This past autumn hundreds of leading marketers attended the Forrester Consumer Forum in Chicago. The theme of the conference, "the three-dimensional consumer," focused on multichannel marketing and was very timely, given the barrage of changes marketers face as they explore a new world of options. The conference buzzed with talk of social media and mobile marketing opportunities. However, while everyone recognizes the potential for mobile, it was clear that the rapid growth—and conversational dominance—of social media still commands marketers' attention. More than ever, it seems that marketers are struggling to understand just how "social" they need to be to engage customers and reach new audiences. As I left the event, three takeaways from the conference stood out.
First, it is evident that marketers are fascinated by the potential for social media and social marketing to truly make a positive impact on their business. The fact that they can literally reach nearly 400 million people on Facebook for free is inspiring. However, before diving headfirst into Facebook, many marketers need to consider that social marketing requires a different approach altogether than traditional marketing.
For instance, leveraging Facebook is a great option for a movie studio executive; movies are inherently social, and consumers want a way to easily share their love of the new Star Trek movie with a larger circle of friends. But what if you are a bank? Money is an intensely personal topic and most consumers aren't as likely to engage as deeply with a bank on a social networking destination. They might, however, ask anonymous questions of a financial advisor that spends time on that bank's corporate website and offers advice for free. Or they may engage in a forum discussion on a finance-oriented website. So while a bank might still need to have a presence on Facebook, expecting movie studio results would be unrealistic. Understanding customer needs in a social online world forces marketers to answer new questions, but learning the answers are the key to unlocking a stronger social media strategy.
My second takeaway was how challenging marketers find the task of choosing the right mix of social media technology approaches, once they determine how social their customers want them to be. Should a marketer build their own social media tools, or use an established platform that integrates content directly into the core sites? Is it a simple matter of using Facebook Connect on their site? Should they engage a firm to build a microsite? What about brand monitoring or social CRM? Once again, marketers should start tackling these questions by considering their customers—defining what social connections
they aspire to make with the brand, then developing objectives that follow. Formulating the right technology approach is a secondary, yet critical, issue. For example, using Facebook Connect or Twitter is an excellent way to expand a brand. But if marketers don't use those features in conjunction with a strong social media platform and the right monitoring capabilities, they won't be able to capture the valuable data that these technologies enable.
This brings us to measurement, the third prominent issue at the conference. While the issue has always plagued marketers, it has now become infinitely more complex with the advent of social media. To date, executives have been receptive to assessing social media with "soft metrics," such as user engagement. Now, marketers are facing increasing pressure to prove social media's bottom-line impact on the business. While investigating ROI is certainly a worthwhile task, maintaining a singular ROI focus can lead efforts astray. Instead, as Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott points out in a recent report titled "Measuring Social Media Marketing," marketers must learn to set one objective and consider several different types of metrics that should be used to measure against it. Success may not always be based on the number of people who registered on your microsite; instead it may be about, for example,– measuring the increase in positive comments in your forums.
Ultimately, social media is still an emerging tool in a marketer's arsenal. That social media enables organizations to have a more open relationship with their customers is indisputable—and that is a good thing. Over time social media efforts will, if executed properly, lead to better business results.
As marketers lay out their social media strategies for 2010, they must continually ask themselves: How social do our customers want us to be? Answering that question will make developing the rest of their social media strategy an easier and more rewarding process.
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About the Author: Gabe Dennison is product marketing manager for Demand Media