Is social the decade’s most important marketing strategy, or the latest black hole for marketing $s?

The short answer: “Yes” and “Yes”.

Yes – social is the most important marketing change of last decade but it would be wrong to take social media out of context. It’s useful to step back and see social media is the external manifestation of a sea change called “many to many”…

With abundance, comes a new “influence” distribution paradigm that gives more influence to the “many” largely at the expense of centralized organizations of all sorts. That fundamental redistribution of power changes everything – politics, business and how each of us lives our lives.

So ya – social media is really really important.

And “Yes” social media can be a black hole for marketing because there are lots of tactical consultants who know what to say in a tweet or how to construct a Facebook page – but there are few system architects who know how to build marketing system that leverages the “many to many” marketing paradigm properly within an ROI based structure.

Unfortunately snake oil sold well in the 1900’s and its progeny called digital marketing services is doing its lineage proud.

The answer is to really push your providers to explain exactly how this or that will work as a system. If you get a typical answer of “Trust us” that’s a red flag. Social marketing is eminently measurable - demand nothing less.

Judy

No, it's not most important. And no it's not a black hole.

What if I introduced you to a small, regionally-focused business selling residential HVAC systems and services using Facebook? And profiting. All by using time-tested marketing techniques? I will on March 7 here at Focus.

No, social is not changing the face of marketing -- it's amplifying the importance of "old style" tactics.

No, there is no revolution.

No, it is not a black hole.

The proof of these statements can be found in the successes of businesses generating tangible outcomes from social media. Like leads and sales, for instance.

What is most important is this: Businesses that are making social media pay them back are applying time-tested, direct response marketing techniques that fit the interactive, social environment. They're DESIGNING social media to create outputs beyond awareness, buzz and "engagement" (whatever that is).

For instance, DESIGN of marketing processes is how AnchorBank is creating increased share-of-customer-wallet (growing customer net worth) with "content marketing" all while Chase fails http://bit.ly/fTAzfg

Design of social media is what helps Adagio Tea meet more new customers. It's Tea Timer application is used to solve customers' problems in a way that integrates with daily life. http://bit.ly/fAazYt

It's how a regionally-focused small business like Logan Services (www.logan-inc.com) can sell residential HVAC systems and services using Facebook.

Amanda Kinsella (appearing on my panel March 7 http://bit.ly/hAYzpN) is combining the lure of a free furnace system (a promotion) with time-tested, classic direct response marketing techniques. And she's boosting it with a “group buying” incentive. All on Facebook.

No, it's not all roses and lollipops. In Kinsella's case, sifting through the leads, qualifying them and delicately following-up on them requires skill, dedication and patience.

*** It requires alignment of social media with existing sales processes and/or customers' evolving buying contexts. ***

The real social media success stories are often untold. They don't involve high Friend and Follower counts nor any other quantitative, mass media metric. They involve becoming known, differentiating, driving sales and keeping more customers by diagnosing and solving customer problems.

Social media should not be managed in a vacuum, it should be integrated into your overall business and be driven by your overall business objectives. It can help augment your other efforts and stay connected with your customers in different ways. The level of funding needs to be driven by your business goals.

I think the main challenges today are:
1) If you really want to be successful, initially, you will need to make an investment in hiring people, putting the infrastructure in place and training your employees so it can be perceived as a money drain. But think long term.
2) A shift in thinking is needed. If you're in an industry that requires specialized skills, you need to have your subject matter experts (SMEs) lined up for social media engagement too. They're busy people so you will need to think of ways to encourage their participation in social media. The more SMEs you can get on board, the more you'll be able to spread the workload and the less incremental work it will be on each person. If you're a one-person show, getting your customers to become your advocates as soon as you can will help you scale.

To me the point is that social media has added new ways for us, today's marketers to connect with customers and others and we need to help our companies change the way they think about business. But, for kids that are growing up today or are entering the workforce now, it's not a big deal. That's what they know, that's how they communicate, that's how they connect with each other. And they will want to bring that into their work environment. As time goes by, connecting via social will become natural, it will be a part of people's jobs (vs. just social media managers trying to juggle it all) and budget discussions will become more inclusive rather than exclusive.

I recently wrote a blog on why social is here to stay and why it should not be ignored in case you're interested:
http://blogs.cisco.com/socialmedia/lost-in-social-media-who-are-the-mistrusti....

No and yes.

There is no question social media has tremendous potential and that a number of companies are finding great success leveraging social media: from ratings and reviews to internal collaboration (Enterprise 2.0) to companies like Threadless: social media is the core of their business model.

There is no questin that millions and millions of dollars, lots of time and opportunity cost have been wasted chansing shiny objects.

The true ROI of social media is realized when oreganizations understand it is not an end goal, but a tool that supports specific business functions.

Gerardo
www.theAdaptiveMarketer.com

I think social media is an extremely important tool. But I don't think it's a strategy. In the same way that a telephone or a business card is a tool, but not a strategy,

Social media is a communication channel and how we use it becomes the strategy. It's really difficult to measure the ROI of social media per se. But you CAN measure the ROI of specific implementation strategies such as using blogging, Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to a page where you measure conversions. You can also measure the ROI of networking using LinkedIn.

A fantastic book on the subject answers this and many other practical social media for business questions -- Social Media to the Business Customer - http://www.amazon.com/Social-Marketing-Business-Customer-ebook/dp/B004IK8PEQ/...