Social Media Marketing - Marketing Techniques - Targeting, COBRAs, and EWOM

Targeting, COBRAs, and EWOM

Social media marketing involves the use of social networks, COBRAs and eWOM to successfully advertise online. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter provide advertisers with information about the likes and dislikes of their consumers. This technique is crucial, as it provides the businesses with a “target audience”. With social networks, information relevant to the user’s likes is available to businesses; who then advertise accordingly.

Consumer’s online brand related activities (COBRAs) is another method used by advertisers to promote their products. Activities such as uploading a picture of your “new Converse sneakers to Facebook” is an example of a COBRA. Another technique for social media marketing is electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Electronic recommendations and appraisals are a convenient manner to have a product promoted via “consumer-to-consumer interactions”. An example of eWOM would be an online hotel review; the hotel company can have two possible outcomes based on their service. A good service would result in a positive review which gets the hotel free advertisement via social media, however a poor service will result in a negative consumer review which can potentially ruin the company's reputation.