Customizing social media marketing

Abstract

Through an analysis of the success of 751 social media marketing campaigns involving Facebook apps, the authors investigated the social sharing mechanisms that encourage consumers to share information about a product with their friends. What they found is that there is no easy, one-size-fits-all solution for social media marketing. Instead, companies must tailor their social media marketing strategies to fit their products. In particular, useful products benefit from different social media marketing approaches than do fun products such as games. A social sharing mechanism can either rely on broadcast messages or target friends individually. Choosing one over the other involves trade-offs between greater reach on the one hand and higher relevance of the shared message on the other. The majority of the Facebook campaigns studied favored broadcast messages (64%) over individual targeting (36%). When managers decide on the design of the social sharing mechanism for their social media campaign, they must consider two things: the type of product they are promoting (is it a fun product or is it primarily useful?) and the nature of the platform they will use for the campaign. Facebook, for example, is seen by most consumers as a platform for fun and entertainment. As a result, Facebook users reactions to social recommendations will differ depending on whether the products purpose fits their expectation