Re: Social Marketing

[joelmb]

Interesting discussion. I think however whilst it may be true that you, or I, or indeed probably the majority of the readers of this web-dev specific tech-savvy site would resist being marketed/sold to through Social Media etc, there certainly are punters out there who will. Millions of them. I personally would never read, let alone buy from a junk mail leaflet through my postbox, or an unsolicited sales email or phone call, but millions of people do, it’s all about percentages, that even just 1% will buy, and that makes it worth it. I’m not advocating these last three as worthy marketing avenues for the likes of ourselves (though they may be!), but all business sectors, sme’s to largest corporates, are increasing their usage of social media marketing for extra market reach, so if your competitors are doing it and you aren’t your naturally going to have less reach than them; how successful in roi they are, as this following article points out, is still hard to gauge.

Personally though I’d rather be involved in as many marketing avenues (appropriate to our ‘product’) available to us as possible than exclude some in case they’re just a latest, passing fad (which incidentally, in my humble opinion I’m *pretty* sure they’re not). If you’re putting your company’s services under the noses of, say, 5,000 potential customers using traditional marketing methods, but possibly, say, a million using every possible marketing method including social media, and you get a positive response from just 1%, well, to me it’s a no-brainer.

All just my opinion, and being in a similar situation as you both, have found social media marketing more and more impossible to ignore (though as you can tell I’ve never wanted to, nor believe we should ignore). A couple more articles I’d bookmarked over the past months which might be further reading of interest…

“Social Objects are the future of marketing.” http://gapingvoid.com/so/
“10 Social Media Mistakes We Bet You’re Making” http://read.bi/jJOzJD