Pepsi Refresh Project Viral Marketing

Pepsi Refresh Project-Viral Marketing Pepsi Refresh Project Evaluate the reasons Social Media Marketing has become exceedingly popular among businesses of all sizes. Social media marketing has gained exceptional popularity among businesses of all size. The major reason behind this strategic shift in marketing management is related to an ability to gain access to large customer communities through internet. Since the users that companies target spend lot of time on the internet, the companies engage these users by employing different tactics. Secondly, the cost vs.

benefits analysis of social media marketing indicates that by spending a few thousand dollars online to market the company, the returns are high. Television and print media advertisements are highly expensive as compared to social media. Specifically, if the large companies target their ads to be placed in prime time, it even costs them more. Most of the target population of consumer goods products, specifically those of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) are present on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

The reach and connectivity of social media is also much more than the traditional media. People use these social networking and blogging sites in their offices during break times and students access these sites from anywhere they connect to internet (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). Smartphones have also played a major role in increasing the reach of social media websites. The sense of personalization that is target customers get from social media is not typical of traditional media.

Thus, reasons such as considerably low cost, increased reach, and personalization of company message to each target customer group has led companies of all sizes to embrace social media marketing. 2. Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of Social Media Marketing for business entrepreneurs. One of the main advantages of social media marketing is that it provides the utility of web-analytics. Thorough web-analytics tools, the companies can plan targeted marketing rather than placing ads on all the social media user pages.

By web analytics, users of social media websites can be grouped according to their likes, preferences for lifestyle and goods choice, as well as what the target market does not like (Whitla, 2009). The companies are able to market their products only to people that are interested in such categories of products. This saves the companies significant waste of advertising budgets on people that will never buy those products offered through marketing.

The ads and offers are then placed to people only having the relevant interest as promoted in the marketing message. Communication threads and forums on the social media websites allow the companies to directly communicate with the potential customers and in real time. This personalization lets brand awareness to increase within the target group. The companies are able to create virtual communities to enhance favorable brand perception. On the other hand, some advantages of social media marketing can be stated as a potential disadvantage as well.

The speed with which information is shared and spread across the virtual communities can also be detrimental to the businesses if any bad news or incident is being reported about the business. Since the virtual interaction and communication cannot be controlled, the companies are unable to restrict the negative impact of any bad news reported about the company. Value creation communities that are established online, through the use of social media, can turn into counter-communities as well.

There are instances in corporate world where ex-employees of the company or loyal customers, having known much about the target company, have started negative marketing of the company products using the same social media channels. Violation of privacy is also a potential threat that businesses face when marketing their products online. Rival companies can get the social media pages, used by target company for marketing purpose, to flood with negative comments. Thus, lack of control is a major impediment for all businesses that market online.

Most of the consumers do not mind being sent targeted ads, there are many customers that consider it a breach of their privacy since their likes and dislikes are used for business purposes (Whitla, 2009). 3. Assess how Social Media Marketing is helping Pepsi gain more customer insight than it would have otherwise. Pepsi employed the strategy of crowdsourcing to gain insight on community development ideas and other philanthropic purposes.

Pepsi decided to skip the Super Bowl ads in their marketing campaign and instead focused its marketing efforts on social media marketing (Armelini, G. & Villanueva, 2011). By interacting directly with customers and target market of Pepsi, the company received proposals and suggestions for their spending their philanthropic funds. By planning such an activity, the company indirectly increased its ratings online since as an outcome of the Pepsi Refresh activity, a lot of people were talking about Pepsi and its community initiatives.

The dewMocracy campaign of the Pepsi Company also got significant insight from the customers by receiving their opinion about next flavor and taste of Mountain Dew. The product innovation process was already there in the traditional marketing management process but taking it online, the company received inputs from target market and in return, the target market felt connected and engaged in value creation process of Pepsi (Qualman, 2010). 4. Research two (2) other businesses that have used Social Media Marketing to their advantage.

Discuss how each of these businesses has utilized Social Media Marketing and provide examples with your discussion. Pepsi has used social media and increased the scale of customer insight in their product innovation process (Divol, Edelman & Sarrazin, 2012). Other than Pepsi, Zappos, an online retail seller of shoes, clothing and luxury accessories has effectively employed social media marketing strategy. The company devised a marketing strategy in which the people who visited company's social media page are encouraged to become a fan of Zappos by pressing the Like button.

The company clearly states that it intends to form a mutually beneficial relationship with customers and treat customers as equals. A specific instance was when Zappos announced 'Fan of the Week' contest. The customers were encouraged to send their pictures with Zappos box and best picture, also voted by fan club of Zappos not selected by the company, will be the 'Fan of the Week'. This clearly engaged the customers while marketing the company. Ford Motor company is also another such firm that successfully uses social media marketing.

THE FORD STORY is also one such example where the company releases a story about Ford and places the comments window before the story, this way the customers that seek information regarding Ford get to know the car and the company through user comments.