use of newspapers and radio –
the logic being that a 30 something professional man will be spending a lot of
time on the road or travelling to get to his work place and during that time he
would be reading the day’s news or listening to the radio. But that was then
and this is now… Today, you will find all your target audience and their
neighbours, friends and enemies on social media. Cue the entry of social media
marketing in India. This form of advertising allows the advertiser to reach his
audience directly. There is also an added advantage to advertising on social
media… your brand gets the word of mouth advertising that every brand craves.
People on social media share everything. People’s lives have become open books
that can be shared and disclosed to the world with a click of a button. There
have been many cases of people reviewing products, brands and services on their
social media pages so that their friends or followers may know their views
about that product and their experience with it. There are some rare cases when
there could be a negative review, but when there is a positive review, that is
an unpaid advertising from your target audience talking to the rest of your
target audience.
Social
Media Marketing in India has in many ways given
the power of advertising to the target audience, it has also give the advertiser
the opportunity to intimately speak to the client on a one-to-one basis without
the clutter of other advertisers.
So here’s to the time of social media
power. The time when anything is possible.
