Perspectives & Strategy

This is an interesting question that was raised the other day on LinkedIn. My own view is that advertisements will continue to be a part of the landscape on Web 1.0 and on Social Media sites well into the future. If used correctly adverts can target the right market sector more precisely on this channel than on any other, which may facilitate the movement of traffic to a target website more effectively that SEO alone.

That however does not guarantee people will buy from your offering. That will depend largely on presentation on your website once the person arrives and whether the product the company is selling really relates to the prospects specific needs.

Leveraging Social Media also takes us beyond the act of advertising and I have talked about this before, in particular the three key components: Improving communications and collaborating more closely; Intelligently intervening in respect of things said about the product/brand/company/marketplace; Each comes before the building of a revenue stream. It is essential to be seen as a market expert, and be seen as providing value, becoming a trusted resource. Leveraging Social Media is about more than marketing it is about connecting and communicating with your target audience – engaging them even when they don’t want something, but not doing so in a way that makes them feel you are chasing them for future sales. It is about being a resource to solve their problems. In fact Social Media can be a very effective customer service tool.

Erica Friedman, Social Media Optimizer and Publisher at ALC Publishing says “Advertisers are having major issues trying to understand the metrics associated with Social Media and are resistant to interacting directly with customers, except in very small, measured ways”. I have my suspicions they are measuring Social Media in the same way as they have measured any other media. She also points out “Once upon a time, long before radio and TV, people had to talk to their customers, in order to keep their business going. The friendlier and more open and easy to work with, the better your business did. We’re starting to see that model coming back, on a global scale”.

Social Media is about talking to the customer or prospect. Basically Social Media can simply be the platform by which a connection is made. It is still essential to win over the business, human to human.

Patrick Murphy of SiliconCloud makes the point that “that adverts are more targeted to your social media profile”, well they should be targeted to succeed. The 22 year old single woman sees a different advert than the 43 year old married man when they are on the same page at the same time. From the viewpoint of Facebook or LinkedIn this is the power of what they can offer an advertiser.  Now whether the demographic focus of a specific product is right for the target audience is another question. That is where it is important to build a market intelligence for each product any corporation markets.

The reason it is important for corporations to leverage the power of Social Media as a part of there marketing strategy is as Firas Abo Assaf points out that according to a recent survey “80% of decision makers say they found the vendor, not the other way around” and “According to Marketing Sherpa, 80-90% of business to business transactions begin with a search on the web”. With search engines becoming more Social Media aware the social media contributions made do become important. What this means is that buyers are increasingly aware of what they need and are researching the market before buying. This also has a relationship to the interaction with the marketplace through the Social Media channel. Buyers are looking for value from their suppliers and Social Media can be a part of that value chain.

The thought “Once upon a time, long before radio and TV, people had to talk to their customers” it seems like we have come full circle, yet we are using different tools to facilitate this.