Why Social Media Marketing

Aug 25th, 2022

Social media is a special thing. It has allowed the exchange of information at a rate never-before-seen. His Majesty has envisioned a Digital Drukyul for all of us, and I believe that the best way to get there is for all of us to become digitally literate.

To some, digital literacy is critical literacy. It is the ability to analyze and scrutinize the digital media you consume. That’s not the definition I have in mind. For me, digital literacy is simply the ability of people to use digital resources. Digital literacy is important because the government of Bhutan could spend billions on digitizing its infrastructure and services, but if the people don’t know how to use these services, everything would be wasted.

So, instead, I believe that for Digital Drukyul to succeed, we ought to educate the people of Bhutan to be digitally literate. That can be done in many ways — but I would like to start by educating Bhutanese businesses to use digital platforms better. I am not doing this so that you can read all the subsequent posts in this series on social media marketing and think, “I’ll just hire this guy to do it for me.” I’m doing this so all of us use these resources equally.

Social media marketing is nothing complicated — although there are enough marketing agencies in Thimphu now to make me think that some of us have convinced the people it is. Social media is straightforward. In this series, I’ll go over some of the basic ideas, then pivot to using data analytics, and finally end with some recommendations based on my personal experience. I have worked as a digital marketer with clients in 8 countries so far, and so I’ve learned a few things along the way.

Why social media

First, let me make my case on why you should invest (money or time) in social media marketing. Businesses the world over and in Bhutan have recently embraced social media as the next frontier of marketing. Their reason for it is simple: it’s where the people are.

Here are four reasons your company should take social media seriously:

1. It is where the people are. According to Napoleon Cat, a social media metrics company, there were over 550,000 Facebook users in Bhutan in Jan 2021. This is about 65% of Bhutan’s entire population. No other form of media, traditional or new, has this level of reach among the Bhutanese populace. If I told you that you could potentially tell almost the entire adult population of Bhutan about your business, you’d jump on the chance right away. So, why wouldn’t you jump on the chance to use social media the right way?
2. It is where the young people are. The emerging consumer class in Bhutan, i.e., those aged 24–36 grew up with social media. To this and younger groups, social media isn’t a tool or technology, it is a part of their everyday life. These groups expect your company to be online.
3. It is cost-effective. John Wanamaker, a 19th-century American retailer famously said, “half the money I spend on marketing is wasted.” Prof. Peter Fader of Wharton School says he was wrong. In reality, more than just half of the money spent on marketing is wasted. The money that is “wasted” goes into over-inflated advertising costs on radio, TV, and newspapers.

A private newspaper in Bhutan that circulated less than 60,000 copies in the entire country in 2019 charges over Nu. 30,000 for a full-page, over Nu. 20,000 for a half-page, and Nu. 10,000 for a quarter-page ad. A recent Facebook campaign run by the author of this document found that an investment as small as $10 every month on Facebook can make more of a difference than spending $150 on a quarter-page ad (for reference, this particular recent campaign received just over 30,000 views in 7 days for a spend of $15). ROIs (return on investment) on social media marketing campaigns are much better than traditional media. Lyfe marketing finds that in the US, CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) of a full-page ad in Vogue magazine is $1,092, while it was $10.78 in digital media.

If you took a quarter-page ad in this unnamed private newspaper and you had this ad in every print they make in a year and every single paper they sent to circulation was sold and everyone who has this paper saw your ad, your CPM would be $2.5 (you’re paying $2.5 for 1000 impressions). On the other hand, taking the average of the author’s best (0.21) and worst-performing (0.63) campaigns, you get a CPM of 0.42 (you’re saying $0.42 to have your content seen by 1000 people), which is better by 6 times. If Mr Wanamaker were alive right now, he’d love social media marketing.

Next in this series: Making and using a social media strategy.