Many of us saw the stats at the end of last year indicating that while social
networks' traffic is up their ads are less effective (IDC 11/08) because people use them to socialize, not be lured into the purchase cycle (as opposed to search). This was a statical blip in the noise of crashing markets a few months ago, but if you buy or sell advertising it must have been a little jarring, like a loudly played wrong note in a cacophonic symphony of doom. Of course, the music is still playing and new melodies are discernable through the discord; they just don't sound the same as traditional advertising. In fact, they're more like a jam jazz session than music played to a score, forcing us all to listen harder in order to play along. In this chaotic transition, in which the customer has more control and influence in the purchase process than ever before, I submit that it is the twenty-first century marketing professional who has the greatest opportunity to step up to lead the band forward to success, redefining the discipline of marketing in the process.
One way not to step into a leadership role is to comply with IDC's recommendation in the above research to put up more multimedia and highly produced ads on social networks which turn these hotbeds of user-generated content into portal-looking things. That seems crazy to me, like dialing the progress meter backwards and playing the music marketers want to hear instead of what users are composing themselves (a trend that is already dead.dead.dead.) Instead, marketers need to look to indicators of what people do in these networks that draws them there so powerfully. We need to explore some interesting new models beyond advertising for how social media, networks and communities play a role in the purchase (and repeat purchase) cycle which provide marketing departments an exciting leadership opportunity beyond their traditional marketing communication and promotion roles. Those marketers that successfully apply their social media customer knowledge to the core challenges and strengths of their organization can offer true business leadership and in so doing, help redefine and reshape the impact of marketing as a discipline.
To understand the distinction between social marketing leadership for the future and traditional marketing (for indeed the new music is still played on the same scales even if the instruments are changing), we need to look beyond the click-through rates to examine customer behavior deeper into the decision process and across the generational spectrum. There is evidence, for example, that some social network users, millennials in particular, use social networks to talk about purchase decisions with their friends after they've acquired information via search and/or continue their research and participate in word-of-mouth conversations as they make their decisions.
Though in many ways this is word-of-mouth decision making as it's always been, it's not quite the same in the sense that it's now more trackable and offers greater opportunity for the companies themselves to participate and nurture the word-of-mouth process than ever before. For a cool example of the new word-of-mouth opportunities, check out this slideshare of HP's word-of-mouth campaign "31 Days of the Dragon" last year for blogger influencers These trends don't yet qualify as "groundswelling," but they are indicators of the role social media can play in selling, buying and customer evangelism, and they are statistical evidence that purchase decisions can be social through electronic networks as well as human ones. At the rate markets and marketing are changing, they are trends worth watching closely.
Creative companies are exploring and imagining this social process to help drive revenue beyond word-of-mouth and awareness and in these examples we begin to see a new concept of "integrated marketing", not across communications channels but across customer and product experience, before, during and after purchase.
- Nike's runner's community is an example of a creative social way to build brand identification and loyalty by tapping into runners' competitive spirit after the sale.
- Startup investing sites KaChing, Covester, Cake Financial and Personal RIA are staking their differentiation on allowing 'regular Joe' subscribers (even plumbers!) to use social networking to find or become brilliant investors and presumably follow each other through the inevitable ups, downs and downs of the wild rides in the financial markets.
- Razorfish's imaginings on how Amazon, iTunes and iPhone might use Facebook Connect in the future to enable social word-of-mouth recommendations and drive new sales.
So do you see the trend in where these social possibilities are taking us? They're pulling marketers down into the guts of the customer's experience of the sales and product usage and involving us in social and contextual marketing. This is cool, but it's also scary for many marketers because it means that effective social marketing will become about what customers do with a product, what they tell their colleagues and friends - not so much what we say about it all.
This is a deeper level of authenticity, a level below "personality" and it is uncomfortable territory for many who've lived in the world where marketing and branding equate to messaging, advertising, lead generation and little else. In the coming days, to develop and execute a marketing plan we will have to lead other departments in our organizations such as product development, customer care and operations in weaving the social marketing components so seamlessly into the product itself that the customer perceives them as part of the value of the brand experience. And we marketers are uniquely positioned to do this because we understand our customers more holistically - or we should - better than anyone else in the company. As with all siren melodies, if we don't have this in-depth understanding, others will develop it for us.
The opportunity to lead the band is here for us now, but to capitalize on it means we have to understand it well enough to explain it to our corporate leadership and peers. We need to listen to our customers differently, hear the tunes they are playing and teach our peers and executive corps how to play along. And effective advertising is still an important instrument; even for click through ads on social networks there is hope as creative developers experiment with some very interesting technologies that, once they figure out the privacy thing that Facebook Beacon tripped over, will deliver more effective social context advertising.
It's an exciting time to be in marketing, but if you're stuck in the back of hall playing your own tune regardless of what you hear around you, it's time to stop and listen.
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