Online Social Media: A Necessary Tool for Business Success

Social CRM has increasingly gained momentum and has changed the way people and businesses communicate. Companies are taking advantage of social media and social networking for marketing and increasing their customer service level. Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Myspace, allow companies to not only attract new customers to their products or services, but also maintain relationships with existing customers.

However, according to a Forbes article by Jeremiah Owyang, companies face a major problem with using social media. Through social media sites, information is communicated in a rapid amount of time and therefore marketers have a hard time keeping up with the information and responding to consumers. Simply hiring more employees is not the answer to this problem.

To respond to this problem, a new trend is emerging of integrating traditional CRM systems such as SAP, salesforce.com, and other software with social media sites. This allows companies to easily track the discussions on Facebook or Twitter by identifying keywords that might show that customers are happy or dissatisfied with a particular product or even show prospective customers that are interested in making a purchase. Companies are then better able to respond to customer needs in a faster amount of time.

Generally, when customers have a problem with a product, rather than calling the company’s customer support line, they would complain on the social media sites. The news is shared with millions of people, which gives the company a negative reputation and thus affects consumer purchase decisions in a negative way. According to a New York Times article, Comcast tackles this issue by using Salesforce to search for particular keywords in Twitter. The company then responds with a Twitter message to resolve the particular problem at hand. Many companies are taking advantage of the benefits offered by Salesforce to respond to customer needs in the online social media.

Social CRM has become a necessary tool for a company to succeed. Customers also use these social media sites to inquire about a company’s reputation and read product reviews before making a purchase. Therefore, it’s very important to effectively maintain customer relationships on social networking sites.

Sources:

Owyang, Jeremiah. “Social CRM: Not Your Father’s CRM.” http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/09/facebook-twitter-social-media-crm-dell-comcast-cmo-network-jeremiah-owyang.html

“Customer Support via Twitter? Salesforce.com Makes It Legit” http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/customer-support-via-twitter-salesforcecom-makes-it-legit/?scp=2&sq=social%20CRM&st=cse

Neuromarketing: Positive Advance in Advertising or Invasion of Privacy?

First we had companies tracking our website searches and making product recommendations from our previous purchases. Now the new trend is neuromarketing, where companies are literally trying to get into consumer’s subconscious minds to influence their purchase decisions.

The New York Times article by Natasha Singer recently explained this new trend and referred neuromarketing as “making ads that whisper to the brain.” Neuromarketing essentially studies brain activity and measures brain waves to analyze consumer’s responses to advertisements and products.  It could be done simply by measuring one’s muscle contraction, pupil dilation, facial response, skin temperature or by using MRI and EEG technologies. These technologies measure one’s attention level, emotion and memory retention when watching ads or viewing product images. The purpose is to give marketers information about consumer preferences, so that they can make the right advertisements and product designs that would reach the subconscious mind. This would in turn influence consumers to buy the particular product and develop brand loyalty.

Many companies are increasingly using neuromarketing to increase sales by producing the exact products that consumers would want. According to a Forbes article by Laurie Burkitt, Hyundai Motor America used neuromarketing to see how consumers viewed their “sporty silver test model of a 2011 Hyundai.” Fifteen men and fifteen women took part in this experiment where they were to view the different parts of the vehicle, all while wearing an electrode-studded cap. The brain activity of each person was captured and the information showed their particular preferences, which was used to change the exterior design of the vehicle into a more attractive one.     

However, neuromarketing have increasingly become a controversial topic. Many feel that it manipulates consumers and turns them into shopping robots without their approval and thus it’s an invasion of privacy. They “call it brandwashing – an amalgam of branding and brainwashing.” Considering the extent to which advances in technology has allowed marketers to influence my purchase decisions, it is really scary to think about what the future holds. The question remains, do the benefits of neuromarketing overcome the negative effects of behavioral control and invasion of privacy?

Sources:

Singer, Natasha. “Making Ads That Whisper to the Brain.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/business/14stream.html

Burkitt, Laura. “Neuromarketing: Companies Use Neuroscience for Consumer Insights.” http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1116/marketing-hyundai-neurofocus-brain-waves-battle-for-the-brain.html