Are Companies Wasting Their Money On Social Media As A Marketing tool?

Are Companies Wasting Their Money On Social Media As A Marketing tool?:

The latest research by TNS appears to pour cold water into advocates and proponents of social media as an effective tool for online marketing. The research reveals that businesses are wasting time and money trying to reach people online without realising many consumers resent big brands invading their social networks. The findings were revealed by TNS’s Digital Life study, the most comprehensive view of how more than 72,000 consumers in 60 countries behave online and why they do what they do. Here is the full report (pdf).

But a little delving into that report brings out some profound truths that brands and social media strategists must pay attention to. The fact is that when a business joins social media platforms because rivals are doing it or because it is the 21^st century way of doing business, they miss the point. Below is my strong proposition to all businesses keen on online marketing – before adopting social media as a marketing tool – Please think about the following.

1. Understand what your customer wants. What does your customer want? What solution does your product or service offer to the customers problems? Do you win your customers in terms of price or in terms of quality?
2. Ensure you have a great product / service first. A phenomenal product and a great customer experience will cause people to talk about your product any day any time. Steve Jobs said “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology.” The point is, work on your product first and design a good customer experience before rushing into technology (social media) to do the marketing. Social media will amplify whatever you have – good or bad. Only two things will compel clients to talk about your business positively. A GREAT product or a GREAT customer service. Always think about the customer before going for a new product. With a crappy product or a terrible customer service, no matter what marketing strategies you employ, it won’t work. And the danger of social media is that a bitter customer will tweet about it. This can go viral and end up being an embarrassment to any brand. Build the capacity of your staff. Train your staff to understand what you are offering. Isn’t it amazing how you sometimes find as a customer, you know more of a product than the staff who is selling it.
3. Content beats all online marketing strategies. The whole Internet is full of many analysts writing and advising on designing winning social media strategies, including my blog. Many big brands are focusing on push marketing instead of pull marketing. Nothing can beat the power of pull marketing. Pull marketing will attract clients to sites by providing relevant content that ready customers are seeking for. Push marketing uses a lot of advertising on the Internet and social sites to promote a website. Great content will attract the attention of search engines thereby receiving traffic from them. While Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising is very common online, Its Impact is less compared to content marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO campaign and content marketing have a greater response rate 70%, compared to PPC Advertising 2-3%. It is time that brands started to allocate more money on developing great content and optimizing their websites and less PPC advertising.
4. Is it SEO or Is It Social Media? You need a balance of both. What we now know is that social media has a great impact on SEO. SEO improves the chances that your content will appear in the first pages of search engines and thereby getting the attention of web users. If you have products / services on your website that don’t rank well on the respective keywords, chances are that your site is not well optimized and what you are selling will not be found by consumers.
5. Think carefully about your targeting. Who is your audience? What are their age-groups? Do they use social media? What is their level of income? Even with a great product, you must know which channel is suitable to target your audience. Fact is that if your targeting is off, then your whole marketing campaign will be missing the mark. You’ll waste a lot of cash, energy and time marketing to people who will never buy from you. Bottom-line,- take your message to the right audience.

The TNS Report concludes by stating that the online world undoubtedly presents massive opportunities for brands, however it is only through deploying precisely tailored marketing strategies that they will be able to realize this potential. Choosing the wrong channel, or simply adding to the cacophony of online noise, risks alienating potential customers and impacting business growth.

What do you think? Lets engage. I’d like to hear your comments.