2. Integrating Social Media in Your Marketing Mix
Intro—A Case for Social Media Marketing in a Recession
If history has taught us anything, it’s that when the economy suffers, so do our
marketing budgets. A recent survey of marketing professionals conducted on behalf of
PRWeek and Manning Selvage & Lee by research firm Millward Brown indicates that 68
percent of marketers expect their advertising budgets to stay the same or decrease in the
coming year. However, 75 percent of those same marketers say they expect to spend
more money on digital marketing programs.1
More evidence social media marketing will thrive: Marketing services firm Epsilon in
August released a survey that revealed 59 percent of senior marketing executives expect
to decrease their traditional marketing budgets, while 63 percent plan to increase the
budget for interactive and digital marketing programs.2
Finally, Forrester Research noted earlier this year that e-mail marketing would likely
increase during a recession, while advertising dollars would flow toward trackable online
media, such as search marketing programs. More interesting still is Forrester’s assertion
that interactive social applications such as communities, social networking sites and
word-of-mouth marketing prove worthwhile because they depend not on a diminishing
ad budget, but on an abundant resource: your customers.3
Enthusiastic customers telling others about your product is a more effective medium
than any of the traditional media. They have the ability to motivate consumers in the
consideration phase of purchase, which, in times of recession, is more cost-effective
than the shotgun approach applied by most traditional forms of advertising.
Whether the United States is headed toward, or already deeply embroiled in, a recession,
one thing seems clear: interactive and digital marketing—social media marketing
strategies in particular—will play a part in how your brand survives and thrives.
This report describes how you can leverage social media such as blogs, forums, ratings
and social networking media to improve your marketing and build better customer
relationships, regardless of the economy.
Sources
(1) PRWeek and Manning Selvage & Lee Survey, July 2008
(2) Epsilon CMO Survey, August 2008
(3) Forrester Research, Strategies for Interactive Marketing In A Recession, February 2008
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3. Integrating Social Media in Your Marketing Mix
Leverage “Points of Enthusiasm”
At its heart, social media provides the opportunity for people to engage: with each
Takeaw ay Tip other, with a brand or with a topic of interest. It’s that interest that drives success in
social media marketing. Photography blogs engage people who are passionate about
3 Find what excites your photography; cycling forums engage people who love to ride their bikes. The long tail
customers and then of the Internet dictates that no matter how obscure your brand or product is, there’s a
build your community group of individuals who care deeply about it.
around that “point
of enthusiasm.” But that doesn’t mean these people are going to flock to your new discussion forum just
because you create one. When CVS Pharmacy launched a user-generated content site in
early 2008, its focus wasn’t on pharmaceuticals and the things customers see when they
walk through a store. The passion for CVS customers isn’t based on what they buy, but
rather, how what they buy allows them to care for others. Their micro site,
www.forallthewaysyoucare.com, focused on the shared experience of caring.
www.forallthewaysyoucare.com keeps the message on the homepage simple: “We
know it’s in your nature to care. Now we’d like to hear your story. Submit it here and be
an inspiration to others just like you.” As part of an ongoing contest, users can submit
stories of caring, vote on their favorite stories, and forward stories to friends. Earlier this
year, the stories were voted on by a panel of judges and prizes were awarded to 10
submissions. The contest began again in October 2008.
CVS decided to make themselves a focal point for issues they knew their customers
faced and host that dialogue as part of a bigger marketing initiative. With support from
television and print ads, www.forallthewaysyoucare.com has attracted thousands of
submissions since its inception, and thousands more view the site each month.
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4. Integrating Social Media in Your Marketing Mix
Humanize Your Brand With Blogs
If the word’s ubiquitous use among the news media hasn’t hammered it home yet,
here’s the bulletin: Your brand needs a blog. A recent report on MSNBC noted than
only about 60 Fortune 500 companies have active blogs, but those leading the way
include Dell, Southwest Airlines and Coca-Cola. With such a small percentage of
corporate blogs active today, there are enormous opportunities for companies at the
front of this groundswell.
Take for example Marriott International. In January 2007, Bill Marriott, the then
74-year-old chairman and CEO of the international hotel chain, celebrated the
50th anniversary of the business his parents built by opening his 3,000th hotel
and starting the company’s first blog.
In his inaugural post he admitted to not being very good with computers, but stated
the following: “I believe in communicating with the customer, and the Internet gives
me a whole new way of doing that on a global scale. I’d rather engage directly in
dialogue with you because that’s how we learn and grow as a company.”
Marriott blogs on topics about which he is passionate, including the hotel’s history as a
family business, current events, the travel industry and politics. That passion reminds
people that Marriott is in fact a real person—a human face behind the brand. Marriott
routinely responds to individual comments on the blog as well, whether readers offer
suggestions or complaints about service they’ve received.
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5. Integrating Social Media in Your Marketing Mix
The blog has yielded tremendous dividends, with individual posts routinely receiving
Takeaw ay Tip hundreds of comments and bookings directly from the blog totaling $4 million in
incremental revenue since its inception, according to Marriott. Mr. Marriott commented
3 Build a blog that on this himself in his own blog as well as on MSNBC.
emphasizes the
human side of Another opportunity afforded by the blog is the ability to respond immediately to events
your business. that impact the brand. Only a few hours after the bombing of a Marriott property in
Islamabad, Pakistan, Mr. Marriott was able to provide up-to-the-minute information
3 Business doesn’t about the incident on his blog. Subsequent posts offered Marriott’s personal thoughts
operate in a vacuum, on the tragedy, and the announcement of a fund established to help those affected by
and neither should the incident.
your blog. Use your
blog to respond to A blog can represent the corporate voice in its purest form, in this case the voice of one
relevant events in the man who is committed to communicating in an unfiltered way with his customers.
world around you.
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6. Integrating Social Media in Your Marketing Mix
Don’t Just Start a Conversation, Join a Conversation
Don’t just open the door and start talking. If you start blogging on a certain topic, start
Takeaw ay Tip participating on the blogs or forums of other organizations that discuss that topic. Leave
insightful comments on other sites, and refer to your own site.
3 To drive traffic to
your own site, leave The trick is to do it in a sincere way. If you leave a comment with nothing more than the
comments in other URL to your own site, it’s obvious you’re just trying to seed links to your site and you
relevant communities won’t be perceived as an authentic source of information. But if you can honestly
highlighting your engage in someone else’s forum, then be part of that conversation and invite people
expertise and back to your house.
authenticity.
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7. Integrating Social Media in Your Marketing Mix
Make Participation Easy
Often the simplest way to get people to join a conversation is to ask for their
Takeaw ay Tip participation. For example, McDonald’s Corp. fostered its nascent corporate social
network by allowing employees and owner-operators to turn registration for a
3 If you want customers company-wide conference into profiles on the network.
or employees to join
your online community, Employees were able to supply information that would make it effortless for them to
ask them, but make find each other on the network, and when asked at the conclusion of the registration
the barrier to process whether they’d like to submit a best practice from their experience to be
participation low. featured on the site, hundreds of people responded. McDonald’s not only expanded
buy-in for the network, but the company instantly added a wealth of user-generated
3 Give context to the content to the site.
content. When you
learn more about the
author, you learn more
about the content.
Grouping content by
social attributes
garnered by user
profiles gives context
to that information.
As an added bonus, since the best practices are tied to user profiles, all the content
is given immediate context. The profiles are built around information to help users
understand the context of that person at McDonald’s. Are you a restaurant
owner/operator? How long have you been with McDonald’s? What part of the country
or the world are you from? If a user gives advice on how to motivate front-line
employees, other participants can tell from that user’s profile whether the advice
comes from relevant experience.
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8. Integrating Social Media in Your Marketing Mix
Shine a Spotlight on Great User-Generated Content
When users on your site have a great conversation or talk up your brand, show off a little.
Takeaw ay Tip Since people made those comments in a public forum, you’re free to use those comments
any way you want. Use them as quotes in your direct mail or e-mail campaigns. And even
3 Great content shouldn’t though the social media part of your site might come off as a separate community, it
be wasted. Leverage should be a part of your main Web site. Feature links to great posts prominently
user-generated content throughout your Web site. If your social media platform allows it, inject community
throughout your content onto your Web pages by relevance. If a customer mentions a product in a post
marketing campaigns, on your community, that content should be visible on that product’s page.
online and off.
Consider including links to the most active discussions, the most recent posts, or new
discussion topics on your homepage to draw people a little deeper into the conversation
occurring on your site.
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9. Integrating Social Media in Your Marketing Mix
The Ladder of Participation
So you’ve got your blog, but it feels like you’re talking to a void. Two or three comments
Takeaw ay Tip pop up on each post, but otherwise, it seems like engagement is low. The reality is the
majority of people visiting your blog are just going to read. Commenting on a post
3 Don’t give up. Building requires a certain level of participation that some readers aren’t comfortable with.
an audience takes time.
That’s why it’s imperative to give your users multiple ways to participate. It might be that
3 Engaging in multiple there are users on your site who are more than willing to write a full-blown wiki entry on
social media marketing how to use your products, but that requires a high level of commitment. A slightly smaller
tactics will reach a level of commitment is posting a photo of themselves enjoying your products. Smaller still
much broader audience is the commitment to comment on some of the existing articles or blogs on your Web
than one tactic alone. site. And one of the lowest rungs on the participation ladder is clicking a vote button and
rating a particular post or product as valuable or not.
Each one of those communication opportunities requires a different level of engagement,
and each will appeal to different levels of users. But if you have only one option, such as
writing original content, you could be shortchanging a whole subset of users who are
more than willing to participate on a lesser level.
But it’s important not to give up when it seems like participation is low. Write content you
believe is relevant to people, and you’ll continue to get picked up by search engines when
surfers look for that content. But don’t panic if you don’t see lots of comments. People
will still be reading, and reading is the first rung on the participation ladder. Most social
media tools will report statistics on how often your blog is read. So take comfort that
people are reading it, even if they aren’t responding vocally at first.
Everyone comes in at his or her own natural participation level, and ideally you’re able to
move them up the participation ladder by engaging them in the way they’re comfortable.
Multiple mechanisms for user contribution will help different people become active in
your community.
Conclusion
Marketing in an economic downturn requires creative thinking and while experimental
media often can get cut during tough times, social media can drive traffic to your brand’s
Web site through the power of your customers’ enthusiasm. Find ways to leverage that
enthusiasm, and your customers will spread the good word about your brand when your
ad budget isn’t going to get the job done.
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