Marketing mix-up: Why everyone is all the sudden talking about social media?

Social Media: a Marketing Mix must?

 

Social Media seems to have become one of the inevitable elements of marketing mix. Have you noticed that in quite a lot of companies today there is a great demand for online marketing, primarily through social media marketing and SEO? What was wrong with our marketing strategy until now? Can we survive without social media?

Swept away by social media

 

Observing the communication reality online one can easily find out that there is a lot of pressure about implementing comprehensive social media marketing, SEO (sometimes interesting enough, called SEO optimization, which honestly does not make any sense!), online advertising, traffic control, etc. There are also numerous articles like this one found in Forbes stating that social media marketing is going to become the absolute must in 2014 and there ia a list of media seeing growth and decline.

As a business manager one gets completely swept off their feet by social media marketing promisses forgetting the uniqueness of their business and old and tried out maxima as “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Managers are convinced that optimizing their online policy is what is going to save their business. But is that true?

Is social media appropriate?

 

First and foremost, it is essential to understand that not every business is carved to be social. A simple example can be James Nicholls’ scientific research publication, “Everyday, Everywhere: Alcohol Marketing and Social Media—Current Trends” (Alcohol and Alcoholism Vol. 47, No. 4, pp. 486–493, 2012). The article discusses social media tactics used by alcohol brands in the UK and their consequences including creation of lasting habits. One can easily predict that many more articles like that discussing fast food companies, candy producers, soda producers, tobacco companies, possibly even companies staying behind environmentally bad products.

 

The danger of being social

Social media is social not only because it gathers consumers and gives companies the possibility to communicate directly and more effectively with target groups. It provides consumers with the power to communicate and discuss with each other and spread news. If there is just one opinion leader out there who finds out something discrediting about your company or the way you do business it is going to spread like wild fire. Because scandal sells even more that sex. Social media means transparency and exposure at levels which you have never experienced before. Many businesses are just not ready for that.

On top of that social media means that you need to provide valuable regular updates. You might want to be funny, or clever, or innovative, or whatever you want. But you need to be able to keep it up. Nobody will follow dull updates and they will not be of any value to you. When did we all get so productive and innovative and funny that we can keep it up daily for the foreseeable future? When did we deceive ourselves into believing that we are the only ones trying to follow such a strategy? Too much funny, too much innovation, too much cleverness is at the end simply too much.

Stuffing social media with corporate messages is going at the end to have the same effect as commercials on TV. Companies need to understand that they are not wanted on social media. Users of social media are people who want to come in contact with their friends, family or like-minded. This is also the reason why apps like Facebook AdBlock are appearing all the time.

Not only that every company’s arrival on Social media is going to avert consumers who in most cases see advertising on social media as too intrusive and violating their privacy, it is going to become significantly less effective in the future. Keeping in mind Facebook’s targeting methods it basically means that both you and all your competitors will have a shot at your target group. How is that better than advertising on TV?

Having a page on social media is more acceptable but as noted above it is not for all as many businesses will be accused in manipulating consumers or creating unhealthy habits or committing another sin. Using your page as an open communication channel is all alright but it is not going to be your miracle cure. Consumers are always more likely to socialize with a brand they are familiar with. For that reason new or not popular brands need to employ heavy marketing before a social strategy can be possible. Beware also of overexposing yourself. More presence will possibly make you visible in the eyes of consumers. Depending on your strategy, that can bring around more damage than good.

Looking back at the very core of social media we encounter another one of its downsides. The almost unlimited freedom of information dissemination makes it impossible for companies to control their image without manipulating posts and comments. However, even doing that will not save them from angry consumers. Regular users are gods in the social media space. The examples of stars’ death hoax are becoming ever more. If someone writes for example that their sister was poisoned by your product and everybody needs to share it to support the grief, they will. No matter if the story was true, the shadow of doubt will fall on your product and you will face losses. Are you ready to face the hoax?

Even if you have all your polices straight and you are 100 % sure that nothing can hit you unprepared you still need to be careful when voting for social media marketing. Analyzing consumer data is still pretty much in the shadows and social media users are not aware of how and how much information is gathered and used for marketing purposes. This is dangerous and might damage your image if information on shadowy data collection is connected to your company’s name. Nowadays there are pieces of data “uncovered” everyday and consumers are getting angry. Even though you were probably just a user of a service the CSR standards demand that you research and keep your supply chain clean. Thus, you are guilty.

Much more can be said about why not to go social. But this as all decisions concerning corporate communication should be made based on your strategy. If you are certain that engaging in social media marketing will be good for you, do it. It does work for many. What you really need to do prior such a decision though, is to make sure that you have double covered all scenarios and have your crisis communication policy close to you at all times. Just in case.

Last but not least, remember to not forget to employ traditional marketing and its basic principles. They still work.

 

DIDI

Online Marketing and Website optimization. Corporate Communication in practice.

Online Marketing and website optimization seem to be the future of communication. Therefore finding the answers of the following marketing questions is essential: When setting up a website how do we do it? How do we communicate with consumers? How do we make sure that our website reflects who we are? How can we be found by consumers? What about SEO?

Setting up a website as a communication tool

We are used to think that setting up a website is a programmer’s job. They know how to do it and we trust them. However, a website is not simply a bundle of code made to look good. A website is a business’ face towards millions of consumers online. As such it needs to comply with business strategy reflecting image, vision and mission. Even more importantly, it needs to represent the business in a way communicating branch, niche, products, services and all subthemes relevant to consumer searches on the web.

There is no doubt that a website needs to be set up by a programmer. To ensure high quality though a close collaboration between the programming team and the company’s marketing or communication department is necessary. Naming, tagging, titles, highlights, products, etc. need to be done in a way facilitating both the company’s best interest and consumer searches. This is done by reviewing business strategy and pointing out what you want consumers to find about you the easiest. After setting your communication goals for your website you have different options in terms of how you are going to implement your communication strategy. You can do it either through careful coding and content management or through helping search engines understand your content (if your website has already been set up and recoding/content optimization it is not an option). Ideally, you could use both strategies.

What does our website communicate?

Monitoring your website performance in terms of visitors, time spent, visitor behavior, returning visitors, keywords can help you understand the way your website functions and is used by consumers. That is done by your Webmaster using tools as Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools. Analyzing those parameters can give you an overview of how good a work you have done setting up a website. If for example you only have new visitors you might want to rethink website structure or content. It might be a sign that your consumers do not like either your website or your business. Which is the case, you might more or less determine by evaluating time users spent on your website. A quick look to your website’s top keywords will give you a good opportunity to find out whether you have made coding/content mistakes.

It is also very important to control how your website appears in searches and on which position it appears. As search engines (mostly) try to provide the most relevant and highly rated results to their users a low position in a search result might signal problems with either popularity or keywords settings and website structure. Keep in mind that the quality of the website in terms of speed is also taken into account when showing search results. Last but not least, be aware that a lot of the content which is not in plain text form might lower your website’s relevance evaluation as it is often skipped by search engines. Therefore you need to provide your key information in a text form.

Consumer searches and SEO

We are made to believe that SEO is the key to success online. However, Google warns that the SEO business has become a bit shadowy and thus not always a good idea. If you though decide that you want someone specializing in the field to optimize your website, you might need to take a look at Google’s warnings and guidelines. The truth is that in most cases you do not need a SEO specialist. What you need is to keep track of your website’s data and optimize content and structure in such a way that you make it easy for both search engines and consumers find what they need.

Still one of the best ways to make consumers aware of you is advertising and marketing yourself both online and offline. In addition to advertising you have the option of establishing links towards your website from different relevant web places. Some of those links you would need to pay for but others like the links on your Facebook or Google + pages will be free.

 

Basically, one of the most prominent rules in Business is to create something of value. Only after you are sure that your product is sellable it makes sense to start marketing it. Therefore think of your business and the process of communicating it as a process of discovery. You have discovered something which you want to share with others. Who are the others and how you get their interest should be what should guide you, not SEO concerns.

A small tip: when starting a business you often lack resources. But you already have a large public thanks to Social media. Use it. Use your friends as your marketers. Asking them to like your Facebook page or share it (once, do not abuse your friends) will instantly give you access to a larger target group than you have imagined.

Bloggers, social networkers and the new communication reality

Why propaganda and manipulation do not work?

Even though nowadays we talk about communication more in a business sense in Europe now and then it is necessary to get back to the origins. What if free communication is prohibited?

In Bulgaria now we are observing horrible antidemocratic processes where the government is disregarding the mass protests against it and is manipulating the media to confuse the masses. As much as we should be alarmed by the old communistic practices coming back to life there is hope. And in the same time a warning to everybody who decided to control the masses again.

We observe that Bulgarians use heavily the social networks to form communities, share causes and news and organize activities, using hash tags, informing and inspiring each other. In Bulgaria I have been witness to anti-governmental protests before and I have seen the need for a leader who organizes the masses. This is not the case anymore.

Even though no one can deny that leaders of opinions will always lead the public now there is a new way for the true leaders to come ahead. Before you needed to be a public figure. Today you need good hash tags.

Even though it should present the ultimate weapon against censure it has its upsides and downsides. It also allows for mass manipulation by experienced communicators. It also allows literally everybody to say their opinion and to be honest I believe that there are many opinions that should never become public. The reason is that in turbulent times the public might be more perceptive to more radical ideas which could dangerously lead to the country or the mass opinion being defined by the lowest class.

However, more importantly, politicians just like every business around the Globe should acknowledge that the time has come to listen to the public. As there is no way to stop the development of Internet communities and movements without totally abandoning the principles of democracy. The truth is that politicians have just been too slow realizing the grown power of the people. They are still living in times where they disseminated information. But today it is the time where information almost disseminates itself.

The real question which both businesses and politicians should ask themselves is:

Is it still possible to disregard the voice of the public and what will it cost us?

The answer is pretty simple: It will cost you everything. For a business it will be a slow but sure death being attacked by displeased consumers. Just check out what is happening around the world with Russian vodka. For a government it will mean loss of reputation, international sanctions and discredited image of the country. Which will surely lead to fewer tourists, fewer contracts, etc.

So the logic question would be: Is it worth it to disregard the public?

The answer is again very simple. As long as there are bloggers, opinion leaders and social networkers it will mean your failure not to listen to the public. Welcome to the new reality.

Misusing CSR

CSR as we know it and CSR of the future

 

The concept of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is not new. Some link its birth to the middle of the 20^th century and the attempt of tobacco corporations to remedy their public images and to shift the focus of attention from the harm they cause to the good they claim they do. However, the concept has been developing all through the past years and has come to mean incorporating philanthropy and responsibility towards stakeholders and community at large. A definition of it could sound as “doing business by doing more good and trying to avoid harm”.

The way CSR is been practiced also differs greatly from country to country (explicit and directly marketed in many countries and implicit and promoted by earning recognition of third parties in other countries). For this reason any generalization about the concept cannot be feasible.

However, it cannot be denied that many companies use the CSR flag as a marketing tool. Dorfman, Cheyne, Friedman, Wadud and Gottlieb give a great example of that in their article “Soda and Tobacco Industry Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns: How Do They Compare?” (www.plosmedicine.org). They be a few CSR campaigns run by soda corporations. Pepsi’s RefreshProject turns out to be the perfect example of misusing CSR.

The problem about doing that is not only ethical. What happens is that corporations use the consumers’ desire to do business with responsible companies to turn them into loyal users of their products. The biggest question here is about the consequences of such an act when we talk about companies which produce health endangering products as sweets, fast food, soda, alcohol, tobacco and medicines.

This issue is highlighted further by the ever greater use of social media in consumer relationship building. Using social media allows for constructing consumer realities and boosting consumer brand involvement by participation in causes, games, initiatives. When CSR activities as a part of marketing become viral through social networks the motive behind, thus the real goal of the campaign gets blurred into the mass excitement. In campaigns as the Pepsi Refresh Project results are expected to be more sells and not so much philanthropic projects, confirmed by a Pepsi official, cited by the authors.

Even though business of business is business and this will never change, with the appearance of greater tools for managing (not to say manipulating) consumer behavior it is necessary that companies take the responsibility accompanying such great power.

Many researchers argue that regulation agencies are too slow in following progress in technology. Thus the consumer is left at the mercy of companies employing ingenious marketing campaigns designed to shape behavior. Therefore something more is necessary. That could be the next CSR direction which would allow companies to master responsibility in close consumer contact.

That could be done for example by engaging in social marketing and reshaping businesses to reflect the needs of society. That is of course idealistic, the realistic approach would be to either focus marketing efforts on adults only, to increase the amount of health information freely available to users or to avoid creating unhealthy habits by using social media involvement of consumers.

Even though there is no active reaction by the public concerning social media and CSR efforts of companies at the moment it is certain that with mounting research on the topic public awareness will soon be raised and the issue will be faced. That is why it is a good investment to rethink your CSR strategies and social media appearance so that they reflect the values your company stays for. This is the surest way to avoid a crisis and go ahead of competition when many are going to face the anger of the public.

 

DIDI

Social and fast - no other way to do business

Social Media Marketing and Trends

Doing some research on use of Social media as a communication tool I stumbled upon an article from 2008. The article was called Enhancing Promotional Strategies Within Social Marketing Programs: Use of Web 2.0 Social Media, written by Rosemary Thackeray, Brad L. Neiger, Carl L. Hanson and James F. McKenzie. I have to admit that I was more than surprised. At first I thought that the authors somehow had misused the term social media. Or misunderstood its uses and importance. Then I realized that the key to that mystery had all the time been right next to the title: year of publication 2008.

I was reading with amazement because I realized how much and how fast our world had changed. Back in 2008 only a small percentage of all internet users were users of some kind of social media, predominated by teenagers and young adults (up to 24 year olds). Today social media is not any more a media in the classic sense of the word. It is a part of our lives; it is a part of who we are and how we communicate.

After reading a lot of literature I still think that research is having troubles catching up with the social media reality. Because it has changed our world in a way so that everything happens ever faster and with ever more consumer involvement. And let’s face it – only the time needed to write and publish an article – around 2-3 years for academic articles - will be enough to make it obsolete.

Companies on the other hand cannot allow themselves the luxury of falling behind. That is why advice as  this the authors of the mentioned article give – be cautious and research the possibilities of incorporation of new media channels in the communication strategy – is not one to be followed. As Kotler points out in his Marketing bible, it is not any more a world where the strongest survives, it is a world where the fastest survives.

Following trends seems to be a relatively good strategy, however you position yourself willingly as number 2 or number 1000. Instead you need to create your communicative environment. It is already established that corporate communications, marketing and any business activity will be done in close cooperation with consumers – or the company will not exist for long. In practice this means that you need to stop following trends only because the others are doing it. Instead, focus on your consumers, on any other stakeholders you deem important. Research THEM, cooperate with them and facilitate communication channels approved by them. That will be your guarantee for success. On top of the fact that you will establish communication that is maximally beneficial for both sides, you will gain the appreciation of your stakeholders.

An example about why you do not need to worry about upcoming digital miracles or trends is a simple request as the one a Danish fitness chain received on their Facebook page – consumers were asking whether an iPhone app was being planned.

As long as you offer a good product and good service and you manage to engage your consumers they will always turn to you to solve whatever matter there is – from a communication issue to product specifications. Is it really necessary to explain why this is very important?

That is why you need to learn the rules of the game – be perceptive and reactive. Be proactive and helpful. Engage and be engaged. And maybe the most important of rules: whatever you do, do it fast. We are not any more living in times where waiting 4 to 6 weeks for TV shop delivery is OK, is the norm. Waiting is not acceptable. And here come tools as social media giving us the new timeframe for successful communication: now, that minute. Forgetting that risks us our costumers forgetting about us.

We don’t know what will come in the future. And that is okay. The future will most certainly not come without us. Keeping up with today’s pace is all we really can do. It is only a few who are brave enough to dare the future. Some succeed big, most fail. It is up to you which path you choose but being fast is still the rule.

 

DIDI