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1) What is the link between social networking and conversational marketing? Why is
social marketing so influential among consumers?
One link is the growing attention paid to and money spent on social networking due to the
networks ability to be a highly successful outlet or stage for conversational marketing.
Another link is the success of one form mirrors the success of the other both in mass appeal,
target and increased financial success and stability- the money paid to social networking
provides the ongoing support to keep these network sites successful and open for business.
Social marketing mirrors a relaxed trusted conversation between friends or likeminded
individuals who share a common interest, belief, hobby etc. Social marketing can go flow
effortlessly into the traditionally out of bounds family private work places and in doing so
not only place their product deep within such systems but do so in an atmosphere of
unprecedented levels of trust and endorsement created by the pre-existing relationships of
the participants that make up any given successful network forum. Such unsolicited
recommendations are many times a more effective influential successful sale technique that
an expensive paid for advertising message (Elliot, G, Rundle-Thiele, S & Waller, D, 2010).
Increasingly with online advertising, marketers are borrowing from the social-
networking craze and infusing their sales pitches with invitations to leave comments, take
opinion polls and share funny video clips with friends. The goal is to give people more of a
reason to notice, click and interact with the ads and if the message is compelling enough it
will encourage more and more internet users to recommend what the ad in advertising to
others, which will begin increasing the marketer's reach and credibility in society (R, Varey,
2008). This is social, engagement or conversational advertising. Most participating
marketers are devoting only a fraction of their overall ad budgets to the idea while
evaluating its potential promise. The ads can take on a variety of forms. At their heart is a
similarity to features on sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter which have drawn
millions of users to their websites with a mix of entertainment and friendly conversations
(Kopytoff, 2009).


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2) What are the similarities and differences between conversational / word of
mouth advertising/ marketing and publicity/publicity public relations?
Publicity/Public relations is defined as communication aimed at creating and maintaining
relationships between an organisation and its stakeholders- those being anyone with an
interaction/interest in that business/organisation so employee/ers/lenders/suppliers etc.
(Elliot, G, Rundle-Thiele, S & Waller, D, 2010)
Word of mouth plays a major role in public relations. Public relations uses specific tools that
come under that of pamphlets, sponsorships, free gifts and good deeds to generate media
and more word of mouth publicity and goodwill.
Conversation/word of mouth advertising is similar to publicity/public relations in the ability
of both forms to cut through the confusion and distraction of mass media and thus provide
a more tailored and direct image/product to a targeted, interested and receptive audience.
Both forms provide for a very rapid ability to measure and quantify the response of a
consumer whether it is positive or negative (E, Steffes & L, Burgee, 2009).
Conversation/word of mouth advertising is dissimilar to publicity/public relations in that
while both forms have had high levels of credibility in the past, public relations is often now
seen as a less credible source by the general public; acts of generosity, sponsorship or
support are seen as means to raise a products profile and hence company sales, rather than
being seen as a gesture of goodwill to the community as such support was once seen as (E,
Steffes & L, Burgee, 2009).
So while publicity was once seen as unpaid promotion in the media, many consumers now
regard that publicity as having come from a paid source ie gifts, sponsorships etc. Currently
word of mouth does not have the taint of such roundabout self-promotion so maintaining
its credibility and objectivity towards it customers and thereby lack the manipulative feel
that some public relations/publicity can generate within the public. However this form is still
vulnerable to accusations of manipulation and so it must still remain alert to not being seen
to be used or using the public (The Economist, Nov 10, 2007).
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Both forms can get close the almost impossible- the ability to perfectly target a particular
group without other groups also receiving the message, so that the message does not get so
distorted in the process of being received (Elliot, G, Rundle-Thiele, S & Waller, D, 2010).
Publicity can use emails to shareholders, support to a community, and sponsorship of a
target audience to narrow down their end audience. Word of mouth will rarely use any of
the traditional tools of public relations as the main method to spread its message.
3) What are the commercial attractions and challenges in conversational marketing?
It has the ability to gain access too traditionally out of bounds areas, utilises the free
medium that is an unsolicited recommendation; which itself is many times a more effective
sales technique that an expensive paid for advertising message. It also allows for more
targeted campaigns, but also more fluid campaigns.
With social networking sites such as twitter with ideas such as retweeting, when people
re-tweet marketers messages to others, these participants are viewing the tweets as
content, not as ads. Twitter has a content dashboard available to marketers which enables
them to see how many re-tweet or follow their tweet. This is a powerful social and
marketing platform with re-tweets constituting participatory media. (K, Grossberg, 2011,)
These existing types of online ads already represent breakthroughs in the marketing world.
In a marketers research, they can now target consumers who express interest in a particular
product or service by typing in a keyword; they pay only when a consumer responds, by
clicking on their ads. Through the use of this type of advertising they can track and measure
how their ads are viewed and whether a consumer is paying attention better than they ever
could when the consumer was merely watching a television advertisement.
Sending recruited people to experiential events allows the promotion of the product in real
time, no delay and customised to the site and place and time. The same promotion team
can be moved from venue to venue adapting immediately to that time and place- something
pre-printed posters/leaflet and media campaigns simply cannot have the same reaction
time and customer tailored interactions (L, Harris, A, Rae, (2011).
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The very strength of communicative marketing is in fact its ultimate weakness, the lack of
restrictions and the sheer uncontrollable- in terms of number and opinion of participants-
means the format can lose its focus and credibility in a sea of predictability and irrelevant
comments and input.
The challenges facing this format therefore are; to maintain the perception, valid or
otherwise, that it is/can/will keep a successful distance between itself and commercial
advertising. It also needs to be able to control the positive nature of the message as word of
mouth can be notoriously hard to control/confine/restrict so that it can move forward at a
speed that is moves to fast for anyone to be able to fix the damage that it has caused. This
format needs to remain visible and pertinent to the end user and not become lost amongst
a global clutter of inane tweets and unsolicited endorsements.














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Elliot, G, Rundle-Thiele, S & Waller, D, (2010), Marketing, John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd,
Queensland
Kopytoff, V, 2009, Social networking is the next step, San Francisco Advertiser, accessed
5/4/2012, Newspaper Source Plus
K, Grossberg, 2011, 2011 Conversational Marketing Summit in New York, Strategy &
Leadership, Emerald Group Publishing, Limited, Chicago
R, Varey, 2008, Marketing as an Interaction System, Australasian Marketing Journal Vol. 16,
Iss: 1, pp. 79-94.
L, Harris, A, Rae, (2011) "Building a personal brand through social networking", Journal of
Business Strategy, Vol. 32 Iss: 5, pp.14 21
Business: Word of mouse; Conversational marketing, The Economist, Nov 10, 2007, Vol.
385, Iss: 8554, pp. 94
E, Steffes & L, Burgee, 2009, Social ties and online word of mouth, Internet Research, Vol.
19, Iss: 1, pp. 42-59.