This is the first in a series on key concepts for social media for business marketing. The transformational nature of social media marketing looks at how marketing has changed due to advancement in technologies and tools. More than a popular trend, social media has enabled a significant shift in power and influence away from large organizations with deep pockets to small businesses and individuals able to capture attention and build market share with some well-focused social media marketing moxie.
Command & control
Marketing 1.0 (or traditional marketing as we know it) born out of the industrial economy revolved around broadcasting your messages about products and services in as many mediums as you could afford: TV, print, radio, direct mail and telemarketing to name a few. It was all about controlling and pushing your message out there. Promotions, discounts, coupons and incentives were often used to capture attention, create urgency and drive action. Also referred to as interruption marketing or outbound marketing, tactics were aimed at grabbing attention in the hopes of achieving a 1% response rate. The power of influence was often measured by the amount of the marketing spend as compared to share of voice and brand consideration metrics.
Reclaiming power & influence
Interruption marketing has become less and less effective largely due to the fact that people are able to block out the attack of these intrusive messages. With tools like Tivo/DVR’s people can now forward through the commercials. Caller ID and signing up for the national Do Not Call Registry has helped people greatly reduce the number of telemarketing calls they receive. With the advent of satellite radio listeners now have a choice of commercial-free music and programming, and the use of MP3 players like iPods has reduced the amount of broadcast radio people listen to. People weed out junk (direct) mail and pay less attention to print ads. Newspapers are going out of business as our eyeballs have shifted from print media to online, real-time information. Some have suggested Twitter is the new national newspaper having first broken the news on such remarkable events as Flight 1593 plunging into the Hudson River. Not only are people fed up with interruption marketing and able to block it out, but they have found an appealing alternative in social media where they feel involved and empowered to both give and get what they need.
Instead of flipping through a magazine, direct mail or the yellow pages, people now pull up their favorite search engine and enter the keywords associated with what
they’re looking for. Search results may turn up not just a Website or directory listing, but also a blog post, YouTube video and/or a Yelp review. Or, they may ask Facebook friends/fans for recommendations. They may also pose a question on Twitter, Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers, or any number of other social networks and communities they are an avid member of.
And this illustrates how the power of influence has been transformed through participation in social media. Buyers (friends, fans, followers, communities) are now in control. And what they say about you and your brand goes – and not only that, but can cause an influential groundswell of opinion. In the bestselling book, Groundswell – Winning in a world transformed by social technologies, Forrester Research authors, Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li define this shift, this groundswell as: “A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.” No longer does capturing eyeballs and influence require a big wallet. No longer do buyers only go to a web site, or believe what an advertisement says about a product or service. The new influencers are connecting and conversing via social media networks, and they’re very powerful and quite effective at influencing purchasing behaviors and consideration.
Quality relationships + great content = social media marketing
Some refer to this transformation of power as Web 2.0 and Marketing 2.0. In a recently published book, Marketing 2.0 – Bridging the Gap between Seller and Buyer through Social Media Marketing, author Bernie Borges writes:
“Marketing 1.0 is characterized as a marketer’s attempt to interrupt our lives with their message, hoping that a small percentage of us will respond.” and Marketing 2.0 as “a mind-set. Its two pillars are content and relationship-building…the mind-set of Marketing 2.0 is to determine where your customers and surrounding constituents spend time on the web. Once you determine that, go there to share great content and build relationships with them.”
As Borges points out, social media marketing tactics are aimed at building relationships and publishing content. Out are static, brochure-ware Web sites that extolled the virtues of a company’s products and services. In are interactive Web sites and blogs that share helpful content and invite comment and discussion. Content on the interactive Web is created, consumed and shared in many ways: from blogs to videos and podcasts to forums, community sites, review sites, photo sharing sites to micro-blogging sites, document sharing sites known as wikis and – you name it – there are hundreds of possibilities.
This form of marketing runs counter to interruption marketing and is associated with social media. Instead of being intrusive and repelling, it attracts and pulls people in. It becomes a vibrant channel where voices are heard, opinions are shared and decisions are made. Shoppers are able to acquire all the information they need to make informed buying decisions from the Web, and more specifically from the connections, relationships and conversations taking place in and around the online communities they are loyal to.
Recently, I sent out a request on Twitter looking for a recommendation on an anti-spam plug-in for my WordPress blog, “What’s the best anti-spam WordPress plug-in, do you recommend Akismet, or something else?” Within a matter of second’s responses from followers confirmed Akismet was great, and one person even sent me a link to another solution that would compliment it and that also came highly recommended by Matt Cutts, a well-known engineer at Google. Whether you’re on the receiving or giving end of this kind of exchange, it makes you feel pretty excited and satisfied. It brings you back to thinking that this is the way business got done in the past – by good and reliable word-of-mouth. And that’s what social media marketing is really all about.
Worth the price of admission
Social media can certainly transform your marketing to greater levels of effectiveness. And while it doesn’t cost a lot of money (most of the tools and networks are free to join), it does require considerable thought and effort on your part to make it work. Some level of technical know-how and setup expertise is also desired to create a professional image and present a favorable impression. Social media marketing is not really something you can just plop in to your marketing mix, set-it-and-forget-it. It is something that requires considerable focus, planning, participation and on-going commitment.
In a guest HubSpot blog post titled, 10 Ways a Start-Up Can Use Social Media to Market Itself, Edward Boches, chief creative officer at advertising agency Mullen, ends by saying:
“When I started in this business, launching a brand was costly. You needed a significant marketing budget that covered an oversized booth at a trade show, a direct sales force or a Super Bowl commercial, and a good hunk of your money went into advertising and promotion. Now you might be able to get away with a laptop, an Internet connection, and some well-focused social media.”
Yes, with a well-focused social media strategy, businesses of all sizes can execute and publish vs. buy their way in to capturing eyeballs. Creativity and sharing remarkable content levels the playing field. It gives even the solo-preneur with passion and the chops to get engaged in the process the chance to carve out their niche and build equity in their brand.
The transformational nature of social media marketing is the power to reinvent, to grow your business and give you a new sense of purpose and hope. When effective, social media marketing taps into your passion and unleashes your creativity. It celebrates quality relationships, craves remarkable content and produces stainless credibility. At its best it reveals the true and unique you – right down to your very DNA. These are the key ingredients of a social media marketing mindset and are the subject of the next key concept.
