Yesterday I participated in a webinar, titled 10 Secrets to Social Media Marketing led by Paul Gillin. The moderator commented that there were nearly 1,000 people registered and online for the presentation. By any stretch of the imagination Social Media Marketing has the attention of many marketers.
The question becomes, Is social media marketing a viable strategy in an economy where companies need buyers and results now? I will give you my thoughts and then you be the judge.
First, social media marketing is not your father's advertising. It takes a fundamental shift in thinking because it's not advertising at all. You can't get stuck in thinking about social media like you would traditional advertising -- it's just another channel to distribute a message. This thinking already puts you many steps into failure. Instead, think connect and engage -- the goal is to get people to talk to you, you listen, you respond and you repeat the process. In other words, you're thinking participation in a dialogue. According to a study in 2008 by Razorfish, nearly half (49%) of respondents have made a purchase based on a recommendation through a social media site. And social media is still in its infancy for companies!
Second, realize that today's consumer is no longer just a consumer, instead they are multi-dimensional. Your consumers have become a user, a producer, a participant, a community and more. They hold more power today than ever before because it's now easy to spread a message good or bad with the click of a mouse. Your customer is now your critic or your champion and they will manufacture content about you, your product or service. The goal is to give them the power to work for you ... social media at its finest.
Third, just because you can build it, does not mean you should build it. The thought behind this statement is that you should always start with your business objectives and not the tool. I have witnessed companies jump into social media trying to join the bandwagon of the hottest trend. The fallacy is that these companies forget thought #1 above. It is compelling, fresh content that people find valuable, engaging, and thoughtful. It is that commitment to content that brings them back and starts the dialogue. We believe every company should go through the simple strategic process of determining what are the business/marketing objectives, how does social media support them, what tool is best, how do I use that tool properly and what are my expectations for success. Once this is done, then execute your social media strategy methodically, but don't take on more than you can handle. It is my recommendation you only do what you can do very well -- less is more here.
Last, but not least, there is a case study that demonstrates the power of social media. It demonstrates how social media can actually bring instant results versus the prevailing thought of "social media takes time to work." Hewlett-Packard introduced a new laptop called the Dragon.The Dragon is a behemoth as a 15 pound laptop with a 20.1-inch screen and 500-gigabyte hard drive and the sales were underwhelming for HP. With the help of Buzz Corps, HP developed a social media campaign called 31 Days of the Dragon, where they contacted 31 tech bloggers to give away 31 laptops in 31 days. Each blogger made up their own rules about the contest but each agreed to promote the contests of everyone else in the group.
In a post by Janet Meiners, she outlined the campaign's results, "The result was that the first five pages of Google results for searches on HP and HP Dragon were blog posts about the contest. According to HP they had over 380,000 links to the 31 sites discussing the contest. Bloggers got over 25,000 contest entries and an average 150% increase in traffic. Here’s the kicker though - almost 85% increase in sales of a computer that was released nine months ago!"
When social media marketing is developed under the umbrella of business objectives, the power can be both instant, as was the case of HP, and long-term as you give people the opportunity to connect with you. So, perhaps it is the right strategy in an economy where companies need buyers and results now. That's my thought, what's yours?
Word-of-mouth marketing is the best kind of marketing and social media is the perfect vehicle for that. But yeah, like anything else, you have to use it strategically. And true relevance is important. I think that's why the Dragon initiative worked so well. They didn't just enlist online consumers; they enlisted tech bloggers.
Posted by: Megan | January 20, 2009 at 03:12 PM