Companies have dramatically increased their spending on social media and online marketing in the last couple of years. eMarketer reports that “Outsell estimates that marketing on social networks will grow 43.3% in 2010. Forrester Research predicts that B2B firms will spend $54 million on social media marketing in 2014, up from just $11 million in 2009.”
But all that increased spending doesn’t mean that revenue has automatically followed. Having a good quality product with a simple message trumps volume and noise any day of the week. For example, poor quality control within the car industry ruined years of carefully executed and expensive advertisements, as Jack Neff points out in the article “Are Marketers Hiking Ad Spend at Expense of Product Quality?”,
“BP, whose five-year "Beyond Petroleum" campaign sought to position the brand as the greener alternative among oil companies, finds itself tarred for years as the firm behind the biggest oil spill ever. Toyota, a brand built on quality and reliability, has recalled 9 million vehicles since October.”
Especially in the case of a small business, most companies don’t have that much money to throw around, or the time to invest in sending out massive amounts of advertisement. The social din is also hard to be heard above with so many social media venues and constant back and forth among blogs, tweets, and other companies trying to make a splash. So how do you spend your marketing dollars, and more importantly your time, where they count?
1. Know your audience
It is important that companies figure out who they want to sell their product too. In the the Advertising Age blog AdageStat, Matt Carmichael agrees that demographics are important, but they often are delivered as broad and generalized reports; it is up to individual companies to sift through that data and determine which numbers matter to them. As Noelle Weaver writes in the article The Old Demographic Rules Aren't Enough Anymore, “Grouping consumers by age or demographic is no longer enough when they are grouping themselves by shared interests and beliefs.”
If you don’t know who your audience is, find out fast! Send out surveys to your current customers, or look at feedback on Amazon or other rating websites on your products or similar companies’ products, to find out who is buying or might be interested in buying from you.
In the article “Five Steps to Social Currency” in the May issue of Fast Company, Ben Paynter points out that while Dunkin’ Donuts has 80% fewer Facebook and Twitter followers than Starbucks, those fans are 35% more likely to recommend the brand. Researchers at HP also demonstrated that just being popular or widespread online does not necessarily make you influential to customers, as reported on the Technology Review blog Mim’s Bits. Who are your brand advocates? Along with knowing who your audience is, it is important to look at where your audience is at and where they are consuming content, so you can deliver your message to them.
2. Know your goals and message
What do you want your customers to understand about your product; what is the perceived value? What is the message you want to get across about your company? By knowing exactly what your main objective is, and being able to state it in a sentence or two, you can focus your resources on getting that point across to your customers.
Kira Wampler, former Group Marketing Manager of Online Engagement at accounting software manufacturer Intuit, discussed this point during the Social Media Breakfast Seattle event this week at RealNetwork’s headquarters here in Seattle. In the case of Intuit, their entire message was focused on one thing: Intuit equals small business success. “Everything we did connected back with [Intuit creator] Scott Cook’s wife sitting at the kitchen table struggling with her checkbook,” said Wampler. Wampler discussed how by selecting a single goal, they were able to keep their message clear and drive home the message in various yet effective ways.
3. Focus, focus, focus
Once you understand who your audience is, and what message you are trying to convey, it is time to hone in on that group, focusing on engaging this audience and delivering your message. As reported in ClickZ, Skintimate created a virtual world and video contest specifically aimed at teen girls – not their mothers, not their older sisters in college, but teens. Huggies created a grant competition specifically for entrepreneurial moms, as discussed on the C-Tweet blog. Intuit engaged with small business owners and accountants primarily through Twitter and Amazon, rather than spreading their energy across various social networks and vendors.
Kira Wampler also suggested starting out with a small test launch of a product and sharing it with a small audience. This is a situation where knowing who your audience is can be especially important. These die-hard fans will tell you what you’re doing right or wrong, and often you can go back and tweak your message (or product) and expand it to a larger audience. Using social channels like Facebook or Twitter to do so help reach your audience quickly and broadly, supporting the feeling of community and allowing your brand advocates to feel invested in the product, and giving them more incentive to promote your product.
Bonus tip: Follow your intuition, not the trends
Numbers and statistics don’t tell the whole story. As exemplified by Dunkin’ Donuts, just because lots of people are Facebook fans of a product does not automatically mean more sales. If you truly know your audience and the message you want to get across to them, then taking that intuitive leap is often better than following what the numbers say. In the article “Our Biggest Brands Can No Longer Be Managed By Nerds,” Tom Hinkes, principal consultant at OutBranding, writes:
“Every once in a while, even when the numbers don't quite line up, we can promise to trust our gut and intuition. Be like Luke Skywalker. At the end of the original Star Wars movie, in order to make the 'impossible shot' and destroy the Death Star, Luke shuts off his computer and chooses to trust his intuition. The nerds at headquarters are horrified. But the Death Star explodes, the audience cheers and we learn a life lesson we all promptly forget. Let's resolve to 'use the force.' Or something nerdy like that.”
To extrapolate on the Star Wars theme, think of your brand advocates as the rebel forces; find them, give them the information they need about your product, and they will help you conquer the empire of social media marketing.
