Word of Mouth Media Through Social Marketing

Word of Mouth Marketing through Social Media

The concept of word of mouth marketing is staggering, with one major question looming in the horizon: Do end-users take peer-recommendation more seriously than traditional advertising? Most people would agree that the reason they go watch a specific movie, shop at a certain store, or eat at a particular restaurant relies heavily on opinions and recommendations provided to them by their peers. So would it not make sense for corporations to utilize such a simple form of brand recognition? It's surprising that prior to the formation of readily available personal information through the conduit of social media, no one ever considered this prospect - literally hundreds of millions of consumers who will recommend, support, and even rate a brand or product, all the while making it visible to their entire social network. This paper will examine the ideas, processes, and successes of a small company, Fancorps, who provides structure, performance tracking and actionable guidance to social media marketing, a strategy that has and will become more prevalent.

Before diving into Fancorps strategy, it is necessary to discuss the current state of social media and how word of mouth marketing fits in. The power of social media or e-commerce marketing can be illustrated by the following statistics: "70% of Americans say they look at reviews before taking the next step to conversion1", "The average consumer mentions specific brands over 90 times per week in conversations with friends, family, and co-workers2", "In a study conducted by social networking site myYearbook, 81 percent of respondents said they'd received advice from friends and followers relating to a product purchase through a social site; 74 percent of those who received such advice found it to be influential in their decision3", and finally, "90% of consumers online trust recommendations from people they know; 70% trust opinions of unknown users4." As social media expands to more end users, managing online brand image and actively engaging consumers will become a larger segment of a corporations overall marketing strategy. Therefore it will become necessary to track online marketing performance as it deals with maintaining a renewable advantage over competitors. This is where Fancorps steps in. What this paper will specifically address is how Fancorps helps corporations maintain their competitive advantage, the life cycle of their product, and finally, the sustainability of their current platform.

Overview

For all effective purposes, the end state of Fancorps allows a corporation to horizontally integrate, creating economies of scale without actually investing any of their assets in the strategy. The corporation merely pays a subscription fee and Fancorps executes the plan with little to no oversight. In the conventional sense, Fancorps utilizes their proprietary software to identify individuals on social media sites who are fanatical followers of the brand in question. Rather than just merely engaging these "fans" through a social media webpage, the corporation now uses Fancorps' methodology to engage these fans at a deeper level, incentivizing social media publications with rewards. Simultaneously, Fancorps provides assessments of this "fan" or "brand ambassador's" social reach or message quality. The entire process is illustrated in the image below:

To better understand this process, the method in which Fancorps assisted Chili's Grill and Bar Restaurant in improving online brand recognition via social media will be discussed. Under guidance from Fancorps, Chili's created an online "Chilihead Nation", in which customers competed among each other on frequency of visits and posts, and overall brand loyalty through social media. Ultimately this helped Chili's create economies of scale by identifying customers who were already discussing the restaurant on social media sites without requiring much effort from the corporation itself. Chili's engaged these customers by incentivizing the creation of posts and brand loyalty through discounts, deals, and other specials. This process worked spectacularly because these "fans" or "brand ambassadors" were already devoted to the restaurant. A byproduct of this process that should be noted is that customers began to repost Chili's advertisements and photos on their own accord, thereby expanding the marketing of the product on their personal social networks. If this procedure is implemented on a large scale, corporations such as Chili's, 7-Eleven, and even popular culture icons such as Lady Gaga can optimize their social media marketing practices and improve their overall online brand image.

Fancorps - How it Works

Modern data technologies have created an entire new universe of website creation and social media networking business models. These models allow the site users' to contribute to the sites they frequent. Fancorps concept revolves around this premise and enhances word of mouth marketing and peer to peer social recommendations on such sites as Facebook and Twitter. Word of mouth marketing has increased an average of 21.5% in the past 2 years and is projected to increase by 50% by the year 2015.

Fancorps utilizes individuals that are passionate about a brand to promote a product or service. The firm has developed a subscription based (Software as a Service) SaaS platform for marketing managers of consumer brands to monetize followers on social media sites by rewarding consumers for word of mouth recommendations and reviews. Unlike traditional marketing strategies this strategic plan creates a value from a user-generated feedback marketing strategy.

Fancorps' technology is groundbreaking. This technological strategy has created a competitive advantage first by utilizing the SaaS software and second by emphasizing quality over quantity. Fancorps platforms are developed with the ease of use and functionality specializing in providing tools necessary to enable a user to continually create social interactions from brands to enhance their brand image. This model will translate into an easy to understand output model for firms to track the benefits, or the lack of benefits, of utilizing the platform. Through communication, engagement, task management, and rewards based utilities, a brand can take total control of their own social stream, defining and directing brand advocates within a customized community they will love to call home.

Fancorps specializes in engaging firm ambassadors with