Yesterday, my associate, Jody Jacobs, led a roundtable discussion at the World Trade Center, Central PA .
The topic was a hot one: Integrating Social Media into your Marketing Mix.
The lively session provided attendees with excellent tactical ideas and best practices related to Linked In, blogging, twitter, and Facebook.
But I found myself scratching my head a bit as discussion swirled about using Twitter to dramatically expand one's reach (as an example).
There seemed to be a missing element in the discussion.
The customer.
Naturally, Wavelength agrees that social media tactics should play an important role in a company's marketing strategy. To one degree or another, most audiences are online doing "something" and marketers -- even those that are industrial in nature -- must use online forums to demonstrate value and build relationships that ultimately generate sales.
But where we seem to differ is in the focus on the customer.
Most marketers don't have unlimited budgets and they certainly don't have unlimited time resources. They are pressed to select the "right" tactic that delivers the "best" outcome and can be measured. For many, there is pressure to launch successful social media campaigns in addition to increasing sales and growing market share.
But where to start? Yesterday's discussion left me feeling that some consultants might select a tactic and advise the marketer on how to properly execute.
This feels like the cart before the horse to me. And goes against our agency's principle: Customer-centric marketing.
And in order to execute targeted marketing strategies that truly reach prospects where they are and deliver marketing content in a format that they desire in a time when they are most likely to receive it you have to actually understand what the customer is doing online.
What value does a marketer receive, for example, when they set up a FaceBook fan page, if their customers are not predisposed to use this forum to receive valuable product information?
Without sounding stodgy and old fashioned, I'd have to say that the take away here is the same one as always:
-- Any marketing tactic must support the overall strategy. This is true whether you're talking about a brochure, a white paper or a Twitter campaign.
-- As with any tactic, you must establish an objective and reasonable outcome before getting started
-- Without a clear understanding of what your customers and prospects want from you online, and what they are doing online, it would be difficult to deploy a social media strategy that doesn't somehow mis-use resources.
Put the customer first. What content of value do they want from me? White papers? Customer service updates? Discounts? New product information?
Where are they going -- currently, without my efforts to create a destination -- to find information about my products and services?
Which social media tactics most effectively allow me to reach my customers and prospects?
For marketers who don't have unlimited resources, marketing programs become about selecting highly targeted tactics. Understanding customer behavior and thinking about marketing from the customer's point of view is the natural place to start.
