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:
- http://blogs.mccombs.utexas.edu/mccombs-today/2010/03/is-social-media-good-for-business/
- http://bip.softwarejewel.com/get-things-done/does-traditional-marketing-still-work-4144/
- http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/190846
- http://outspokenmedia.com/reputation-management/social-media-is-not-customer-service/
Thanks to my friends @JamesBurgess ( http://www.purewaterstudios.co.uk/ ) and @polichism for their input on this article.
Comments 4 Comments
Personally, I doubt if commercials (on websites, radio and tv), billboards etc. really work. If I look at one of those forms of marketing, I don't have the feeling I should really buy that product of that brand. If there is a sort of emotion the commercials give me, it is annoyance.
I think letting people contact you (one way or another, think further than email and phones) and giving them the service and personal approach they long for, is a better idea. Sure, they need to know your name somehow, but if they do and if they like the way you do whatever it is that you do, they will probably spread the word in a nicer way than the 'old' way of marketing.
CBS is already expecting an overall decline in revenue as far as the advertisement agencies go. Perhaps we'll see a form of social media replacing these static forms of advertisements on the street at some point in the near future.
Take adverts on the web at large, to most they're an annoyance but to an increasing minority who use 3rd party addons like adblock they're removed from web browsing entirely. The question then becomes what effect does this have on brand awareness? I would argue very little. In an age where we can find out how to do just about anything from designing paper sculptures to the construction of a hydrogen bomb triggering mechanism in just a few clicks, more often than not and as you in fact noted, if people want information they can easily find it.
How people interact with marketing has fundamentally changed in the last decade, no longer are companies able to just rely on gimmicks and sharp presentation - with the ability to more readily and comprehensively research goods and services consumers are more aware than ever of the reality of how they measure up against the competition.
Social engineering, a strong presence in social media and increased engagement with blogging and reviewing sites would seem to be a natural progression of modern marketing strategy in current times.This has indeed been fantastically successful for many companies but it is not without its pitfalls. Astroturfing - deliberately padding or skewing the community reviewing process to fuel your own ends goes down like a lead balloon! Despite this a number of companies continue to fall into this trap and fail to realise that all this does is serve to damage their reputation. Building a brand is increasingly something that has to start long before the marketing dept. Issues cannot be made to go away as might have been possible with savvy PR in the past. What gets you noticed, gets you a greater market share these days is simple - spend your money proving you are better than the competition rather than simply talking big and they will come. Examples abound - Apple sell less capable phones on polished UIs and user experience, component manufactures like ASUS make their names from being more reliable than the rest, banks for actually offering a decent rate of interest and so on. The same applies to marketing - the clever, inventive honest to God original ideas are the ones that stick. The Honda rube goldberg machine - clever, inventive; comparethemarket.com - cute meerkat granted but the entertaining character is what kept people talking. Even simply taking advantage of memes, being aware of what amuses people and running with it can work wonders - Old spice guy is case in point. Old spice is for old men, but play your cards right and myriads with forego the better judgement and give it a go regardless.
Bottom line - Do it well or don't bother. Be inventive, original and engage with your target users in a way that plays to their interests rather than just using which ever traditional media your company may have used in the past. And if you do anything - don't lie, BS, fudge the numbers or sugar coat stuff, you will be found out and it will do more harm than good.
/rant
Doing it well is what is crushing most campaigns as the definition of doing well is hard to measure when you're traversing into new territories as far as technology goes.
I think it could also relate to companies being afraid of losing control of their brand. Whilst with social media, they have no control by default without realizing this particular fact.
So it is possible for them to believe they're doing well, when all they are doing is twittering that a new article was just posted.