A guest post by Sujata Ramnarayan of SMStrat.
Recently, myriad companies have started their own web stores within Facebook. This is a nascent and tentative move for some. However, looking at what impact digital media is having on marketing strategy overall can give you better direction on how to allocate your resources among the various digital media channels and the role your website should play in your strategy.
Interest in digital media marketing and especially social media marketing has steadily increased since 2008. It has become a marketer’s nightmare to deal with the fragmentation of channels and a dilemma as to how to allocate resources among the multitude of ways customers seem to be using these different channels.
Do you use tweets as part of your marketing strategy? Who is listening to these? Do you maintain and cultivate a Facebook audience? How do you keep them engaged and reading your Facebook updates? What about YouTube, podcasts, LinkedIn groups, blogging, SlideShare, whitepapers, and email marketing? Now adding to the list is Google+. What role does the search engine play in all this? How does a marketer deal with each of these channels and still be effective and efficient?
How Social Media & Your Website Fit in Your Marketing Strategy
A similar thing is happening today with Facebook. While it might be great to have a friends’ circle of 1,000 or more, it is not humanly possible to pay attention to all the information coming your way. What we see going on with consumers adopting different channels today is an attempt by them to simplify their own decision-making and stay on top of what is happening by depending on others they know to filter the information for them. This is their way of dealing with the information deluge.
While fragmentation of channels is a dilemma for marketers, it is also an opportunity for marketers to create more awareness in a multi-tiered way through “likes,” tweets, or followers. In some ways, this fragmentation is also a result of the way consumers are trying to deal with excess information and to simplify decision-making. When customers see a “like” or tweet, it tells them that they can trust that information and gets them closer to the purchase decision. Using Facebook “likes” and tweets is thus a tool for companies to increase awareness of their products and services and yet, at the same time, win a token of trust from prospects.
Twitter is a little bit different in the sense that it provides for real-time information. While its broadcasting feature has resulted in a lot of noise, it also enables finding real-time information much easier. It is the tool customers turn to for real-time news. It is the tool marketers should use for sales, for example.
Which brings us to search. Searches are still a critical component of your digital media toolkit. Marketing strategy has always had the customer at the center. What we are now looking at is figuring out what the customer is likely to be thinking at the time of intended purchase.
The Core of It All
Central to all of your digital media strategy is your website. This is because what you are trying to do with the use of all of these tools (and they are really technological tools) is to solve the fundamental marketing problems of how to get the customer or prospect become aware and interested in your product or service, how to get them to purchase and purchase again, and how to get them to recommend your product to others.
As is evident with the disappearance of MySpace and the recent appearance of Google+ as a formidable competitor to both Twitter and Facebook, these tools will continue to change. Your website is where you have complete control. Your website is here to stay for the long term, and it is where customers can get a complete understanding of your products or services. When using these new social media tools, you have to remember what they really are and that these tools will continue to change. Fundamental marketing issues, though, stay the same.
Use them as technologies to map your problems to solutions. What these tools provide for is greater context, greater reach, and a way to generate greater trust in your product or service. This trust happens at two different levels. One level is when you see a reference or recommendation directly from a friend. There is a second level that comes from reading reviews and experiences of other customers.
What these new tools have done is to give you a way to increase awareness and sharing, and also made it trackable and measurable. These tools will continue to change and it is worthwhile to focus on keeping control of your website and building it with a focus on blogs and search engines, while continuing to use these other social media tools to generate more traffic to the website.
Sujata Ramnarayan, Ph. D. is the managing principal of SMStrat. Ramnarayan’s background includes several years in the industry as a senior analyst at Gartner where she managed the digital media research program and as an assistant professor of marketing at Humboldt State University, where she brought changes to the curriculum introducing new courses in consumer behavior and Internet marketing and as an adjunct professor of marketing at San Jose State University.
Tags: Content, Facebook, Social Media, Strategy and Tactics
Sujata,
Great post on the state – and trending – of marketing today. It’s more complex than ever and practical advice like this is a big help! We work with a lot of sales and marketing leaders who know they have to get their arms around this ’stuff’ and posts like this one will help bring some sense of prioritization. We’ll definitely be sharing this around our network!
Matt Smith, 3FORWARD
Great post, although I would argue that the website is becoming less relevant. Consumers want information to come to them, rather than having to go fish for it. Moving my corporate information (via site and/or profile) to something like Facebook puts my business where my customers are, rather than investing in trying to get them to come to me.
There was a time when a website was a destination, but that is changing. Today, a website is a platform; another language we use to talk to our customers, but the problem is that a website is 1-way. It is a broadcast message where consumers are looking more and more for a dialog, a conversation, a way to interact.
Maybe I should say it differently: My opinion is that websites the way we know them are a dying breed. They will continue to have value, but the value they provide will be much different than what we know and believe today (or yesterday).
[just my opinion]
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Sujata, Thank you for so clearly explaining this. Many of us freelancers are trying to help clients see that yes, Facebook is the new shiny, tool, but the website must be in place too…and first. I like to think of the website as the hub that everything else can extend from and link back to. It’s the foundation upon which we build our online marketing: the blogging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube…even for me as a content provider, it’s the hub for offering whitepapers and archiving newsletters too! The other channels might attract the initial attention but as you say, the website is the place where the consumer can go to dig deeper, whether your audience is B2B or B2C.
Websites are what brochures used to be, only more so. Here’s where you can find pretty much what you need to know WHEN YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IT. The social media might point you to a solution provider, but they can’t answer most of your questions. A well organized and easily navigable web site with real content (not just marketing hype), can answer those questions and take you a step closer to a decision.
I think that there is something critical that is not mentioned here, especially with respect to B2B sites: while social media can help to convey sentiment, distribute breaking news and so forth, it is not a great vehicle for succinctly conveying functionality.
If you are looking for a particular type of software, for example, you may seek out recommendations or reviews, but it’s likely that you also want to see a detailing of what specific functionality a given software offering provides.
Social media is unlikely to displace this. And even for B2C sites, I’d argue that the move to make company websites more “social” (e.g. including consumer reviews, offering sharing buttons) will ultimately drive more revenue than pur social media sites.
Hi Ellen,
I agree, social media is another layer. I just want to bring more clarity to the role of the website (which you have already invested in and have more control over) versus recreating everything on a new platform such as Facebook. Word of mouth has always been important. These social media platforms are really tools that give you the ability to enhance and track word of mouse. Thanks for your comment…
Sujata
Great points you have here. The way I see it, social networks such as Facebook or Twitter can be compared to the exterior of a building. It’s a way of enticing customers to look at your products. If they want more detailed information then they have to get in, which is where your website comes.
I donot see any thing convincing about this article ,it is like stating the same fact.The writer has not taken a macro view of digital media and value creation for business.Academic world need to really go and talk to small and medium business to get feedback from them.
My argument is 1)For users to discover web site ,business need to spend money on SEO efforts . 2)new gen of Users with mobile devices and lack of patience to read . 3)Tons of competitors fighting for the first page in Google.
Finally the winner is who has paid more money for SEO or google robots.4)No body purchases based on the web site content written by business alone ,users go to blogs or 3rd party reviews to make a decision . In this case what good is web site – A dumb catalog with content designed for google robots.
The core idea of web site is good ,but involving search engines it lost its true value.
Just try “realestate agents in sunnyvale” ,Google smartly gives 20 – 30 results.Now user has to waste time to filter in the ocean to really figure out who is the best.At the end user is confused and ending up in social media .
What this means is the commerce is delayed due to information deluge and no body is winning ,except Google.
The future is social search ,which will give concise results based on social connections .For this to happen business need to have social media presence and establish infrastructure to discover them.
Instead of paying Google pay to your social eco system who can bring a life time value.
I still think for business which is newly starting up ,social network presence is very important and not the web site.
The results are proving it any ways.
Your words ring true concerning digital medias long line of social media resources that all have a place in our busy personal and professional lives. Truly, I was just thinking about when I read once that a blog shouldn’t be all about it’s creator, and I thought, isn’t that the point? Using your own life experiences and combining that with your passion to write and share information is what should represent the core content of any blog. Using that approach surely won’t hurt, and at the least the creator feels good about what is offered to the audience.
Good article.
Although we know that so many network marketing, but want to do each one, it is very difficult.
I have a question, how to maintain a return rate of visitors. My store is http://www.shapercorset.com/
Someone help me? Thank you!
I can see where some may believe the company website is not a high priority, but both as an employee and a consumer; I still believe a company website is vital to a company’s well-being. If the website is out-dated or neglected, consumers that do visit the website may not view the company as a credible.
I do rely heavily on customer reviews before making a purchase, but I also visit the company website. I also believe the older demographics with larger disposable incomes do not rely as heavily on social media, but will take their time researching a product and company before spending.
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