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