OMExpo 2009: The Boom of Social Media is Here to Stay
Social media, social media, social media… and, have I mentioned social media already? OMExpo’s conferences went on and on about this phenomenon, ceaselessly underlying its importance. Of course all mighty Google was also mentioned, but social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, were at the center of the debate. New paradigms are being built around them, and users have become advisors who recommend other members within their virtual community the products and services they like. Nothing we don’t know or haven’t discussed so far. Contents are being created by the same people who read them, and communication is getting more and more interactive and bidirectional. It’s not only about spreading out a message; it’s about having your target participate in the creation of the message itself. It’s about listening hard to what your clients have to say… and doing something about it!
Apparently, if you want to sell something you must have common people, unrelated to your company, telling their audience that your products are good. What interest could the guy next door have in recommending the use of a certain product? None. If he says something is good it’s probably because he’s tried it out and thinks that it’s worth every penny. What better credentials? People take for granted that companies will always advertise their brands as the best there is, but are common people going to do the same unless they are really convinced? No way! And that, my friend, is called credibility, one of the most precious assets you could ever have. Viral marketing has never been so within reach, and at the same time, it has never been so complex. As in any promised paradise, social media have some advertising rules that restrict the access to heaven. Facebook creators, for instance, are still thinking about non-intrusive ways to monetize ads without disturbing their members.
The Fun Factor
We are all tired of boring emails, ugly banners and intrusive pup-ups. Our time and attention have become priceless and we don’t want to be interrupted unless there’s something important to learn or amusing to do. Yes, amusing: this has been called “the fun factor”. Today, when everything is about passion and creativity, fun has become a big element in business marketing strategies. Take Audi as an example. They were launching the latest model of a sports car and thought about making a video that was to be posted on their website. We all know that in the past few years multimedia has become essential for on line marketing campaigns, and that visual and audio stimulus wisely combined can capture anyone’s attention. But instead of posting a common video of the car speeding away on a beautiful highway, Audi went one step further. They captured footage and made it available to their target as unedited material. The objective was having the people who visit their website download this footage into their computers and edit the images and sounds all by themselves. The participants who dared take this challenge were competing against each other and the winning edition was to become the official video of Audi’s latest model. Clever, uh?
And what about B2B?
This has always been my concern. Most marketing conferences are focused on consumers, leaving businesses aside: what people would say, what people would be interested in, what people would buy. What about companies? Can B2B marketing profit from social media as much as B2C? The answer is SOMETIMES and only up to a certain extent. Imagine you are in the syringe manufacture industry. How could you possibly profit from social media, let alone from what we have so joyfully identified as “the fun factor”? Impossible! You ought to focus on more traditional B2B marketing strategies and keep visiting hospitals and doctor offices, handing out samples and doing whatever it is that you do to sell your needles. Of course having a neat and professional-looking website will help you create a favorable image, maybe even find medical communities who have websites on which you can post the benefits of your products. But I just cannot imagine the guy next door posting a comment on his Facebook on how great his experience was the last time he got an injection. This is of course an extreme case, but very real and very common nonetheless.
Social Media for Business to Business
Fortunately, not every industry focused on business to business faces such restrictions. Some of the companies in the B2B marketing sell products and services that can actually be related to fun, spare time and technological interaction. That is at least my case. As mentioned in some previous post, we develop multimedia software to playback movies and music, two of the most popular recreational activities among computer users nowadays. In these cases, how could social media (including Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc.) and “the fun factor” help us boost our sales?
Basically, our sales channels target hardware manufacturers (such as Dell or HP) who can embed our software into their products, offering their clients computers and devices with our solutions pre-installed in their basic pack. Big companies like these sell thousands of units a day, and having a small share of this business would certainly translate into prosperity for us. But why would a company like Toshiba or Sony decide in favor of our products instead of going for the more traditional solutions already swarming around the market? The answer to this question could have many different approaches, some of them being that our products offer quality software ruling out reverse engineering, or that we have come up with a different approach to multimedia with innovative ideas, or that we offer the most cost effective solutions available. All these arguments are valid, but what if we could include a more irrefutable line by telling them that their potential clients just love our software? What if these big companies suddenly realized that in the decision making progress of people buying a computer the fact that our software is “inside” these devices is actually taken into consideration?
There is yet another desired target for our B2B marketing strategy: Software resellers and distributions. It is obvious that the more people talk about our software and the more they want it, the better placement our products are going to have on the resellers’ and distributors’ web shops.
We need to create a virtuous circle in alliance with the final users and we will only be able to achieve it by communicating directly with them. And hence the triumphal entrance of Social Media.
But, are we really up to this titanic challenge? In my opinion we have no choice. We have to communicate with the people susceptible of using our products to find out what they like, what they think, what they need and, while doing it, make a lot of buzz so the big shots notice our presence and acknowledge our importance. This is where we contact people who blog and twit, especially well recognized experts who prescribe our solutions through social media. Also, this is the moment to encourage people to talk about us using tools such as Facebook and when we stimulate the debate and open an ongoing communication channel.
And how do we do it? We need to relate our website to the mentioned social media. Placing links to our site is a “must”. We have to be careful in keeping certain coherence between what we tell our prescribers and we offer in our web. People learning about us through our website will want to post comments on our Facebook page and follow our twits. Understanding the process from the other way around, people who follow our twits or post comments on our Facebook wall will need to visit our web page, and so forth.
SEO becomes one of the key players to achieving such an important task. Contents acquire relevance and people have to be able to find whatever they’re looking in a rapid and efficient way. Emailing campaigns are transformed into interactive experiences where the addressees are invited to interact in playful and cooperative ways. Marketing today is not only about communicating and advertising, it’s about entertaining, and that’s the key.
