How Social Media has Affected Marketing How has social media changed the marketing strategy used by companies? Marketing can be classified as a strategy that lets consumers know about products and can tell companies what consumers need. Social Media is an important communication tool to easily connect to other people or organizations. Studies have shown that people use information on social media as the guideline for their future purchase or planning their future trip. The marketing strategy focuses on a target market. Companies can easily reach their targets individually through the use of social media. Consumers tend to post, share, and favorite advertising through social media, which attracts other similar consumers as well. Overall, social media is an easy way for a seller to reach a target market. The increased use of social media has given marketers a larger pool of data, a better understanding of the audience’s needs, the ability to bypass gatekeepers, real-time feedback, and the chance to place their employee’s on the front line.
An affective marketer usually markets their products to a target market. Target markets are customers that are most likely to buy your product. In order to obtain research and information on a target market, the marketer must receive primary data. Social media has made this easier to obtain by the click of a button. Before social media companies would use phone calls, mail, or surveys to gather primary data. This proved to be expensive, time consuming, and had minimal data results. Marketing needs to tell production what to do and therefore relies on primary data. Social media allows people to “like” posts, comment, or even share. This gives producers the ultimate feedback on what costumers need and what they want to change. Chuck Hemann, vice president of digital strategy and analytics for Ogilvy 360DI and author of the