Social marketing has made millions for those who adapted early, but it’s not too late to jump on board and benefit from the marketing potential social media have to offer. You may be wondering why social marketing is so powerful. Well, mostly because you’re able to reach prospects in new and creative ways on their terms, giving them a sort of home field advantage, if you will.

Buyers have fun on Facebook; they enjoy networking on LinkedIn. It’s their choice to include you, to follow your twitter posts, to like your Facebook page, to invite you to send them marketing messages. That alone provides a receptive audience no other media can offer.

So, how do you harness the marketing potential of social media. The most important factor when it comes to social marketing is your audience. If they’re not on Facebook, social marketing probably isn’t going to work for you. So assuming your target audience is on Facebook, or at least some segment of it, you should consider the following reasons for advertising to prospects through social media.

Profit
The main goal of most marketing efforts is to produce capital, and social marketing is no different. Yes, it can be fun, but the bottom line is that for businesses social marketing can be a boon.  Social marketing allows you to create interest, showcase your benefits, educate buyers, and can even close the sale. There are a variety of ways to efficiently sell on social media sites. Using Facebook apps, links on twitter, coupons as status updates, etc, you can close the deal without buyers ever even reaching your main website or picking up the phone.

No More Cold Calls
With a new client base found socially, you can take the surprise out of the message. It can also save a lot of time. Calling 10,000 people can take weeks even with a decent sized staff, while posting 5 messages on Facebook every day can take a matter of hours and be read by even larger numbers. This is not to say cold calling is obsolete; the numbers say otherwise. The real point is you can save on man-hours and reach a receptive audience by using social marketing.

Go Viral
Messages go viral on the social web every single minute. The big example used in marketing circles today is Blendtec blender, which, with a crazy-low budget, used YouTube and social buzz to boost the company bottom line incredibly with its Will It Blend? campaign. Blendtec simply showed how its blender could cut through anything, from cell phones to marbles. It went viral on the social web, turned a small budget into tens of thousands of blenders sold, and now it’s history.

How Cheap is This Approach?
That depends on what’s more valuable to you, time or money. Social marketing is very cost effective in terms of ROI. It can cost nothing to set up a Facebook business page or a twitter account. But the one thing it does take is time. It takes time and a lot of effort to build a quality following. Sure, you can attract a thousand fans with a free give-away or buy a cheap program to build your follows, but is that going to help you build a receptive following full of real prospects? For social marketing to pay off, you need to be willing to invest a great deal or time, or hire a company to manage your social profiles for you.

Engaging New Clients
Many companies use professional social marketing campaigns to find new clients on a daily basis. It’s a good investment for creating interest from all ranges of prospects. When combined with other forms of online and offline advertising, social marketing can be a valuable venue for marketing to new prospects. Create content, interest and even more buyers with social marketing.

The new rules of web marketing clearly put traditional marketing into the museum. Well, maybe not the museum, but the new rules of web marketing squeeze your dollar, increase niche product revenue, and introduce your product to more buyers than ever before.

Why is that? For many companies and industries, traditional advertising methods can waste money, while smaller amounts can have a more critical impact on a person-to-person level. With brands now using creative web marketing to up awareness about products, traditional advertising may seem like a dinosaur. Instead of wasting your money on one single shot, you can spread your marketing across more than magazines and TV: you can use banner ads, blogging, social marketing, affiliate marketing, and more.

Prior to web marketing, all businesses had was expensive advertising aimed at large segments who don’t care about the product and third party responses from the media. Now, you can direct web readers to literally hundreds if not thousands of your ads over the course of a year. The old axiom, a buyer needs to see your pitch several times, is only more proof on why web marketing should be used. If you just present your product once, your chances of selling are low. If you have several opportunities, the buyer at the least will notice your brand and at the most, decide to buy.

Web marketing does many things, but clearly being able to reach your specific target at just the right moment is key.

They may see your blog, your blog comments, your banner ads, your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Myspace pages. They may find articles published on your company website while searching for new products. This array of exposure is much better than traditional print and TV marketing.

What was the old way of traditional marketing like?

• Marketing was confined to advertising and branding
• Advertising had to pander to the masses instead of niche groups
• Advertising was focused on selling products
• Advertising and PR had no relationship

The new web marketing has clear advantages, namely in who you’re reaching out to, how you reach out to them, and when you reach out.

New web marketing creates brands, but more so, it focuses on niche groups. Here are a few of the movements in web marketing.

Facebook Marketing
Facebook has taken the world by storm, with user-friendly applications designed initially for conversation, but which soon became business portals for niche groups. You might not be interested in this group focused on cooking, but the other group on farming sounds interesting.

Twitter Marketing
Twitter is a second to Facebook, but with the potential to reach new niche audiences in one clear manner cannot be undervalued. While Twitter is small, it’s fast becoming a web marketing kingpin.

Blog Marketing
Blogs are more than a public relations portal. They build brands, get unique readers, and create interest via search engines to other unique niche buyers. Just like you’d hire someone to ghost write an article for you in a B2B magazine to get buzz for your name and business, you can do that and more with a updated and optimized blog. The usability of blogs make it simple for anyone to start one up, hosted or not.

We’re not saying in with the new and out with the old completely. Traditional advertising still has its place and will continue to offer valuable venues for distributing your marketing message. However, advertisers need to keep up with their target audience, and for most companies that requires going online.

Part 2:  Why is Social Media Marketing critical to business success?
All the buzz about social media would be a “so what” if it weren’t for the incredible reach of social media. According to WebProNews March 18, 2008, social media has a mass communication reach similar to television. 

Let’s look at the statistics:

• The top 25 social media networks delivered over 155 million unique visitors in Feb. 2008 (70% came from MySpace, Facebook, and Classmates.com).  If add YouTube and Flckr you get another 60 million.  This leads to a grand total 215 unique viewers
• Monthly unique TV viewers in Feb. 2008 was approximately 200 million

In addition, depending on the social network, each unique visitor is looking at 1000’s of pages per month.  The analogy to TV is a relatively good one.  The social media audience is loyal, large and habit-oriented just like TV.  In fact, according to Media Post, November 25, 2008: 

• Demography of users closely mirrors the U.S. population, with over half the Internet users visiting social media sites
• Although 15-34-year-olds account for a significant portion of the visitors, social networking sites are now reaching more than half of 35- to-44-year-olds and more than a third of those ages 45-54

What does Social Media Marketing have to do with business success?

This is best answered by looking at looking at the research Cone/Opinion Research Corporation published in September 2008.  Their findings are delineated below:

• 93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media
• 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media
• 56 percent of users feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment

Couple the above findings with the power of “word of mouse” and you have the perfect storm, namely the convergence of marketing, advertising, and public relations.

This, of course, begs another question:  How can I harness the power of Social Media Marketing?  Stay tuned for Part 3 on May 5th, which addresses this question.

Part 1:  What is Social Media Marketing?

Most businesses back in the 1950’s relied heavily on “word of mouth”.  Of course, there were also several significant advertising mediums available, such as newspaper, radio, direct mail, and the new embryonic media called television.  However, “word of month” played a significant role and for some businesses was their life blood.

In today’s high-tech world, “word of mouth” still plays a significant role. 

Let’s look at some recent statistics:

• Recommendations from family and friends totally outweigh other consumer touch-points when it comes to influencing purchases (ZenithOptimedia, AdAge, April, 2008)
• 86.9% of respondents said they would trust a friend’s recommendation over a review by a critic, while 83.8% said they would trust user reviews over a critic. (Marketing Sherpa, July 2007)
• Consumers say that word of mouth is still the number one influencer in their apparel (34.3%) and electronics (44.4%) purchases (Retail Advertising and Marketing Association/BIGresearch Study, November 2008)
• According to a global Nielsen survey of 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising among 78% of the study’s respondents. (Nielsen, “Word-of-Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool”, October 2007)

Undeniably, on the Internet, “word of mouth” has become “word of mouse” and a critical element in influencing the decisions people make.  For example, comScore and the Kelsey Group reported that reviews generated by fellow consumers on Internet shopping sites had a greater influence than those generated by professionals (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007). 

What does “word of mouth” have to do with Social Media Marketing? 

Actually, it has everything to do with Social Media Marketing.  Just consider the results of JupiterResearch.  Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions. (“Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” JupiterResearch, March 2007).

What is Social Media Marketing? 

From my view point, Social Medial Marketing is a form of Internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding, marketing communication, and sales through:

• Participation in social media sites – such as Facebook, MySpace, Classmates.com, YouTube, Flickr, iBlogBusiness, iBizRadio, LinkedIn, and Digg
• Utilization of social media – such as blogs, micro-blogs (like Twitter), audio/video media & podcasts, and public bookmarks

Now, we are ready to address the key question:  Why is Social Media Marketing critical to business success?  Stay tuned for Part 2, which addresses this question.