Social Media Communication

Marketing is a difficult job to accomplish for most companies as they are looking to increase sales and build up goods customer relationships. Therefore, companies have come up with many innovative solutions to gain the attention of its customers. Traditional approaches to marketing are not as practical as they were in the past and hence, demand newer methods to be applied, one such way is social media marketing. With the rise of the internet, social media has become a part of the daily life for many individuals. These individuals are often the ones making sales often influencing sales decisions.

Hence, it is crucial to appeal to these customers in the media of their choice. Moreover, nowadays customers are a lot more knowledgeable than they were before which makes it harder to come up with a marketing campaign that is both attention-grabbing and morally and factually correct. Social medias such as Facebook and Twitter provide advertisements based on the preferences of the user which narrows down the target audience for the brand automatically. Therefore, social media can be exceptionally helpful in promoting a brand. In my interview with the regional manager of Pepsi Co., I asked various questions related to their social media marketing strategy. Pepsi Co. was a little late in joining the social media marketing bandwagon, but ever since its entry, it has invested a lot into the company online presence.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co. have always been the two most prominent competitors in the beverage industry. While Coca-Cola was early in capitalizing social media potential, Pepsi Co. has tried its best to come in front with Coca-Cola. However, Coca-Cola currently has over 55 million followers on Facebook while Pepsi Co. has 9 million. This is still a considerable achievement considering that in 2010, this following was only 4 million. Pepsi Co. has gained all those followers by investing in their Refresh Project. This project primarily risked a large sum of money, budgeted for the super bowl which had proven returns, on a social campaign costing $20 million in the year of 2010.

Pepsi Co. was successful in combining social responsibility with social media marketing and their following on Facebook went from 25,000 to about 9 million as of today. Also, this was a massive success for them as it also increased the traffic on their website by a whopping 800%. Even when Pepsi has been known to make innovative TVC's and marketing campaign, their marketing strategies were insufficient without proper social media marketing. Their company has a large customer base which requires them to infuse more loyalty into their customers. For this, they must relate to their customers on a more personal level.

Pepsi uses personalized questions and asks their followers to share their pictures with the brand to win giveaways and prizes to gain even more followers. They frequently affiliate themselves with social causes and help raise awareness to establish its image as not just a company driven by profits but also by caring and responsible individuals of the society. At Pepsi Co., the management believes that marketing is based on social relationships and with the help of social media customer can express what they like about the brand, and this word-of-mouth marketing drives their profits and revenues (Silverstein, 2010).

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