13 Sep 2010

Traditional marketing VS Social Media

I am currently doing a graduation project that includes research on the application of social media within small startups and/or large established firms. I want to establish that I am by no means an expert on the matter, but merely an individual looking for answers.

The reason for this post is to hopefully start a conversation and perhaps gain some new contacts in the process.

First, we need to define the terms. By ‘traditional marketing’ I refer to a one-way street in terms of communication towards clients. E.g.: TV commercials, radio announcements, billboards, website advertisements etc. You get the picture.

Research via eye tracking and heat maps have already proven that people have become experts at avoiding advertisements. The majority of us are able to “feel” advertisements in our peripheral vision. http://www.scribd.com/doc/20321480/Tobii-Whitepaper-Studying-Web-Pages-Using-Eye-Tracking Page 10 contains the reference to the previous statement.

I am taking billboards as an example here, though this is intended to be applicable for most other forms of one-way marketing.

So, how effective are billboards? Do they exist just to reinforce the advertisement on various other forms of media? Or are they not targeted at anything you are looking out for? Or is it just a subconscious marker that reminds us at a later point? E.g. seeing a particular TV manufacturing brand will cause you to prioritise that brand when you are out looking for a new TV. Or will it simply entice you to look for a new TV, completely disregarding the brand in the process?

How are you affected by advertisements? Are traditional marketing tools slowly fading away as their effectiveness slumps into decline, whilst social media technologies take over? Any input is greatly appreciated!

Social Media

As far as social media goes, the biggest argument I can think of in favor of it is the wealth of successful stories that always focus on the one-on-one conversations it creates with customers. Social media can help to validate user input, letting users know that their suggestions are actively being used. This allows a product/service to grow through customer input.

Besides that, customers can often find the information they actually want via  a simple Internet search. Any contact that is established from that point forward either comes from them approaching the company via social media or they announce something to their own followers and friends, which the company in question then responds to.

The difficulty about this appears to be the time it takes to build a respectable network, i.e. finding the right people to converse with. For example, a start up web development company wants to build a name via social media: where do they start?

Do they simply register on every social media platform and get a feel for every community, or do they perform extensive research beforehand to find the right niche to delve into?

I won’t be listing any tips for startups here, as they are plentiful on the web already. I will however link to a few interesting posts that I have found so far:

Thanks to my friends @JamesBurgess ( http://www.purewaterstudios.co.uk/ ) and @polichism for their input on this article.