Are Social Media Marketers Learning?

The world of marketing is learning that old models, old mindsets and the intents of marketing are changing. As the world adopts “social stuff” marketing is taking on a new model and the intent of the buyers is changing.

EMarketer reports in an article titled :What Working For Social Media marketers: Unsurprisingly, buying ads—even targeted ones—was the least effective type of social media marketing overall.

Like those on Facebook, marketers using Twitter were also most interested in increasing traffic. Driving traffic by linking to marketing Webpages was the most common activity on the microblogging site, followed by driving sales by linking to promotional pages. But again, the most effective tactics were different.

B2C marketers had the most success with monitoring Twitter for PR problems (done by one-half of all respondents) and contacting users who posted negative comments about their brand (done by only 22.4% of total respondents). B2B companies also succeeded with brand monitoring, as well as with using Twitter invites for in-person events (the least common tactic of all).

Being vs. using social are two totally separate intents. Being social is a reflection of how well the organization serves people’s intent (internally and externally). Using social media has become a primary function of marketing departments and the intent is to pull us into a transaction.

Serving buyer intents, whether that means a sale or not, is what drives brand loyalty, market sentiment and buyers that brag about your service. Is it better to have the marketplace bragging (consider Zappos) about your intentions or complaining about them?

Marketing professionals continue to try and use social media as yet another marketing channel. In essence it is but “how” you market to your audience is more about serving them than messaging them. Buyers come ready to find value, meaningful engagement and convenience.  Marketing may get their attention but when they come to you the subsequent experience loses their attention at the click of a mouse.  Buyers have always been attracted to organizations who pay more than lip servie to customer service. Customer service begins with the initial engagement and continues on throughout the experience. If you haven’t learned that yet well either you are blind or simply ignoring the buyer.

Ask not what the audience can do for you rather what will you do for the audience.

Think about it.

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