The past year was eye-opening in many ways for the entire IT industry. It saw Dell fall from grace, BlackBerry phones transformed into pariah devices, Apple lost Steve Jobs, but its iPhone 5 emerged as the leading mobility device of 2012, and more. But the highly publicized story that turned out to be a flop was the launch of Facebook, the social networking site, on the NASDAQ. In a few months, Facebook’s stock is trading below its IPO price and its earnings statements, which were made public recently, didn’t help matters. In the face of criticism about the way Facebook places advertising on its pages and the questionable ability of such PPC campaigns to target specific user groups, social marketing lost some luster in 2012. In fact, many development companies software chose to go down the path of placement. Instead, Google PPC ads to improve web traffic and attract a wider group of potential customers. The key reasons many companies pursue social marketing are as follows:

Strengthening customer relationships

Through social marketing, most companies in a variety of industries, from software development to automobiles, seek to establish closer relationships with customers. In this case, Social Marketing provides businesses with an instant and low-cost method to connect and build stronger ties with their chosen customer groups by providing special discounts, limited-period offers, etc.

Improve brand preference and brand awareness

For existing customer groups, this form of marketing can play a key role in enhancing preference for the advertised brand. This helps increase repeat customers and improves the brand image as well as the bottom line of the company. Furthermore, this marketing system can also enhance brand awareness among specific user groups to improve the overall visibility of a product / service, by enhancing and establishing interaction between various customer groups.

Improved information exchange between stakeholders

An additional benefit is the ability of this format to facilitate an improvement among the various stakeholders of the company. These stakeholders include customers, suppliers or partners, even if the company is a software developer abroad or is engaged in providing quality assurance services. This form of marketing enables stakeholders to instantly convey their changing requirements to the business almost instantly. This improvement in communication would help companies adapt more quickly to their business environment and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Increased revenue through new clients

This form of marketing can act as a key method of acquiring new customers, as well as breaking into new niches. In addition, improvements in information sharing with the organization’s key stakeholders can also play a key role in designing new products, as well as driving innovation in organizations to improve the overall market position, even if the company operates in the field of Java application development or mobile application development.

These are key reasons for companies to invest in social marketing, yet questions about the ability of existing social media sites to actually deliver these benefits for the company to improve its bottom line has been criticized in 2012.

The future of social marketing

Any illusions that social marketing on its own can propel a business forward has dissipated in recent years. In 2013, we can expect the integration of social marketing within the scope of additional marketing initiatives such as PPC advertising, TV advertising, etc. Like any other trend, this emerging marketing is expected to evolve and be incorporated into other marketing initiatives commonly undertaken by organizations to acquire new customers, expand their reach, and enter new markets.

In the years to come, we can also expect increased use of various social media optimization techniques to help companies focus such marketing efforts and target desired market segments to maximize profits. The proliferation of smartphones, tablets and related mobility devices is also expected to result in the development of mobile applications, which aim to enhance the social marketing initiatives of various companies, especially those operating in the SME segment.