The Fundamentals series continues this week with a look at how social media has impacted marketing. This will be a three-part series that looks at marketing in general, public relations and advertising. At the end, I’ll present what I see as the “Online Value Framework”.
For marketers, the fundamental power shift from organizations to individuals has also been noticeable. With individuals being able to talk back, one-directional mass marketing has lost its edge as a way to get a message across.
However, social media is not there to emphasize polarization. It is there to promote relationships. Just like any relationship, the business relationship between marketers and consumers is a game of give and take. Marketers will need to give (attention, value, quality et cetera) in order to take (money, positive brand perception et cetera).
When a marketer does not give enough, the consumer will lose interest and the marketer is unable to take from the consumer. The opposite holds true as well, a marketer who gives something relevant consistently builds a relationship where consumers have higher levels of brand perception and trust.
Marketers still need to remember that taking is also part of the relationship. Exchanges like a value proposition and a call to action for giving a product or service with real benefits and value keep the relationship real. Remember that relationship marketing is not solely about relationships, it is about marketing as well.
Social media has also made relationships branch further than the exchanges between an organization and an individual. Individuals are also building relationships of trust and value among each other. As such, organizations may not be the de facto source of trusted information for consumers. The relationships consumers forge with each other can negate the relationships that organizations have with consumers. However, they can also be amplified as positive exchanges between organizations and consumers are shared and expanded through consumer-to-consumer relationships.
As a result, social media marketing is not about marketing to people but marketing with people. Social media does not belong to anybody. Marketers and consumers both inhabit and populate the social media space. The relationships between people are built on relevance, attention and trust, and these relationships are built through an on-going series of exchanges and experiences.
Since no-one owns social media, marketers and organizations cannot own these exchanges and experiences either. However, they can facilitate them. It is up to marketers to go beyond campaigns and to establish relationship platforms that host the exchanges and experiences among consumers and between consumers and organizations.
Examples of platforms that organizations can create are:
- Experience Platforms Elevate the organization’s offering from just products or services to a platform where the brand experience can be shared. For example, a food manufacturer can start a community where consumers can share recipes and cooking tips.
- Crowdsourcing Platforms Activate and leverage the knowledge and expertise of consumers to make them the drivers and creators of ideas, content and changes. Crowdsourcing increases consumer participation and sense of involvement while it provides the organization with feedback that is market-relevant.
- eCommerce Platforms Extend the online presence and direct people traffic to a branded store environment. This decreases the odds of people from leaving the branded website to a different eCommerce environment or to an offline store.
The chosen platform(s)—whether it is a self-hosted platform or a 3rd party platform (like Facebook)—must still tie into the principles of establishing relevance, attention and trust.
The comments are yours.
Related posts:
[...] Yesterday, I talked about social media causing marketing to shift from messages to experiences. Today, I’ll take a closer look at how two very typical marketing activities—PR and advertising—have fared with the advent of the social web and how such developments underline the need to re-focus marketing activities. [...]