Thursday, April 8, 2010

Social Media (Re)marketing

I don't know about you, but I'm so tired of the "social media marketing" hype I can hardly stomach it. So many self-proclaimed social media "experts" are talking about how great social media is for marketing without a shred of concrete evidence to back it. Enough already!

Nevertheless, our firm has also concluded that, amid the hype, there is an ounce of real meat here. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook do have some use in online marketing, albeit it peripheral and tenuous. So, rather than talk about social media "marketing", here I'd like to talk about social media REmarketing.

*What Do You Mean, Social Media Remarketing?

A little background. Our firm has concluded that, in general, social media works better as a client relations and customer service tool than as a marketing tool. If you just pump your Twitter/FB feeds with advertising and self" promoting, you won't get very far. If you publish useful, interesting info, you're doing better, but still are a ways off from strategic marketing. But the biggest positive impact of social media for us has been as a client relations/customer service tool.

We define marketing in two main ways

1. Putting products/services in front of the people who will buy

2. Related to no 1, generating leads of potential buyers

Now, given these definitions, how well do social media sites accomplish these? Well, in our experience, not so well. Aside from the occasional, unpredictable, random customer you get from social media "marketing", social media doesn't top the charts when compared with some other online methods to generate consumers It certainly doesn't perform as well as PPC or organic SEO. Not even close.

*Social Media and Client Relations

However, social media works very well for operational functions such as client relations, business updates and customer service. This, we think, is were you should focus your efforts in using social media. That said, if we can somehow tie these ancillary functions into marketing, then we may be able to ascertain what is social media's most suitable role in marketing.

*Social Media (Re)marketing

That's where the concept of "remarketing" comes in. One instance of social media remarketing is locating your current customers on Twitter or Facebook. We've done this and found that this works better. Current customers already know and trust your brand. (If they didn't they wouldn't be customers.) Therefore, they are much more likely to respond to you on Twitter or Facebook than a random or disinterested follower.

This presents you with another medium to communicate your brand, product or service. And as your immediate customers engage with your brand, others in the second degree of separation will see that engagement. This remarketing to current clients via social media can open up avenues for additional marketing.

Of course, all this remarketing has to be done strategically, and with proper netiquette and style, to be effective. It requires thinking about social media in new, creative ways. Social media marketing succes - in our opinion - is not really about a one-way advertising dump, but rather a conversation with current clients for the purposes of building those relationships.

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