*This is a sponsored post to promote the latest Oracle asset, Modern Marketing Essentials Guide: Social Marketing, which can be downloaded here.

Oracle has released a guide discussing the ‘Five Pillars of Social Marketing’ including advice on how to best leverage social channels for marketing success.

This essentials guide aims to assist marketers with their social media strategies by offering helpful insights within these five pillars, which are:

1. Listening,
2. engagement,
3. marketing communications,
4. social advertising, and
5. analytics.

The guide responds to the growing importance of social media in business. At least 92% of marketers now consider social media as important to their business, up from 86% in 2013, says Social Media Examiner’s recent report, 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. The same study found 89% want to know the most effective tactics to engage their audiences.

The ‘Modern Marketing Essentials Guide: Social Marketing’ discusses the opportunities social media offers to marketers:

“Social media is a unique force in that it’s a channel that provides distinct value for both the user and the marketer. While it’s been compared to other evolved channels – such as TV and radio – the special appeal of providing a means of ‘talking back’ allows for a evocative, mutually beneficial dialogue rooted in the most precious (and scary) marketing asset: Customer opinion.”

Case study: Marriott Rewards

The report details a case study focusing on Marriott Rewards, which has achieved strong results through using Facebook promotions.

The company gave away 30 Marriott beds to 30 Facebook fans in 30 days, with the primary goal to increase fan acquisition and engagement on Facebook and also to drive traffic to partner sites like Chase Marriott Rewards Credit Card and ShopMarriott.com. Marriott also hoped to drive enrollments into the Marriott Rewards program.

Oracle Social Cloud’s sentiment analysis showed the campaign generated more mentions of the Marriott Rewards program and the campaign outside of Marriott channels with a clearly defined sentiment ran 90% positive during the campaign.

The report further details the success of this campaign including key metrics.

For more on the five pillars of social marketing success, download the report here »