Social Media Maximizes a Marketing Strategy

There appear to be some die-hard traditionalists who do not believe social media has a place in marketing products and services. That was the finding from a recent survey conducted by Emailvision, a global email marketing service, which surveyed over 100 companies at a recent Online Marketing Show. The majority of companies said they prefer SEO and email as the leading tools to reach their target audience. The same companies cited little use for social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or Twitter as supplements to traditional marketing tactics.

Hmmm. Where do we begin in breaking down this missed opportunity?

Let’s start with the obvious. There are still a number of companies that will not consider augmenting their marketing strategy with the aforementioned social networking tools because — let’s face it — these tools remain unproven.

Okay, I’ll give them that. But I have to follow up with this question: Are they measuring the effectiveness of social media the same way they measure the effectiveness of a television commercial or a banner ad? If so, that’s where the problem lies because social media cannot be measured the same way traditional media is measured. It’s like apples to oranges and here’s why: Social media is about building relationships. It’s about pullingpeople in to experience a product or service and less about pushing it out to the audience and interfering with the way they consume media.

In order to measure the effectiveness of social media you have to look at what’s called the return on participation or ROP and not on the traditional ROI. How many times are people forwarding the link to your company blog? How many people have assume advocacy roles in discussion groups to talk about your product or service? How many times is your content being shared with others through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn? The answers to these questions and more measure engagement and that’s where social media has an advantage over traditional media.

The next factor in this missed opportunity is fear — fear of the unknown, fear of what people might be saying about your brand. The old saying what you don’t know can’t hurt you is no longer true. The bigger question is “What do you need to know about your brand?” and how people are interacting with your brand.  

Social media gives companies the tools to ”listen” to what people are saying about your product or service. And get this: Instead of paying thousands of dollars to get 40 or 50 people in a room to talk about your product or service, companies can monitor consumer conversations through social media. This conversation is real, it’s robust, it’s honest and very revealing because social medial allows for that kind of freedom. No one is behind the two-way mirror listening to the comments of those in a focus group. Instead companies that know how to engage with an audience have identified subject matter experts to answer questions and make comments on these platforms. What comes out of these discussions is more valuable than the “paid” comments that come from a focus group.

Social media also allows for a cross-section of people to engage with your product or service. Companies that are brave enough to “listen” to their customers are finding that what they don’t know can help them make improvements in quality of the product or service.

Finally, there is the concern that social media tools will replace the face-to-face contact needed to build relationships. Not true. If anything social media opens up an avenue for more relationship building to take place. Companies that are apprehensive about losing the human touch must understand that every tweet or status update creates an opportunity to learn something about an individual that you didn’t know before. Yes, sometimes you can get more information than you want to know. But the smart people who are using social media to manage their brand or reputation online are becoming familiar with what’s acceptable and what’s not especially in a professional setting.

Integrating social media into a marketing strategy takes foresight and a little bit of intelligence. It is not as risky as some make it out to be if companies do what makes the most sense for their business. Some of the drivers to making those decisions are determined by allocated resources to manage the social media effort. But there’s minimal costs to launching a Twitter account or a Facebook Fan Page.

So where are the marketing traditionalists? Let’s talk about getting you over the fear of the unknown — or better yet — let’s talk about helping you become more familiar with the next generation of cost-effective marketing. Email and SEO are great but you’re still pushing your product or service out to your target audience. If pushing is what you want  cool. How much longer before your product or service becomes irrelevant to your consumers?