Can Social Media Marketing scale is the wrong question to ask

Mukund — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:06:37 +0000

I was intrigued by the question Peter Kim asked on his blog a few weeks ago, paraphrasing – “Does social media marketing matter? If it does, can it scale?”. (Side note: that tells you how much I have to think to come up with a halfway good response, since it requires a lot of thinking).

Even with accidental examples of viral success and social media examples abound, I could not come up with them because “conversation marketing” involves engaging with people as opposed to talking at them, and a big part of social media is having conversations.

If you are a marketing professional there are multiple modes of getting to customers – (which is the point of marketing anyway) including advertising, sponsorships, newsletters, public relations, your corporate website, events (seminars, conferences, webinars), search optimization, direct mail etc. For a more comprehensive list check out Brian’s multimodal lead generation webinar.

The persistent lack of resources in marketing (or high leverage ratio) requires that most marketing folks spend time on highly scalable opportunities – Why? The pipeline conversion ratio (or how many suspects turn into prospects, and how many prospects turn into customers) is something they take for granted as an “industry best practice”.

The amazing part is that several of the above mentioned marketing vehicles are “high touch” or not very scalable. So does that mean you should give up regional conferences, breakfast sessions or executive briefings? I took Brian’s top list of lead generation and put them on a 2X2 matrix showing scalability and effectiveness. All comments and criticism welcome on which quadrant each of the vehicles reside. The point of that graphic is that not everything marketers do is scalable and effective.

So why do we do them?

Easy: Its what a segment of your customers want. Period.

As a good marketer you have to be where your customers are, do what your customers want and do it while managing to your budget.

There are 2 more main reasons:

1. Be cost effective: Francois interviewed Paula Drum, the VP of marketing for H&R Block and here’s the comment that struck a chord:

Based on her experience that traditional marketing program are more capital intensive, and social media marketing programs are more labor intensive – she recommends that you move some of the people resources which are going to free up because of the budget reductions to social media marketing programs.

Social media is labor intensive not capital intensive so in some ways its more capital effective. During a downturn you want more capital effective means of marketing.

2. Use the right marketing vehicle for the right stage of your customer acquisition pipeline. For someone with a hammer, they say, everything looks like a nail. If you position social media as the solution to all evils, then it wont scale, wont be cost effective and will not add value. BTW check out the video link in this paragraph, its HILARIOUS and very topical.

So what’s the right question to ask?

What are the MOST effective (cost, conversion and stage of customer acquisition) uses for social media?

BuzzGain Recommends: Discussions on the economic crisis

Mukund — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:58:19 +0000

Lots of discussion on the economic crisis and social media. Here are the ones that generated the most reactions and engagement:

1. Todd asks if Social media will help PR weather the storm?

2. Chris talks about 25 ways social media prepares you for the downturn.

3. We covered where you should be spending marketing dollars during a downturn?

4. A good LinkedIn discussion on how to help PR avoid the dramatic cuts.

Buzzgain » Marketing budget

Can Social Media Marketing scale is the wrong question to ask

BuzzGain Recommends: Discussions on the economic crisis