Utilizing Multi-Screen Marketing & Social Media Effectively

The social media and online marketing landscape is ever-evolving. Facebook and Twitter, and to a lesser effect LinkedIn have solidified themselves as leaders in the social-space with Google on their heels garnering the power of YouTube and their newly launched social network Google+. Other players like Foursquare, Tumblr, and most recently Pinterest and have entered the fray and showed strong growth throughout 2011 and into early 2012. All of these social platforms offer a massive influx of users and with that comes opportunity. This begs the question, how can one incorporate these platforms into their marketing strategy effectively?

Meeting Customers’ Needs Across Multiple Platforms

After watching a recent roundtable webinar entitled “Meet the Screens” the central idea was about integration of advertising and marketing across four platforms. TV, PC, mobile and tablets. The key focus was that in order to be successful, brands would have to utilize advertising that combined all of these platforms together in a cooperative effort. The research and metrics were all provided by Microsoft Advertising who was the official sponsor of the event by targeting “multi-screen consumers”.

Multi-Screen Marketing

Most people nowadays sit in front of 2-3 screens at any given time. Consider this example: You are sitting on your couch watching TV, you are likely to have a cell phone somewhere nearby within arm’s reach, and even more common you are likely to have a laptop and/or tablet there with you for work. The study went on to show that the most personal of all those relationships was with the smartphone. The research continued to show that a fair percentage of people actually touched their mobile device before they touched their significant other first thing in the morning! Shocking I know.

While most users only use their mobile for its usage as a phone for calls and/or text messages, an increasing proportion of Canadian multi-screen users use their phones to communicate online as well. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook have played a key role in this engagement but also phone technology has gotten increasingly more robust allowing users to easily access internet applications.

Taking Advantage of Multiple Channels for Advertising

So what does this mean from an internet marketing perspective? Well firstly this enables marketers a greater channel stream in which to promote their products and/or services. Engagement across all four platforms will play a vital role in branding and awareness for 2012 and companies that aren’t leveraging the viewers across these technologies they will be missing out. Internet marketing is moving from the web to mobile and most recently tablets at an alarming rate. Just recently a study by eMarketer showed that ad spending online (Internet, mobile, tablet) will for the first time in history surpass print. This is an exciting time to be an internet marketer as you will effectively have access to leverage more ad spend than ever before in the history of the internet.

The future of Social Media Marketing is growing exponentially with new social networks, platforms, and applications being developed all the time. Staying ahead of the curve and being able to identify trends across multi-screen consumers will be the difference between those who succeed and those who fail. Brands will look to utilize social media across multi-platforms and multi-screens, and with all this diversity having an organized, structured marketing plan to encompass all platforms will be the deciding factor.

Lorne Fade is an Internet search marketer for 9th sphere a local Toronto SEO, web design & marketing firm.