Social Media Marketing: the Holy Grail or the Emperor's New Clothes?
It's one of the biggest debates in marketing at the moment - is social media the key channel to invest valuable marketing funds into? It's certainly getting plenty of press coverage, with Twitter in particular often driving news coverage of major activities despite actual user engagement and activity significantly below what you would expect for such focus. However, the opportunities for more personalized communications, targeting (especially with programmatic) and most importantly a one-to-one relationship that traditional media simply doesn't offer means that it is enjoying a surge in popularity from marketing departments.
What about the IT channel? There has been a great debate on CRN recently, kicked off with an article (http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/feature/2403165/is-email-marketing-dead) where in a post on the Official Microsoft Blog, Australian partner marketing manager Rob Evans said traditional techniques such as email are no longer fit for purpose. “We are seeing declining cut-through for many of the marketing techniques that we have used to effect over the years,” he said.
Inevitably, there has been a push back - and I would certainly argue the case that traditional methods (if email can now be placed in the category) are not dead. It's all about having a kitbag of tools, and PR, direct mail, events and online digital media all play an important role. It can depend on the campaign, the product, the target audience and even the time of the year.
At e92plus, we certainly believe that social media's time has come to play a key role though. Long term ROI is between email and PR, with reporting available to understand engagement but without the more direct action that email will often deliver.
Tying back to a previous post I made, it needs to be personal. Build it and they will come - but only if it's built for them. That's why at e92plus we have developed e92social, a social media marketing platform that enables our partners to engage with social media quickly, easily and effectively. It takes two minutes to sign up, and links social accounts so that everything is fully automated and users can enjoy the benefit of great content posted on their behalf. Alternatively, after registering they can choose to preview every post and then edit or approve as required - giving them complete control, and the ability to personalise everything but without hassle of having to write or source the content.
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