Geoff Anderson back for another post for the Technology Marketing Center. This time I will explore the phenomenon of social media. You can’t be associated with marketing these days and not be inundated with social media, and how the world has changed. However, I suspect, particularly in the B2B space that it is crowding out what works, replacing it with a vehicle that is hard to measure. While I wouldn’t advocate ignoring social media (Twitter and Facebook), I would caution against spending too much time and money.
For the B2C space, and doubly true in technology, there is no doubt that the early adopters and your best advocates are highly active (and visible) in the social realm. From companies like Chrysler monitoring Twitter for grumbles and complaints, to Best Buy using it to track customer “hot spots”, it would seem that direct customer interaction is moving inexorably to the online realm. But I fear that this is going too far, too fast, as you run the risk of tailoring your message to the most vocal group online (a very small group) ignoring the “watchers”, the vast majority, and completely missing potential customers who are not using social media (older people, or those who don’t use it for product research). One often heard comment is that social media can accelerate the conversation between a company and a prospect. Really? It is already hard enough to get many companies on the phone. Unless you have a bank of people monitoring a social media feed, it is difficult to imagine it being a conversation accelerator.
But what about the Business to Business market? Here, the best leverage of social media is to work through your influencers. The concept of market influencers is not new. I have long exploited industry opinion leaders to get a multiplier effect. Often they are offered early access to technology and products (they are invariably early adopters), and extra access to internal technical resources to ensure a positive experience. With the advent and meteoric rise of Social Media, the opportunity to amplify these messages abounds. And this is a very good use of social media.
All this is a boon to marketing in the Social age. However, there is a risk of going too far, too fast. I have seen a marketing team that had extensive domain knowledge, market segment savvy, and deep marketing skills gutted to bring in a new generation of social media marketing staff. Wizards of Twitter, blogging and maintaining a Facebook presence, their lack of detailed product knowledge (indeed, disdain for product knowledge) has lead to poor lead generation (both numbers and quality). Now they are scrambling to rebuild the core product marketing skills from zero. When you see companies looking for “Directors of Social Marketing”, you see the risk of going too far.
Without doubt, leaders in Marketing need to adapt to the changing world. But they should not be discouraged, as their skills and expertise remain crucial to an organization. The key is to ensure that a social and traditional marketing team work together to cover all the vehicles.
In summary, Marketing in the Social age has changed. But the more it changes, the more it remains the same. YOu are still driving brand and product awareness. You are still tasked with generating leads. You are still tasked with defining products that delight customers. Trade publications, and the past masters of influence (industry analysts, media, trade shows) are in decline, being replaced by the new world. However, the shift runs the risk of damaging your domain knowledge, and if overdone, alienating large swaths of your potential customers.
Geoff, you bring up some very interesting ideas in your post. The world is certainly changing and marketers must adapt. This year in ITSMA’s annual survey of IT services buyers, we saw a big split between what we call “traditional” buyers and an emerging segment of “B2B Social Buyers.” The biggest distinction between these two groups of buyers is their age.
As you might expect, younger buyers value social media more than their older colleagues. But to say that this is all about creating campaigns on Facebook and Twitter would be making a big mistake. The social buyer also has different views about relationships with their business peers and dissimilar expectations of the value and role of providers in the buying process.
These differences are big enough that they constitute a bifurcation of the market for B2B services. Marketers who want their companies to remain relevant must adopt a new approach to dealing with the younger buyers. Meanwhile, marketers must also continue to satisfy the still large contingent of more traditional buyers.
The rise of two strikingly different buying audiences will have big implications for marketers’ strategies and budgets over the next few years. And as you point out, business leaders shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. We need both traditional and social media marketing. In the best case the two are integrated as part of the overall marketing strategy and programs.
In the meantime we see no danger of B2B marketers going overboard with social media. Change is slow. In ITSMA’s 2012 Marketing Budget and Trends Survey (respondents including 45 companies such as Deloitte, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Symantec, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, and so forth) we found that social media spend, on average, is only 1.8% of the total marketing budget!
Julie
Posted by: Julie chwartz | January 26, 2012 at 02:07 PM
Julie,
You make some great points. I will admit that this was a difficult post to write, as I am a user and believer in the social media options out there. However, hardly a day goes by where I don't get a solicitation from some social media expert to consult with us on our social media strategy. Some pretty outlandish claims are made that strain credulity.
The frustration that lead to this topic was a not so subtle shift in our own marketing group. Instead of rallying the long time marketing team around a sensible social media strategy, several great people were pushed out to make way for a new group of "fresh" thinkers. They are smart, and driven, but they are starting at 0 in domain and segment knowledge. and this is bad for our business. It is also devilishly difficult to quantify how effective social media marketing is.
That said, it is an interesting time, and some of the technologies are quite useful.
Posted by: Geoff Anderson | January 27, 2012 at 11:45 AM