eStrategy Development Service
The Web is changing marketing.
Traditional marketing channels, by their very nature, are highly controlled, one-way messages—created by marketing departments and directed at the consumer. Web 1.0 made it easier than ever for prospects to learn about products, services or providers. Much of the information available was published by the provider so the message and brand was highly controlled.
With Web 2.0, marketing departments no longer control the message. Power is shifting to the consumer. Individuals can influence the perception of a brand and buying decisions of their online friends through such online media as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.
Social media is profoundly different from standard channels such as print, radio, and TV. Web 2.0 channels might be better seen as marketing “engines” rather than “channels.” These engines can energize and add power to marketing messages, helping those messages to spread it in a viral fashion. “Word of mouse” marketing is amplified online where it’s easy to pass on a message to hundreds of contacts and friends around the world in a fraction of a second.
A quick look at a few statistics shows that social media is here to stay:
- 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations (like those found on Twitter and Facebook)
- Only 14% of consumers trust advertisements
- In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media
- Internet users ages 12-32 are more likely than older generations to use social networking sites and to create profiles on those sites
- The number of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network website has more than quadrupled in the past four years – from 8% in 2005 to 35% in 2009
Unlike traditional marketing, which is about velocity, social media is about acceleration. Traditional marketing metrics center around how many people received your message at any given point of time, just like you measure velocity at an instance in time. We measured “impressions” and were often able to do so with relative ease. We could count how many brochures were distributed or estimate the readership of a given publication.
In contrast, social media metrics consider the influence of a given network and how the message distribution grows over time. For example, a “tweet” that goes out to 400 followers might be re-tweeted several times, eventually reaching tens of thousands of people. A key consideration in social media marketing is how the message spreads over time versus, just like acceleration measures speed over time.
- We work with you to help integrate social media marketing in to your existing marketing plans.
- We educate your organization on the appropriate use of social media.
- We provide coaching and training so you can implement your strategy successfully.