Let's talk about the newest and one of the most influential types of advertising, social media advertising. One of the reasons why we consider social media different from your traditional marketing media or your digital marketing media is that social media has this unique characteristic of being shared between individuals. A characteristics that your standard search ad or display advertising does not necessarily have. By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to discuss the advantages of social media over standard types of advertising. You can really think of how well you do on social media as being a metric for how good word of mouth is for your particular product. So, what is the reach of your social media advertising? What about its credibility? What about control, costs and so on? This table highlights some of the differences between word of mouth advertising and standard advertising types. You can see here that word of mouth is much more limited than your standard mass market advertising. Unlike your standard mass market advertisements, word of mouth tends to have limited reach in the sense that if you were trying to communicate the benefits of a particular product or particular brand to individuals then your reach is going to be much less than the reach of, say, a TV ad. However, the credibility is going to be much higher than that of a TV ad. Chances are people tune out, or consider less credible, the TV or mass market advertising, but consider the opinions of their friends and family members much more highly. In terms of control, word of mouth cannot be really controlled. However, it can be stimulated in the sense that you can offer incentives. For example, for individuals who distribute or recommend your product, you may offer some sort of discount on their next purchase. Of course, with standard mass market advertising, you have full control of the message, the medium, frequency and so on. In terms of interactivity, electronic word of mouth, which is often associated with social media, is highly interactive and immediate. Whereas with standard advertising there is less scope for reaction or subsequent adjustment. In terms of intrusiveness, advertising and mass market adverting is often considered annoying in content or frequency. Imagine when you're watching a television show and all of the sudden breaks into an ad right when the show started getting interesting, this scenario can be quite annoying. All right, so that's an example where mass market advertising can be quite annoying. In fact, to make up for this annoyance many TV ads rely on humor to make them seem less annoying. Just reflect on any Super Bowl ad you've seen in the last decade. But in terms of intrusiveness for word of mouth advertising it really isn't intrusive at all. In fact, it tends to be voluntary and generally happens in some sort of discussion. You discuss with a friend that you're considering a certain brand of car, and then they tell you about this other brand that they like. And so now the information disclosure here is voluntary and consensual, and you actually want to listen to the opinion of this friend about the other brand. Positive electronic word of mouth enhances brand value. However, because you lack control, as we discussed earlier, there's no guarantee that the comments can be very positive. And in fact, negative word of mouth can do serious damage to your brand's reputation, whether the negative word of mouth is deserved or not. In standard advertising, your mass market ads play a decisive role in awareness and recognition because you have complete control of the brand, the message, the medium and frequency. And research has shown that it actually increases brand value. Word of mouth can change the attitudes that may guide consumer behavior and can help spent on sales provided the word of mouth is positive. On the other hand, advertising shapes attitudes towards the product and stimulates interest in it. However, it is not clear how long the effect of mass market ads last. Word of mouth tends to last much longer. With respect to different products and services word of mouth plays a stronger role for products that might be hard to assess, for example, experience, goods, healthcare, wine, etc. While in the case of advertising, it informs of the existence and quality, and it basically handles the role of providing information about your product to the consumer. And respect to context, frequency and intensity seems to be greater in more collective and hierarchical societies, while in the case of advertising, it works in all cultures. So word of mouth might not be something that works in the market that you're operating in, and in those cases, standard advertising might actually be a better method to reach consumers. To conclude, social media in the form of electronic word of mouth plays an important role in any marketing plan. It serves different purposes than the typical marketing instruments that you use. Once you understand how it fits in your marketing plan it serves to balance the issues of control and trust that we discussed earlier, thereby giving you a well rounded marketing strategy.
