Back in the day, social activity was a handshake on the sales floor. It was a beer after work. It was a cup of coffee or afternoon tea. It was a tennis match or a game of chess. It was lunch. It was a conversation at a party. It was a friendly hello on the street. None of it required a monthly subscription, a marketing firm, a guru or a content strategy.
Forget the “media” for a second and focus on the “social.” Focus on the word social.
What makes social media different from TV, radio, print and traditional web? More to the point, what is it that you as a company could do with social media that you cannot do via mass media?
Think. Think back to the way that friendly store manager made you feel about shopping there. Think about the impact that being friends with your auto mechanic has on your loyalty to his repair shop, about the degree to which positive experience, familiarity and trust impact your purchasing decisions every day. Would you rather do business with strangers or people you know? Would you rather do business with people who genuinely care about you and look after your every need, or companies whose employees couldn’t care less if you are happy with them? Think about this carefully. Do you look at Facebook and Twitter as merely new marketing channels, or as rich ecosystems where you and your customers can interact in ways that enhance your value to them and in turn helps you develop them into outspokenly loyal customers?
The companies that use social media correctly, the ones who see ROI from their activity there have already figured out that the social nature of channels like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Foursquare and others makes them radically different from traditional channels. Are they using social media channels for marketing purposes? Sure. But is that all they are doing? Not on your life. Check out the breadth of activity being managed by Starbucks, Ford and Best Buy, for starters. Marketing is only a small piece of the pie when it comes to the type of activities these companies engage in when it comes to the social web, and for good reason: Social media is not marketing media.
There are two things I want you to think about before we tackle Part 2 of this post. The first is this: If a company focuses its social media efforts on marketing, what is it not focusing on? Answer: Online reputation management, customer service, consumer relations, user groups, technical support, and consumer engagement, for starters. Yes, you read right. I used a social media buzzword. En-ga-ge-ment. Except that when I say it, I know what it means. I am not talking about marketing posing as engagement. I am not talking about content, contests and entertainment. I am talking about real engagement. The kind that feels like a handshake, like a conversation over coffee, the kind that develops trust, preference and loyalty in consumers. The real brick and mortar that companies can build their bridges with rather than the house of cards they are overpaying agencies to piece together for them. Social should feel like a handshake, not like a marketing message. Not like “content.” Not like a sales pitch.
The second thing I want you to think about is this: There are three clear phases in the customer life-cycle. They are acquisition, development, and retention. You’re a business and you want social media to work for you? Great. Your social media activity has to focus on all three phases, not just the first.
We know that your agency can get you lots of “likes,” follows and views. And as a company, you have paid the price for every single one. Now what? Did your digital agency, your marketing partner, your superstar consultant also factor in the rest of it? First question: What are you acquiring for all that social media spend – new followers or new transacting customers? Second question: Are you using your social media presence to develop these new customers into regular customers? Third question: Are you using your social media presence to further develop these customers into loyal customers, even ambassadors for your brand and products?
If all you are doing with your social media potential is handing it over to a marketing department, a digital department or an outside agency, you are not. All you are doing is spending money on reach and follower acquisition. Think beyond acquisition. What are you doing through social media to develop customers, to increase their frequency of purchases, the yield of their transactions? What are you doing to develop them from potential customer to new customer, from new customer to satisfied customer, from satisfied customer to repeat customer, from repeat customer to loyal customer, and from loyal customer to evangelist?
Move beyond the marketing/acquisition mentality or you will never get anywhere in this space. Later this week, in Part 2, we will dive a little deeper into what I mean by that.
To learn more about how to properly build social media programs that involve but are not limited to marketing:
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Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
Olivier:
I think we just need to KILL the Media part of the Social Media descriptor.
Social is a great place to engage with people and a lousy place to sell them stuff. You have to step back a bit and serve the community motivations (whatever they are) and put your own corporate motivations (sell more stuff) away.
Serving community motivations will sell more stuff, but it is a second order effect.
Tom O’Brien
MotiveQuest LLC
@tomob
Yep. We do.
Well-writtten, thank you for your insight. You really capture the essence of what it means to engage people via social media.
Although social media is a different beast than traditional marketing, it’s hardly the Lone Ranger, nor should it be considered so.
How much more effective would your social media efforts be if they were integrated with offline marketing? I’m not suggesting that social media be handled like traditional marketing. Social media should be an extension of a company’s brand. It should serve to enforce the brand’s image at every touch point with the consumer.
Like corporate culture, how you engage consumers via social media and how you add-value to your brand and traditional marketing campaign is what makes a company unique and it’s hard to duplicate. This is your gateway into using your integrated social media strategy as a competitive advantage for your company.
Olivier,
I normally love your writing, but I have to admit that I was perturbed to see this latest title. I persevered and read the article, but feel that you misuse the term marketing here. It seems like you view marketing to be solely about promotion and advertising, when that is merely a small fraction of marketing’s role within an organisation.
Marketing is about customer centricity and building meaningful long-term relationships with customers. Customer acquisition, development and retention form the basis of most marketing theory (granted, not all marketers or agencies work that way). Reputation management, brand building, customer service, consumer relations and consumer engagement are all parts of good marketing rather than being things that are sacrificed for it.
As someone who spends a great deal of time in my working life trying to push this positive view of marketing, it is frustrating to see proponents of this customer-centric approach using the term in an adverse way and reinforcing the 1980s view of marketing being purely about push.
It is not marketing that is choking the life out of social comms and social media, but organisations that are unaware of how to operate in the social space. It is their lack of realisation that social communications requires a different approach to their traditional communications. I’m sure that Starbuck, Ford and Best Buy approach marketing in the positive way described above, and that they consider their work in the social space as being marketing in its true sense.
Zack
It seems like you view marketing to be solely about promotion and advertising, when that is merely a small fraction of marketing’s role within an organisation.
Marketing is about customer centricity and building meaningful long-term relationships with customers. Customer acquisition, development and retention form the basis of most marketing theory.
Valid point. This is the marketing I learned about in B-school, but the not the marketing I see very often in ‘real world.’
Zack, let me ease your mind: You and I have a similar definition of what marketing is (or at least should be). That said, the vast majority of organizations don’t look at marketing the way we do, and these marketing departments, in turn, do not operate in the way that we would like them to. So the post speaks to the reality of our current situation, not the evolved view of marketing that so few of have come to embrace.
What I am seeing with the marketing world’s takeover of social media is this: Content, push, and the same old crap that already wasn’t working very well in the 1980s being adapted to social (poorly at that). Let me share something with you that will make your blood turn cold. It comes from a study by Zoomerang conducted just this past month, in which “reflects the attitudes of business leaders in regards to their planned marketing budgets, priorities and challenges for 2011.” Are you ready? here we go:
“For the second year in a row, email marketing and social media marketing remain the top targets for increased spend. […] Email marketing and social media will be the top areas of investment in 2011, followed by Search, Direct Mail and Tradeshows/Events are the top targets for decreased spend. The most important email marketing initiatives for 2011 are increasing subscriber engagement, improving segmentation and targeting, and integrating social media and email marketing. On the latter point, a full 71% have already integrated email and social, or plan to 2011. […] Among social media initiatives, Facebook is the biggest priority, followed by viral/referral marketing programs. Marketing via Twitter and implementing social media management technology tied for third place. Awareness building is the primary goal for social media marketing initiatives, followed by loyalty acquisition and reaching new audiences. As is the case with any new channel, social media marketing is seen as least effective at generating leads and revenue.”
That was the coffin. Here are the nails:
“Marketers are focused on increasing subscriber engagement through increased relevancy and automating lifecycle communications (in 2011)… though struggling with insufficient resources, this challenge can be overcome with the right marketing partner.”
There is the version of marketing that you and I, Seth Godin and Tom Peters, and the readers of Fast Company understand, and then there is the other 99% of the business world, that still thinks and operates this way.
Just last week, our account management and retention team created, on the white board directly behind me, a list of “Ways we piss our customers off.”
It’s an outstanding list of things that our company currently does that aren’t adding net value to our customer interactions.
And none of them have anything to do with marketing.
In fact, if any of our current clients starting getting marketing promo through one of our support or community channels, I can’t imagine the backlash.
Yet it seems that so….many….companies treat social media contexts just like that.
I think the power of your message, Olivier–not just here, but throughout the context of your blog as a whole–is that you walk a fine line between ensuring that social media produces a real return, but treat the actual development, production, and engagement of a social media program as something holistically different than marketing.
In other words, social media needs to have solid tracking metrics, like sales and marketing have had for years–but the vision and attitude behind it must be something different, better, and more customer-inclusive than marketing “push.”
And apparently, based on the fact that you’re still having to preach the message means that a lot of people don’t get it, or DO get it, but have a hard time implementing it.
Wonderful comment. Yes, it’s a fine line. It’s almost a conundrum, operationally speaking, to shoot for specific business outcomes through activities that indirectly influence them. The key is this: Social media is not the entire business. It is one aspect of its communications. The rest of the business still has to do its thing. As long as social isn’t used as a substitute for advertising and marketing, it can enhance and amplify other business functions. It takes a little tact and insight to make it work though. An intern can’t do it, and an outside partner (like an agency) can only handle certain aspects of it.
As for the need to preach the message, I feel like a pebble standing up to a tsunami. 😀
But I am at peace with my pebble nature, so all is well.
Nice post. What would be a great engagement process is to also get the community to create casual content around the brand on an regular basis. Social media seems to be the right medium to engage audience in the content creation process e.g: 101 creative uses of a starbucks cup…etc…
How about the brand creating something for the community for a change?
@tomob
and where is the ROI on that. Where are the measurable metrics? I say stick with the casual content plan with the starbucks cup and write a blog about it. 101 creative uses of social media to build brands and thought-leaders.
I don’t have to tell you that you’re 100% correct. Here are a few reasons why I think we’re not seeing more social:
> The vast majority of people still can’t figure out KPIs (much less ROI) save for baseline ‘engagement’ metrics (i.e. likes, unique page views, etc.)
> The guys in the fancy suits atop the ivory towers don’t get that it takes patience. [I’d actually be curious how you’d approach conveying this message up the ladder.] X dollars into paid search generates X amount of leads, which resulted into X customers. They get that.
How do people evangelizing social tools explain that having genuine conversations (hand-shake interactions) with people after the sale leads to those customers telling 12 of their friends, of which results in 5 customers?
Looking forward to part II.
How I do it is simple. I ask them what they want. When they can’t tell me, I help them find the answer.
Here’s the first step: Getting them off the notion that acquiring more customers will help them hit their numbers. You said it yourself: “X dollars into paid search generates X amount of leads, which resulted into X customers.” What’s at the end of that? Net new transacting customers. here’s the thing though: That’s only 1/3 of the equation. I can take their existing customers and increase the company’s sales revenue by about 9% just by focusing on a frequency/buy rate tweak with existing customers. If you’re already growing at 12% and I can add 9% to that, using social media, is that valuable to an executive? You bet.
And the best part: You can do this by focusing on existing customers rather than focusing on acquiring new ones.
The problem with companies that focus most of their energy on customer acquisition is that they never bother to patch the hole at the bottom of their bucket. They spend a lot of money acquiring customers that they don’t bother to keep. It’s a waste of resources and a shitty business focus. Imagine a marching army whose general only focused on the front lines and doesn’t bother defending his flanks or supporting from the rear. That’s what you have with this customer acquisition obsession. This focus on breadth of reach at the expense of depth of connection.
Remember my whole thing about F.R.Y.? Frequency, reach and yield? That’s what I bring to the table in that first meeting. If the focus of the meeting is increasing sales, those are the 3 ways we can do that. If the focus is on brand management, PR, reputation or crisis stuff, the conversation is very different. But if it’s about business growth, I put it in perspective for them.
😉
Dude! I fought the urge to jump to the comments before finishing the post, but barely made it to the first slide. I’ll go back and read the marketing/agency-type stuff in a minute, but you are so righteously on-point in the first half of this post, if I don’t get this uber-enthusiastic comment out, my head will explode.
In your opening, you described – to a T – what our little business is looking to do. We are reaching out to our community and showing them how they can forge powerful, mutually-beneficial connections through the things they have in common. Would you rather do business with someone like you, who shares your values, and understands your needs? Doesn’t that pretty much WELD people together through TRUST?
Let’s tap those skills, those passions. Let’s build a new market, served by new businesses, based on real value designed to improve people’s lives.
If we make a dime, we’re investing six cents back. True success is helping others be successful. We’re in the business of building high performance machines and high performance lives.
Pow. Catalina effing Wine Mixer.
Thank you.
Boom chakalaka.
I love it when people e-mail me or Tweet me, and then I respond back and then are all “Wow! Thank you for answering my questions!”
That is where the real magic happens.
Getting attention on blog posts is nice, but when you get to talk to people behind the curtain (and really connect) that is when you know you are actually doing something worthwhile.
Feels good.
There you go. 🙂
Bingo.
You’ll find a plethora of social streams that have thousands of followers, fans, likers, etc. And, while I think quantity plays its importance as social proof, I’m seeing the quality factor not as in demand.
The Chase…
For social to occur on social channels, there needs to be a targeted message presented to a defined group.
Blasting promotions, contest giveaways, and other advertising ploys is a great way to mask a useless social stream. Seriously, who doesn’t love free stuff?
And, what better way to expose a dead network on a social channel, then by posting an interesting conversational topic, and having less than 1% of fans respond?
I think it would be naive to assume most social directors don’t get it. Marketing in the fashion as you describe in this post, is probably what’s keeping a good number of these consultants, specialist, and directors employed.
I don’t know the extent to which ignorance trumps intellectual laziness in the space, but yeah. You’re spot on. Same result in the end.
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Oliver & Ryan – Relationships are built on love, trust, connections – to truly build relationships with customers social media has an opportunity to connect at a deeper level.
As a marketer trained on the CPG side, now in Retail (follow me @jf1216) you’re correct, marketing in the mold of Fast Company & Seth Godin is slim to none – Tactics tend to be the norm, executives search for the ‘bright & shiny object’ and strategy has been replaced by ‘activity’ – ‘build a facebook page, make a viral video, etc..’
When I built http://www.kmartdesign.com/ we had a clear vision: Build ‘curious disbelief’ around Kmart, driving credibility & consideration . . . and an ongoing relationship.
http://multichannelmerchant.com/ecommerce/0701-merchants-use-facebook/
And content was important to help tell a deeper story – but theres a differnce btw ‘relevant’ content that serves to educate & inform vs. simply push an ad message or attempt to be ‘viral.’
Continue spreading the gospel….Jeff
Thank you very much for this interesting article. I love the customer life cycle info-graphics. I definitely agree that the person to person interaction is a key ingredient to this type of success.
Thank you Olivier, it helps a lot.
One thing more, shall we have a tweet button in next post? Please do. One should help loyal readers / learners to become loyal ambassador too.
The one aspect of business today that still floors me is how does the C-Suite justify or spin the numbers bubbling up to them. Do they not know the chaos and the money being left on the table to make them look really good? So a CEO needs to increase revenue 5% every year at the current economy levels how the hell do they think they are going to do this with their current business structures?
One unit is stealing money from the other, another one is undercutting their budgets or hiding the spend, the other is fudging ROI based on HUGE assumptions…..do they not realize this.
I guess it is going to take a whole new breed of leaders that understand this to really start serving customers, investors and employees….
I can see how this could be happening. You have marketers using social networks as a fair game playing field. Others using social networks as place to explote to post the latest junk about the lives of themselfs, friends and family. Others that just hang out and play the latest crazy game like digital pull my fingure and pass the stink on to your friends.
It seems that if you are looking for something real online, like doing research it could take hours of looking at lines of search engine code to find the truth on the subject your looking to find an fix.
but the internet keeps growing. We build faster computers to do the same thing day after day. Seems to me the days of the main frames we got a lot more of our tasks completed, but then again we had less computing power in bigger packages.
Thanks the article How Marketing is choking
the life out of social
communications and social
media – Part 1 in this blog. thanks I from Indonesian
Nice..Thankyou very much..
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