Including social media as part of the marketing mix

For many b-2-b marketers, social media has at best been something of a trial, a test run, a toe in the water to take the temperature. But now some companies are thinking it maybe time to include a social media strategy as part of an integrated marketing communications programme. An integrated marketing communications programme should now strike a balance between traditional media, established Internet methods and social media.

Traditional print media has been under pressure for several years due to the widespread adoption of the Internet offering greater immediacy to news and information without the need to subscribe or register for journals and magazines. With advertising revenues declining, weaker editorial content, fewer pages and fewer publications, display advertising - the mainstay of many b-2-b marcomms plans - may no longer be the best investment. Although  traditional media offers researched and audited audience data, more of your audience may now be looking somewhere else.

In the Internet era, customers and prospects are no longer passive audiences but are actively researching comparative product specific and background information themselves. So search engine optimisation became a mantra to propel company web sites high on the list for relevant search terms. Analytics packages measure visitor statistics - where they came from, what they looked at and what, if any, action they took.  Web sites and email have been the killer applications of the Internet and matured into mainstream marketing communication tools, primarily accessed via desk top or lap top computers. But this situation too is changing - just when the web site has become the main conduit for enquiries - with more people preferring mobile devices to access content and the increasing popularity of social media platforms. 

  

Social media additionally offers the prospect for ‘conversations’ between sellers and buyers, explaining and showing products and receiving feedback. Measuring and evaluating interaction varies between the different platforms, but those with advertising options allow a target audience to be specified based on user registration data. Because social media’s origins are in personal social communications, b-2-b organisations generally don’t expect their customers to use this medium for business. But it’s worth asking them the question. Do your customers use Facebook, follow on Twitter, read blogs and watch YouTube? Because social media is used to share social trivia and questionable images it is not seen as serious media for business. But then again the same people once dismissed the importance of web sites and placed labels on them to declare their site did not contain pornography!