Use of Quantitative Tools in Social Media Channels

E Commerce, online brand building and marketing using Social Media Channels is one of the most modern developments in Sales and Marketing fields. In fact no business can afford to ignore or be absent from this medium.

As long as your audience and customers are present and discussing about their experiences about your product or your competitor’s products and services, you will need to be present there.

Social Media consists of various platforms that are grouped loosely under Social Networks, Social Content and Social Interactions.

In this section of the article we will be exploring the employability of some of the quantitative tools such as Ratings, Reviews and Recommendations in Social Media Marketing, with an aim to understand the utility of these tools from a marketing perspective.

Quantitative Tools are Helpful to Marketers

A look at Social Media channels gives us a feeling that the same applies to and consists of individuals who contribute their experiences, opinions and such contributions leads to building a content that is based on consensus. While this is largely true, the same can also be viewed from a entirely different perspective of that of a marketer and to use the same channels and discussions to build a relationship with the customers, to build brand awareness and loyalty and finally to influence the prospective customer to buy your product or service.

If you think that the Social Networks and other media are all related to personal discussions and subjects, you may be right. But go through all of the content that is generated in the various channels.

You will see a lot of discussions taking place about politics, news, economy as well as about health, travel and more importantly about the personal and recent experiences of the people.

Such discussions about one’s experience and the other’s discussions, comments etc will always include their experience of a product or a service that they recently engaged with. Chances are that the products could be yours or your competitors.

Alternatively you might want to explore the platforms to see where the community is talking about the products that you are interested in and dealing with and target that particular community to build your program further.

Application of Quantitative tools such as Ratings, Recommendations and other such tools as a part of your online marketing efforts are useful to you as the marketer as well as to the audience.

As a marketer you get a chance to listen to what your customers are saying about your product and your competitor’s products as well. You can use the insight gained to improve your product further and also enhance the experience for the customers.

Precise information gathered from the qualitative tools can tell you a lot about what your customer likes, what he doesn’t like and what he finds useful etc. Imagine what this feedback can do to improve your product and your business.

Customers Benefit from Online Quantitative Tools

The online ratings tools help advertise your product effortlessly to the new audience and prospective customers as well. When a customer is in the process of building awareness and gathering information to make a decision to purchase, he is likely to bank heavily upon the ratings and recommendations of other users.

Traditionally word of mouth publicity has always been an effective medium. So also in case of Social Media, the recommendations and ratings are effective in helping the prospective customer sway his decision to buy your product.

Though the quantitative tools appear very effective and useful, caution has to be exercised in managing and controlling the same, for without effective controls in place you might end up inviting unwarranted feedback/advice that might be harmful for your reputation.

To understand the effectiveness and modalities of the application of quantitative tools, take some time to study various sites that offer ratings, reviews and recommendations and make a list of your observations as to how they are useful to the audience, to you as the marketer as well as how to introduce, monitor and control the entire online process.