How Should You Market Your Product in a Social Media World?
Social networks are much talked about. We have learnt that on these media platforms consumers become active and collaborative, i.e. they say what they think of companies and their products and share relevant information and content. Companies are getting around the idea (too slowly according to Eurostat data) that social media matter and that marketing must consequently change skin: it should now be centered around transparency, communicative leadership, collaboration, and community, rather than on the traditional push forms of suasion and brand management.
And change is accelerating. First of all, the prediction of ubiquitous computing is becoming a reality, decades after it was first foretold. The Net has become instantly accessible by anybody from anywhere. We carry the Internet and our social networks always with us, thanks to smartphones and tablets (and soon Google glasses?), while we walk or enter a shop. Smart cars and homes will make the Net accessible through our eyes and voices. These objects (the so-called Internet of things) will gather an array of information (weather and road conditions, nearby points of interest, service availability, as well as biomedical data summarizing the health of the driver or resident). The progressive hybridization of physical and virtual reality, through augmented reality applications (e.g. augmented in-store experiences) will add value and functions to brand and retail encounters.
A second trend is that the sharing logic of social media is creating a new way of entrepreneurship and doing business, i.e. social business. We will no longer be surprised by the fact that customers participate in the design of new products (Barilla does it, for instance) and that organizations will increasingly be thought of as large networks of learning and innovation, with employees being the best brand advocates on social media. The first experiments with a collaborative economy have started from below (viz. the cases of AirBnB for home, and Uber for cars). Consumers are realizing that the sharing of goods and services with other consumers, enabled by mobile social media, creates new services and additional value. Incumbent firms in these specific sectors have two options: either they lose value or redesign, at least partially, their business according to the new collaborative logic (also by becoming platforms for sharing as in the case of Volkswagen).
Lastly, also objects (so-called smart things) are being sucked into social media. Networks of objects will increasingly support our provision of services and entertainment by creating social networks with our peers and their objects. A well-known US insurance company provides a car insurance, whose premium varies according to the customer's style of driving (which is automatically monitored and webcasted). Such smart machine becomes a social machine, if these data are shared on the driver's social network, perhaps with the purpose of competing with relatives and friends on the safest and cheapest kind of driving.
Who is willing to bet what will be the next service or object to turn social?