Future-Marketing, becoming Big Social Mobile Should Marketing Really
Own Social Media?
I
n the last edition of this column we talked about
layering analytics to uncover potential consumers
who could be most easily converted to customers,
more quickly, at higher value and with an increased
CLV. But once we have them identified, what should
we do with them? The typical answer is that
someone in marketing, or perhaps digital marketing,
will create personalized messages for them and…
that’s pretty much the end of it—consumers either
respond or they don’t. Of course, there will be an
endless string of increasingly less personalized
emails and advertisements and eventually coupons
until the consumer eventually sees no value and
unsubscribed. What else is a good marketer to do?
The honest answer is: perhaps nothing.
Marketing themselves really can’t do much more.
That’s why the world’s best digital operators don’t
leave social solely in the hands of marketers. In fact
marketing might not be the right group to actually
own your social media initiative. If you are a
marketer reading this, you are probably rebelling at
the very thought of giving up control over what has
given your department such power. It turns out that
just about anyone else in your organization might
do a better job at convincing consumers to become
customers than your marketing department.
Consider how these other departments and
functions might add more value before you decide:
What I call today’s “social consumers” are doing
more than just purchasing from a company; they
are building a relationship. And relationships
require long-term value to survive. Marketers
address this by mixing holiday messages and
discounts with standard sales/marketing content.
None of this gets at the heart of what consumers
really want: insider information on how your
product or service must make their life better, easier,
or just more fun.
Unfortunately marketers can’t create content that
meets this need the same way R&D, product
managers, operations, customer service or even sales
subject-matter experts can.
Experts tell you
something you could never have figured out on your
own; marketers too often tell you things you already
knew in a cool format, with great graphics or using
140 characters.
Social Consumers also form relationships for
another reason: they like what “friending” a brand
says about them (or perhaps more accurately they
like what it will make people think about them).
Do they want to be viewed as hanging only with
the cool crowd, or showing they can accept the
unpopular? Social media practitioners know this,
and respond by trying to make their brand look as
popular as possible—and therein lies the problem.
A company can’t be all things to all people and still
effectively convert consumers to customers. Tight
branding, supported by on-point marketing
collateral and a knowledgeable, communicative
sales people lets consumers know what a company
can do for them, and can’t. And that earns their
confidence and their loyalty. Senior management,
product managers, implementers, installers,
designers, even sales people, all understand better
than marketing what is at the core of why
consumer’s purchase and how they really use the
product once they do. After all, they designed the
product, they work hand-in-hand with the
consumer integrating it into their lives and they are
most likely to hear about the unhappiness. From
that standpoint, your organization is better off with
customer service owning your social initiative
(please don’t confuse this with social customer
service—there is nothing worse than creating a
social customer service department).
Strictly Marketing Magazine July/August 2016
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