John here, coming at you from Hunt
Valley Maryland enjoying our short fall break from classes. Today I would like to
talk about a company that is very popular in our generation, Instagram. Over the course of the past couple months, Instagram
had turned itself into a company promoting tool with the implementation of sponsored
adds, a contact button, and stories.
First
things come first, the ads that sponsors companies, which always somehow appear
in the middle of your timeline. These ads can come in picture or video form and
depict a product being offered. This is a fairly new concept implemented by
Instagram and carried out over the past 6 months. With this being said,
Instagram’ advertiser base had jumped to almost 500,000 who use it consistently
per month. All of these sponsored ads are essentially turning your timeline into
a Marketspace. A Marketspace is
described as, “An information- and communication-based electronic exchange
environment occupied by digitalized offerings”. In the case of Instagram, these
ads are an opportunity for a company to promote their product and give the consumer a chance
to get in touch with the organization. They call this addition to their
social platform “Business Tools”.
To
piggyback on the topic of communication between the company and consumer, we
can look at the “contact” button that is found to the left of the follow
option. The contact button helps to create quicker and easier means of
communication between the organization and customer from their targeted market.
Instead of commenting on a photo or direct messaging the company, the contact
button allows for email, phone number, etc. to be displayed. Not only does the
customer benefit from these new features, the business does as well. From the
content the company posts and responses they may receive, their target market
can be narrowed down and pinpointed. These companies are using Primary Data to determine the future
content that will be posted. Primary data is described as, “Fact and figures
that are newly collected for a project”. Being able to gather this data is one technique to identify a specific target market and which marketing techniques to use.
The
final and one of the most substantial changes made by Instagram is the “Story”
function. These stories allow a person or company to depict more personal
actions or activities not typically seen by the every day person. One of the
major concerns, as you can imagine is the resemblance to Snapchat. This
presence of two similar ideas or services is known as competition. The technical definition of competition is,
“Alternative firms that could provide a product to satisfy a specific market’s
needs”. In this case, Snapchat and Instagram both offer the “story” option with
Instagram’s version focusing on a business/ customer relationship.
With
advances in technology and times that are rapidly changing, companies such as
Instagram must use tactics such as Environmental
scanning to stay updated. This is, “The process of acquiring information on
events outside the organization to identify and interpret potential trends”. By
implementing these new features, Instagram is staying up to date with its
competitors and creating a closer company/ consumer relationship. From my
personal experience, Instagram has done a very good job with these functions.
It helps to cut out steps previously needed to get in touch with a business and
the stories can even show behind the scenes of production. That’s all I have for you today, tune back in
next time for more exciting marketing news!
Works
Cited:
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