How cost effective is a Social Media Marketing Plan Vs Direct Marketing?

A need arises

The time is completely recession proof, but the business is not – for being a reeler through the financial meltdown. In this scenario, the best possible solution or in fact a challenge for any organization was cutting down the costs and expenditure; operational and personnel as well. During these unexpected doldrums, putting up oneself against the changing market conditions, either adapting new technologies or embracing the competitive efficiency, has also been an immediate requirement to safeguard one’s business targets. How cost-effective companies confronted this situation is our discussion here.

A marketing tool evolves

Within a tight budget that too targeting a technologically advanced target audience, though it took a little momentum get on with new improvements, marketers have started being with audience round the clock not at their door fronts but on their fingertips. With the social networking on rise (thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin), marketers eyed the target’s digital personal space. Availing all search based recognition techniques, profile (age, gender, and demography) based targeting methods they have stormed into customer’s personal digital space. Eventually the process is named as a new marketing tool called Social Media Marketing. To the organizations’ delight, the new tool has turned out to be cost-effective in reaching the customers with in a specific budget and within very short time making it a best deal to salvage the businesses from financial meltdown.

How cost-effective is this new marketing tool vs digital marketing?

That said, how cost-effective is a social media marketing plan when compared to digital marketing could be your query. In brief, we can say SMM reduces the cost of employing more number of personnel than in direct marketing, it encourages cost-effective online discussions than high-spend focus group gatherings, and with analytics’ fact assessment social media marketing proven to be faster in gathering response/feedback thus can roll back a failed product or process in time and be damage preventive. Let us dig more deep into these cost-effective factors.

The Buzz Word within the pocket range

Gone were the days, where we had to knock every door, literally, to let the prospects aware of our products/services. The time is not the same, so are the prospect’s preferences. With a 3G enabled smartphone in almost every hand, the well-versed (online) gen Z generation are more responsive digitally than in direct.

No one is interested in entertaining a personal conversation specifically sales oriented (exceptions include corporates). The reason might be anything but the influencer is one - the ever-changing technology. The new-age consumer prefers to turn dynamic than being victimized to lagging sales discussion at gunpoint.

With social media has become a need in every part of the world, it should not be any big task for an organization to create the buzz.

Thus, instead of shelling out more on 10 traditional marketers, it is, indeed, a better idea to employ a few digital/social media marketers to get the business done. All you need is a better-contented web portal –properly optimized, adequately informative and with regular product/service updates. However, an informative web portal in coordination with social media marketing plan might not bring-in exceptional results overnight, but, for sure, could reduce the promotional costs of an organization, helpful in come off unnecessary allocation of working capital.

Virtual discussions Vs Focus Groups

On the same lines of Ernest Dichter's idea of organizing focus groups for a qualitative research in order to conclude people's perceptions, ideas, beliefs and attitude towards a product, Social Media Marketing plan too equipped with user polls, discussions and many such online activities to keep track of the end-user’s respectful opinions on the brand and the product.

While the age-old focus groups could cost you much in finding out accommodation for mass gatherings, the new age Social Media Marketing needs just a Facebook/Twitter account to get the job done cost effectively. To the betterment of the market as a whole, making it is easier for organizations digitalised-behavioural-targeting has also been introduced in making focus groups online a success and cost-effective social media marketing plan.

One such successful and effective social media marketing campaign is Fastrack’s which has kept its character ‘Move On’ with their Facebook page going in the new-age marketing way-generating more discussions among its fans-publishing/updating the line of products every day triggering a virtual likeness towards the product.

Analytics Surfacing the Facts

I still wonder how one’s admiration towards a product could be quantitatively calculated without even, them, buying, or experiencing the product. With the old techniques like wait and watch till it breaks out and guess the go methods, the business would lag in time to build up competitor analyses and to come up with a combative business strategy.

With numerous fan page likes and shares clubbed with instant responses pouring in through list posts, social media has it all to assess the facts in real-time and gets the job done within no time  paving a way ahead to compete with rivals. Taking clue from that the social marketers bounce in no time to fine-tune the processes in case of backfires. It not only helps in safeguarding the goodwill of the organization but also cuts down the extra spend.

For better reach, extended brand/product discussions, and for real-time feedback within very less cost, social media marketing plan has many a successful campaigns since its inception. However, though SMM proven to be cost-effective, a traditional marketer–if at all he is properly been incentivised- would always be an asset to the company is what we strongly believe in. Our opinion on how cost effective is a social media marketing plan Vs direct marketing might differ with yours. If yes, kindly let us learn. 

Algorithm Updates or End User preferences, eCommerce Website Optimization at maze!

Perhaps most of us could have read/heard a news item 'Panda slaps 10 year old original eCommerce content site,' couple of years ago. Well, dug deep into the topic and having gone through the comment section we have learned that that ecommerce website marketer practiced some of the black hat SEO techniques that of keyword stuffing (at the bottom of the page) written exclusively for search engines instead of end user preferences. However, those practices are now rectified, if, at all, you would try to go through.

Having that example discussed, we can imagine what could be the worst nightmare of an ecommerce website marketer; their portal coming under the claws of google algorithms. In that perplexed state, which should be the ecommerce website marketer’s first target, algorithm updates, or end user preferences? What practices should the marketer be following?

Either periodic change of google algorithms or ever-changing customer preferences, the ecommerce website should be equipped to welcome any.

No one should have anything against google algorithm updates for Google being the biggest stakeholder in online searches. It deserves the control over how the crawling and indexing should be done; what accuracy levels one should follow regarding the content to be published; and how fast the end user should get what he prefers.

As per end user preferences concerned, every business’ main goal is to attain customer satisfaction through reliable information, quality service and if not regular, frequent visits. Thus, an ecommerce website must try to provide accurate information always to keep themselves in good books of Google algorithm updates.

But the penalized ecommerce website http://tinyurl.com/p5w48u had unique content to its kitty. It was all dependent on organic search than any other traffic pulling sources. No links were purchased or given. It has exclusive product information for end user preferences, which no one could find anywhere else (as claimed by the ecommerce website marketer himself). Even then, Google has penalized it.

Early into the fact assessment, everyone had raised concerns about Google algorithm updates. However, it was learned that that ecommerce website has much of the content written targeting search engines than the end user preferences. That was out right an act of keyword stuffing for which any website is vulnerable to be penalized.

Now with Panda 4.0 up for victimizing many such ecommerce website marketers, what one should know to get with the flow is discussed here.

The quality - Fresh Product Descriptions: You can rather call it as no mass publishing. As a first step, the tangible thing any ecommerce provider should take up is drafting fresh product descriptions right away with price tag updates on daily basis. Say a big no to direct company information. There might be many websites, which publish the same product descriptions given by the manufacturer. Never ever publish the same. Tweak it a little. If possible, with a better keyword planning team devise new keyword sheets and show up the content as fresh to the google algorithms.

The brevity - Go comparable: The new age customers are analytical, clever, and smart as never before. They need a lot of research before a purchase. Make them avail of what they want rather than pushing what you have: branding a keyword on your website for particular brand. Let them have a choice of comparison between two products of equal segment but different brands. Give them some time to kill more on your website.
For instance, draft detailed reviews (with accurately placed keywords linking back to product selling page) on Canon Powershot G7 and Nikon's Coolpix P5000 (arguably competitive product segments from the two major camera manufacturers) and make them avail through the top level gateway site thus, the end user will get an opinion of his own while making final decision.

Gateway Site is indeed an useful technique through which one can hyperlink exclusive product reviews, product comparisons, and various product descriptions to the main domain following proper search-oriented keywords inserted for better optimization.

The simplicity - No Doorway Page/Bridge Page: To safeguard the eCommerce website against algorithm updates, one should adhere to stringent SEO i.e., avoid creating just a doorway page/bridge page/jump page – a page which is phrase related, agent related, or IP related.

One common way of creating doorway page is establishing a page targeted to a search phrase with lack of information, i.e. just for the sake of creating or mimicking the success of similar pages on a website. When user searches for that page, he may land in doorway and can find no information, which sounds a form of black hat SEO, and potential enough to be a victim of Google algorithms. Therefore, avoid simple bridge pages or jump pages in eCommerce website optimization.

Ultimately, for an eCommerce website marketer the biggest challenge would be ‘to-go-with-the-flow’ with the robust Google updates. Keep quality over quantity in the content plan to be shielded from algorithm updates; a better classification of product categories and pages with search-engine free architecture are purportedly proved to be the best practices for ecommerce website marketers to see better results in the long run.

We also wish to see Google to come up with altogether a different algorithm for e-commerce websites to get rid of algorithm updates (if at all a website achieved a momentum over a period).


Our opinion on how algorithm updates or end user preferences push ecommerce website optimization into a perplexed state might differ from you. If yes, let us learn.