A comment to yesterday’s post about why marketing to consumers on social media is a terrible idea got me thinking. The commenter said I don’t understand the difference between selling and participating in social media.
More to the point, for our purposes, here are the differences between social media participation and consumer marketing:
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I emphasize that the Marketing column focuses on the results of effective consumer marketing techniques.
I can hear you thinking: isn’t social media a part of marketing? Yes. It’s just not an effective marketing technique when your goal is to reach consumers.
Also, to be clear, I am not advocating that you not participate in social media. Contributions to “the conversation” can help inform people of what you’re up to. But I do have problems with heavy investment of time and money into social media that so many companies are making these days, for all of the reasons outlined above. Social media should be towards the bottom of your list of techniques to reach consumers — mostly because, aside from Facebook, you’re not reaching mainstream consumers on social media.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss social media in general, or to generalize it as a single “technique.” Social media isn’t a technique, it’s a platform – or group of platforms – upon which to perform marketing techniques.
There are effective social media marketing campaigns, and there are ineffective social media marketing campaigns. Just like there are effective and ineffective consumer marketing campaigns.
Given the present audience of social media users – that 500 million number Facebook has loved to drop everywhere possible – and the growing user base, to ignore and discredit the medium as a whole is nonsensical. Furthermore Facebook provides an incredible amount of data for marketers. If you want to talk about a targeted marketing campaign, you can’t get more targeted than limiting your display ads to users based on age, gender, geographic location, workplace or college, previous connection to a page/group, and so on. While traditional PPC campaigns involve a lot of guesswork, measurement, and adjustment, with Facebook you define your audience before the ads even run.
Simply take care to effectively evaluate the costs and expected ROI of any social media campaign, and understand the benefits and limitations of individual social media sites.
Bill — “Display ads” are part of the problem. Have you ever bought anything because you saw a Facebook ad? Has your purchasing decision ever even been influenced because you saw an ad on Facebook?
My post has more to do with participating in “conversations” on sites like Twitter — but, frankly, I don’t think Facebook ads are any more effective than tweets when it comes to marketing to consumers.
I’ll admit that I haven’t ever purchased anything because I’ve seen a Facebook ad, however my profile is stripped bare so the information for advertisers is limited (I consider myself an outlier, however, in that respect). I have, however, clicked on links in ads before. While not a direct purchase, I did visit a website. For an online consumer, that’s the first step.
I think the biggest problem with social media marketing right now is the difficulty in assessing its effect. You can, however, directly track the traffic to a website from Facebook/Twitter links. And I would argue it’s even more difficult to objectively measure the effectiveness of other traditional marketing (how do you equate a print ad with website traffic or direct sales?).
With Facebook’s new integration with Bing, and the less publicized and ongoing integration of Twitter and Google, you’re able to find friends’ comments and opinions about products in search results. As consumers frequently research products online before making a purchase, this social data will have increasing importance in purchases. If I search for an upgrade to my Sony DSLR camera, for instance, I’ll find that several of my photography friends “Like” and comment on various camera brands and models. Their opinions matter more to me than a Sunday morning paper ad.
Creating conversation is more about brand loyalty than pushing a direct purchase. While that’s difficult to assign a dollar value in the short term, it’s far more valuable in the long term.
Quick note: I agree that Twitter is more of a “marketers haven,” but I think the consumer benefits of Facebook – especially given the ongoing proliferation throughout the web through the OpenGraph and Bing integration – should be a valuable part of any marketing plan.