Social Media as a platform for marketing provides for continuous innovation, thanks to the evolving technology. No other medium gives you the kind of direct and interactive opportunity as do the Social Media Channels. Though the medium is seen to be belonging largely to the audience who discuss, participate and contribute to creating content, online marketing using the same platform has gone places. Today no brand worth its name can afford to ignore or absent itself from the platform where its customers are present and are discussing about their preferences, likes, dislikes and experiences etc.

As in the case of traditional media, Social Media too developed the concepts of online advertisements which continues to exist and grow in the form of pop ups, banners and other multi-media clippings. Online advertising works out to be very cheap and at the same time has the capability to reach out to larger audience. In the second phase developers introduced embedded marketing applications that engage the customer directly and let him tell what he thinks of your product. Use of quantitative tools such as Ratings, Recommendations and Reviews have become highly effective means of giving the voice to customer’s opinions, preferences and feedbacks.

It helps to understand briefly how these Quantitative tools work in the context of both the customers as well as the marketers.

Ratings

Check out any information about any product or service on the Social Networks and you will see the ratings that appear below the same. Books, photos, Hotels and movies etc are some of the most popular categories which are rated by the audience.

Providing a mechanism and asking the audience to rate the particular offer, product or service is one of the most popular ways of measuring what the customers think of the same. It reflects the overall opinion of the audience with respect of their expectation of the product or service and with respect to what or how the product/service is expected to perform.

A highly rated movie tends to build into a buzz and the publicity around the same tends to spread faster and wider within a short period of time. Many people who wish to watch a movie over the weekend are likely to look for the ratings and choose the movie accordingly. If you check out the movie ratings system, you will normally see five stars being used for rating the movie from excellent to good, three stars for an average move, and so on. It is quite likely that you will not bother to check out the movies that have below two star ranking.

Ratings can be a good barometer of how well the product is accepted and liked by your customers and it also measures the fulfillment of Customer Expectations. On the marketing front, the ratings speak for your product and it is there for all others to see. Just like word of mouth publicity, the ratings too help in bringing you publicity which is good or bad depending upon your product performance. This is not all, rankings help you to gauge the customer’s moods and expectations better. You get to listen and watch your customers talking about your product as well as your competitor’s product as well and such information about your competition can give you very many insights into your business.

It is quite likely that many marketers would shy away from getting anywhere near using such ratings and other tools. This can only mean that they are missing out on opportunities of getting valuable feedback as well as publicity. As long as the aim is to receive and act on the feedback and to work on making your product offering better, there is no need for any hesitation in using such feedback mechanisms.