social marketing: the be all, end all?
overall marketing strategy, something every successful company must develop, and on which they must execute. But, how many shop owners on Facebook Fan Pages, not to mention Twitter authors, have such an overall strategy in place?
Social marketing platforms – Facebook, My Space, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. – are just that, platforms. They are not silver bullets for what ails a company, and participation on them does not guarantee a company’s success. In fact, if not handled properly, with an overall strategic plan in place, and with long-term dedicated resources applied to their use, they can do more harm than good. How, you ask? Well, let’s start at the beginning.
Before starting out on the social media path, a company must have well defined, and measurable, business goals. Why? Well, how can you know if what you’re expending your time, money and energy on is effective, without having a goal by which you can measure success? Just as you wouldn’t set out to run a race without knowing how far and where the finish line is, a company needs to know what the “end game” is, they need to be able to determine when they have succeeded. Now, these goals can encompass many areas of the company, and all can be measured differently. But, each goal must have a “finish line”, a point at which you know you have succeeded. And, these goals are not limited to the staff handling social marketing. These are overall business goals; goals every department in the company should be striving to reach.
Perhaps the company’s goals include customer acquisition and retention. Perhaps the goals also include superior customer service. And, just maybe, increased market share is at the top of the list. Each of these goals will be reached in a different manner, each requires a different set of metrics, and each might be the primary focus of a different, or several departments. Lastly, each might require a different social media platform, or perhaps just a different use of the same platform.
As I participate on online forums, in various webinars and at conferences, as well as at start-up networking events, the refrain I hear again and again from companies just developing their social media initiative is, “Tell me how long it will take
to see results; tell me exactly what I need to do; which tools should we use; how many people, and how many hours, will be required to succeed in social marketing?” Hearing this over and over again prompted me to write this article, in the hope, that I could offer some clarification on what social marketing is and isn’t, what purposes it can serve, what types of resources might be required, and most importantly, how to implement and use it effectively as one part of an overall marketing strategy.
How Long wiLL it take? No one can provide that answer, and if someone says they can, they are simply not being truthful. How long it takes is dependent upon so many factors, your individual business goals being at the top of the list. How one company uses the various social marketing platforms can vary greatly from how another company does, and how well known a company is already, has a direct impact on how successful their efforts might be.
For instance, if you are an auto dealership, and your number- one business goal is to sell cars, and sell them to anyone who will buy just this one time, so you can clear your lot of old inventory, the platforms and strategies you employ to reach customers might be quite different from the mom-and-pop scrapbook store, whose number-one goal is to retain current (read: high-profit) customers. The dealership might not be as
sociaL media invoLves tacticaL activity based on
an overaLL strategy.
sociaL marketing is an ongoing initiative, one tHat
requires foretHougHt and pLanning, and one tHat requires
dedicated resources, focused attention, and
constant monitoring (and tweaking as necessary).
scrapbook business 31
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