[This is a letter I wrote and compiled recently to convey the importance of social media to my marketing & sales team. It's not complete by any means but it was meant to communicate some of the benefits and answer some of the concerns upper management had related to using social media in our marketing and sales efforts. Keep in mind - I had only a short time to capture their attention and expound (briefly) the virtues of how it can work to benefit our business.]
Further to our discussion yesterday, I realized it is my job, nay my responsibility to educate our team on the importance of social media in business today. Since it seems everyone would be too busy to attend a presentation, I kindly ask you to take a few minutes to read further.
There is a conversation already taking place on the web about our products and brands, and experts warn businesses can “ignore this conversation at your own peril”. We will NEVER have the ability to ‘control’ consumer opinion or negative feedback (nor would we want to) – whether it happens on our site or other websites – we must respond to it and that means correcting problems and issues and then communicating publicly. I would rather have a negative comment on our own site where we can respond to it – and demonstrate our responsiveness and reputation – rather than be oblivious to it elsewhere.
Kryptonite Locks provides the best example of this – all it takes is ONE incident – to have a significant impact on sales.
A brand is what your clients “say about you when you’re not in the room”. We must use social media to harness all these discussions rather than pretend we can prevent them. Ken Kaplan declared: “social media is not something to fear but to embrace“. We must enable the thousands of ‘brand evangelists’ (that is people who have enjoyed or are satisfied with our products and services) so that they may spread the word and market for our products for us!
In comparison, traditional marketing can be expensive and costly, not measurable, and short-term. For example, a TV news story is seen by thousands of people, then it is gone and all but forgotten. A blog story can be found for years by millions of people – it also provides links back to our sites bringing traffic and enhanced search engine ranking – and therefore improves product placement and exposure on the web. I agree that marketing should be a calculated mix – however we are only scratching the surface on the most cost-effective and in my opinion, now the most important part of that mix.
For those that believe this is NOT a sales tactic, think of it this way… our sales managers make phone calls, attend tradeshows, and visit our clients (travel agents and tour operators) attempting to enhance our product placement, increase inventory, and remain top of mind. Our social media strategies achieve exactly the same goals by building and maintaining relationships (a connection) except it is all done on the web on various sites, blogs, and even social networks like, … yes Facebook and Twitter. In this case the hard cost is minimal however ‘sweat equity’ (via @chrisbrogan) is required.
Why use social media in our arsenal??
- Reach - both industrial and social media technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience.
- Accessibility - the means of production for industrial media are typically owned privately or by government; social media tools are generally available to anyone at little or no cost.
- Usability — industrial media production typically requires specialized skills and training. Most social media does not, or in some cases reinvents skills, so anyone can operate the means of production.
- Recency — the time lag between communications produced by industrial media can be long (days, weeks, or even months) compared to social media (which can be capable of virtually instantaneous responses; only the participants determine any delay in response). As industrial media is currently adopting social media tools, this feature may well not be distinctive anymore in some time.
- Permanence – industrial media once created cannot be altered (once a magazine article is printed and distributed changes cannot be made to that same article) whereas social media can be altered almost instantaneously by comments or editing. A news story is seen once by a large audience and then forgotten. Material on the web can be found for many years by a growing audience.
- Trust – As we are inundated each and every day by traditional marketing and advertising, we have learned to “tune” these messages out. Consumers tend to trust each other (product reviews, testimonials, blog stories, etc) more than a message from a company trying to sell them something. This in itself, qualifies social media as a stronger choice for marketing our products.
In my opinion, Social Media and Mobile marketing must become an integral part of our marketing mix to remain competitive.
Finally, I highly recommend watching the first video (which should put this into context for you) and if you can make the time, scan the articles below. It is to your advantage to be familiar with these concepts; as part of the tourism industry , and more importantly as part of a Marketing and Sales team determined to increase sales and profitability, reduce costs and understand the marketplace and environment in which your business operates.
Just a few social media references:
13 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing is Worth your Time
7 Reasons Why Executives Hate Social media
5 Ways to Sell Social media to your Boss
Fastest Growing Demographic on Facebook: Women over 55 (coincidentally this is a target audience for us)
Leave a Reply