|
Page 3 of 4
Publicize vs. Monetize
The shift in priority from PR to sales in the use of social media reflects a philosophical battle that has been raging among professional marketers, with one camp arguing that social media should be used primarily as a public relations tool. These marketers believe social media marketing creates an aura and halo effect with benefits that are valuable but immeasurable.
The other camp sees social media's value in generating sales and is pushing for the monetization and measurement of social media. A good part of the debate centers on how or whether the impact of social media marketing can be measured.
Another aspect of the debate concerns how social marketing fits into traditional marketing methodologies. On one side are marketers who believe social marketing should be carefully planned, executed, and measured in accordance with established marketing practices. On the other side are marketers who essentially want to wing it, without worrying how its effectiveness is measured.
Today there is no standard way of measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing. As Aaron Uhrmacher, a contributor to Mashable, The Social Media Guide, explains:
"Social media measurement is one of those topics about which everyone has an opinion, but nobody agrees on the solution...If you're waiting for someone to provide that magic bean, then put away your watering can. It ain't gonna happen."
Uhrmacher falls into the social-media-for-PR camp, believing that social media "is more aligned with the goals of a PR program than it is with marketing."
Also in the PR camp is Shel Holtz, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology, who warns against being too "salesy" when you engage potential clients in a social media environment. Says Holtz:
"I see it as a place to build relationships, but it's not for direct selling. That's not what people want to receive on Facebook. People are there to socialize, and if you can offer value though conversation, you can build relationships with those customers. If you pitch them, they will ignore you, or worse."
Dan McCarthy, chairman and CEO of Network Communications Inc., also believes PR is the appropriate use of social media, and that it is the means through which businesses can attract customers and make sales. Says McCarthy:
"The Holy Grail for a marketer is positive word of mouth. If you can capture this, it is the highest means of converting prospects to sales, and at the least expense. Social media is a way to supercharge word of mouth."
Beth Harte of Harte Marketing & Communications also leans towards PR and the social value of social media, arguing that:
"Many see social media as merely a new toolset instead of the enabler that allowed
socialness to become part of business processes. Take marketers, for example. They think of social media marketing as doing marketing using social media tools, instead of thinking about it as enabling the social in marketing."
On the other side, Olivier Blanchard, on his BrandBuilder Blog, argues that the goal of social media in business is clearly about making money:
"Trust me when I say this: most business executives who don't fully understand the value
of Social Media will not invest in customer engagement, conversations, or customer communities. (Cool concepts, but not a priority unless you can turn all three into cold hard cash.) They will, however, invest in all of these things if you can link them to increases in revenue, market share and/or margins."
Blanchard sees the ultimate goal of social media as making sales:
"Okay, we know that a well executed social media strategy can yield a certain amount of customer engagement. Now what? Should we just measure engagement
by monitoring unique visitors to a microsite or blog? Should we look at the number and frequency of comments? Sure, but that is just the beginning. In order for engagement to be truly measurable in terms of effectiveness, you have to be able to tie that engagement to an impact on sales. (Yes, the almighty sale is still king in the world of business. Tie anything to sales, and you will get even the most old-fashioned CEO's attention.)"
How to measure the impact of social media is a sticky issue. Even marketers who stridently insist that social media can and should be measured hedge when describing how social media can be measured, sprinkling their discourse with disclaimers.
For example, Don Bartholomew, aka The MetricsMan, who is among the most ardent of marketers pursuing a means of measuring social media's return on investment (ROI), says:
"We are in the very early stages in our ability to measure the ROI of social media. Not enough cycles yet. Case studies are limited but growing. The need to demonstrate a financial return on social media investment, if not here already, will be here shortly. We have a lot of work to do. Let's get started."
The problem, Bartholomew explains, is that each company's social media situation is unique and requires custom approaches to measuring ROI.
"The simple fact is you cannot buy an off-the-shelf solution to calculate the ROI of your social media effort. All ROI studies are custom. This is primarily a reflection of the unique objectives each company may have for their social media efforts. Objectives are specific and contextual, and your ROI measurement efforts will need to be as well. Attempts to develop ROI Calculators where you simply plug in several numbers and hit a button to calculate your ROI are not worth the time it takes to plug in the data. They are a one-size fits none approach to ROI."
Measurement guru KD Payne's PR Measurement Blog is chock full of tips, pointers, and opinions about measuring social media. But she also admits that measuring social media is an art in its infancy. Katie believes in ruthless honesty and is currently at the center of a storm she created by criticizing advertising professionals for continuing to use ad measurement techniques that have been proven to be unreliable.
Paul Dunay, a measurement authority recommended by KD Payne, believes there are many methods already available to measure social media. Dunay says that "at this point in social media or even in the development of the web-we have plenty of ways to track and measure lead generation coming from Social Media. So much so that I have lost all patience for this discussion."
Dunay points out that "back in the early days of the web marketers found ways to measure and track lead gen with a lot less sophisticated tools then we have now." As examples Dunay draws on the tracking practices of direct mail and print advertising. Marketers, he says, can insert "a unique 800 number in their white papers or a unique hotlink or email address embedded in their white papers. These would be only accessible via the various social media outposts they use to share their story like on RSS, syndicated Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter."
|
