The Social Web As Marketplace: A Primer In Social Media Marketing

Information and Communication Technologies and the Internet in particular, already integral elements of marketing, are fundamentally transforming the market dynamics and add new parameters to the marketing environment. The rapid adoption of a new generation of online applications known as Social Media (or Web 2.0) resulted in a new breed of powerful, sophisticated, empowered customers increasingly interacting with peers and claiming control over the marketing process. The latest wave of customer empowerment has raised new doubts about the effectiveness of traditional marketing tools and mass media approaches. In reaction to the ominous loss of market control many businesses are rushing to integrate the Social Media into their marketing strategy, often without sufficient knowledge and experience. Understanding the essentials and effects of the Social Media can help marketing strategists to make sense of a marketplace where the customer is the dominant party. The article discusses the nature of the Social Media as the current stage of the Internet evolution, explains the effects of the Web 2.0 applications on customer behavior and identifies ways to use these as part of the marketing strategy. Learning to use these applications properly opens to the 21 Century marketer the door to a collection of new marketing tools and new ways of informing, interacting, acquiring and retaining the new empowered consumer.