Event Marketing and Social Media Marketing

Event Marketing

Print Marketing – which can loosely be defined as any paper form of advertising – this is the oldest form of traditional marketing which has been in use since ancient times (Marketing-schools, 2014). This includes Posters, leaflets, newspaper advertisements and other printed materials. This form of marketing was effective till other form of marketing took over, such as broadcast- which aired its 1^st on-air advertisement 2^nd November 1920, followed by telemarketing and direct mails.

Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984 were the first time event marketing concept was used (Behrer and Larsson, 1998). The companies sponsored for the event not only got an opportunity to expose their logos, the sponsors were also allowed to use their connection to the event in their other marketing communications. This was where the concept of event marketing was initiated (Behrer and Larsson, 1998).

'Event marketing' is a tool, where marketing underlies as the core. Anna and Jessica also state that 'It turns a message into an event' and carries it to the targeted group of audience. It is not a substitute for other promotion tools and media; it simply is used in combination with other promotion tools and media according to Behrer and Larsson (1998).

'No other marketing discipline is expanding as heavily as event marketing today', these words appeared in a journal by Jessica Eriksson and Anna Hjalmsson (2000) in the year 2000. It has been a decade and a half and it still stands strong and has grown stronger ever since. The research also agrees with Jessica and Anna’s view on event marketing. Event marketing has reached new feats after the social media took over marketing.

One issue frequently brought up by researchers as being of importance, is the evaluation of event effectiveness. According to Lundell (1999) referred in Anne and Jessica's report state that the lack of relevant and unitary measuring methods of event marketing is a problem. They also state 'Therefore it is important to develop measure methods that can prove the effectiveness of event marketing'.

Social Media Marketing

Marketing is a well-developed methodological science and is constantly changing its rules according to the needs and developments taking place in and around its (Saravanakumar and Suganthalakshmi, 2012).Social media marketing is now growing at a rapid speed.

Social media marketing is a technique that is used to persuade the potential customer to buy a product or service making it worthwhile. According to Gattiker (2010), social media marketing is the 'process of promoting your brand, service or product and building your reputation through social media channels, such as weblogs and social networks' like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (Nagahawatta, 2012). 

Over the past 40 years, there has been a radical shift in how business is conducted and how people cooperate (Abu Bashar, Irshad Ahmad and Mohammad Wasiq, 2012). Social media is being widely used by almost all and  even  the  companies,  in  spite  of  their  size  have started  using  social media to  advertise  and  themselves.

Social media marketing offers three distinct advantages (Neti, 2011). He has showed that social media marketing allows the marketer to get feedbacks and suggestions directly from the customers. Since the Feedbacks are directly from the customers the marketers can rely on the unprocessed feedbacks and understand the customer's needs as well as market trends. This also would allow the marketer to get a better understanding of how customers rate and use their products versus the competitive product.

Also, Neti (2011) has elaborated on how Social Media marketing allows the marketers to identify peer groups among various other groups, who can help in organic growth of the brand. This allows the marketers to listen to peer groups and to understand their methodologies and approach in marketing through social media. Moreover Neti has pointed out that social media marketing is cost effective - all this is done nearly at zero cost.

Social Media Marketing in Business

In the recent years the media clutter increased heavily (Hjalmsson and Eriksson, 2000). It has become hard and expensive, to reach and influence target group through traditional methods (Hjalmsson and Eriksson, 2000). Companies quickly realized that social media was more efficient and started adopting social media marketing at different rates; 39% of the companies surveyed by McKinsey Quarterly use social media services as their primary digital tool to reach customers (Saravanakumar and Suganthalakshmi, 2012).The number of businesses that say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased by 75%(hubspot, 2014)

A study, "The state of small business report," done by the university of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of business as mentioned in Neti's(2011) journal points out that small business owners has increased  their social media usage from 12% to 24% in the year 2010 alone.

Social Media Marketing in Organizations.

Not only social media has invaded the business and marketing practices, it also has offered numerous opportunities to non-profit organizations to interact with the public.

A research conducted by Lindley Curtis et al (2009:91-92) to find out 'how a non-profit public practitioners were adopting social media tools' showed that 'of the respondents (N = 409), nearly all (n = 404) indicated that they used some form of social media'. This research also points out that one practitioner used the average of 5 social media tools. Lindley Curtis et al (2009) conclude stating that social media tools are becoming beneficial methods of communication for non-profit organizations.

When the Social Media play a major role in day-to-day life of people it must be safe and accurate/ precise. Especially in case of business it should be more precise since marketers and business personals take major decisions and changes based on customer feedbacks through Social Media

References

• A.M.M.K. Navarathna, (2012). PlagCop - A Source Code Plagiarism Detector. University of Westminster,UK.
• Abu Bashar, Irshad Ahmad and Mohammad Wasiq. (2012). Effectiveness of social media as a marketing tool - an empirical study. International Journal of Marketing, Financial Services & Management Research.
• An Introduction to Buffer - Bufferapp.com, (2014). An Introduction to Buffer - Buffer. [Online] Available at: https://bufferapp.com/guides [Accessed 14 Sep. 2014].
• Annie Wallace, (2011). 9 Sins of Google Analytics - Search Engine Journal. [Online] Search Engine Journal. Available at: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/9-sins-of-google-analytics/27931/ [Accessed 3 Dec. 2014].
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