A
lot has been said about Social Media, but many organisations (profit
and non-profit) do still have incorrect ideas about it. The main
misconception is that Social Media is something organisations do.
However, it is actually something the consumer does!
It has nothing to do with Marketing but in fact is a revolution;
a cultural revolution in the true sense of the word, in which the
consumer has been empowered by the internet and social media. The
consumer is no longer accepting mass-marketing and mass-production.
It is no longer the big corporations who decide what we should buy
and what the marketing messages are. The consumer decides what to
buy based on online reviews made by their peers in Social Media
and thus it is the consumer who writes the marketing messages from
now on.
Actually
the term Social Media is often used incorrectly. Social Media,
as the word says is a media channel of communication like Facebook,
Twitter and mobile apps. What most companies do is Social Media
Marketing. As an example let's look at the Old Spice man:
Example:
The Old Spice Man
Old Spice made a television commercial featuring Mustafa Isaiah,
who asked his female audience "Ladies, does your man look
like me? No! Could he smell like me? Yes! While baking a cake
in the kitchen he built with his own hands. (If you have not seen
it yet, I suggest you look it up on YouTube)
This
television advertisement had reasonable but not very exciting
results. Then the Old Spice team decided to place the ad on YouTube
and had Mustafa create a new video for comments made by viewers,
answering a specific comment in the new video and addressing that
particular person directly. This was a great success as the personal
answer videos went viral and as a result Old Spice doubled its
sales.
The Old Spice team then dropped the whole campaign at the end
of the season and developed a new campaign for the next season,
to try and recapture the same success.
Social
Media Marketing is obsolete
This is what I call Social Media Marketing; using Social Media
as a new channel to do old fashioned marketing. However that is
not what Social Media is about and it showed clearly in the sales
figures. The Old Spice man campaign had resulted in a 100% sales
increase and about 200,000 subscriptions by customers or fans
who wanted to stay in touch with Old Spice. As soon as Old Spice
stopped the campaign and dropped their fans, the sales dropped
as well. They had created a great relationship and connection
with 200,000 customers and in fact told them they were not interested
in them?! These people went of course elsewhere and as a result
the new campaign this year is not showing any mentionable success.
Social
Business
What organisations need to understand is that Social Media is
not just a new communication channel, but a totally new way we
do business. To succeed in this new world, companies need to become
Social Businesses: the whole organisation has to become social
and when a business engages the consumer in Social Media it has
to realize that this is forever. Social Business is not a date;
it is a marriage for life!
As
I said above, the consumer will be writing the brand marketing
messages from now on and companies will have no control over this
process other than by delivering an excellent customer service
and experience. If done well, this will lead to positive reviews
and word of mouth promotion. To create this excellent customer
experience, organisations need to find out where their target
group hangs out online, start listening to their preferences,
interests and issues, and then engage with those customers to
deal with those issues and talk about and deliver what they prefer
or are interested in. Initially there can be no branding or advertising,
but just pure delivery of services. Promotion will be done by
the customer, if the customer deems the product, service or organisation
worth talking about.
Participation
The organisation can then take this one step further by involving
the customer in different aspects of business: using the customers
feedback or let them collaborate directly, to improve the product,
service and organisation to grow the business together, creating
a product or service that best suits the customer and thus building
a strong relationship that will increase retention and create
advocates.
For example threadless.com sells T-shirts that are designed by
customers, thus saving costs on a design department and pays customers
if their designs are bought by other customers.
Conclusion
Organisations in the Social World need to forget all their traditional
marketing lessons and go back to delivering a great service to
their customers, not just with their marketing department, but
with the whole organisation, thus turning into a true social business;
a business that takes care of their customers, instead of bombarding
them with advertisements they no longer want to hear. In the end
(something organisations tend to forget), the customer is the
main reason for each organisation's existence.
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