Why Social Media?

By Anne Merkert
Posted on August 2010 in Market Strategy

A global enterprise software organization recently reached out to us for assistance in developing a social media strategy. It’s been over six years since the launch of Facebook, and yet this client expressed the same common questions and concerns that we often hear when clients are considering getting started in social media.

Our marketing department is doing so much already, why add social media to the list?
Are your customers, prospects, partners, or competitors on social media sites? If so you should join the conversation. Can your prospects find what they are looking for amidst all those other marketing activities you are doing? Social media can offer them a single portal or entry point to answer their unique questions and learn more about your product or service.

Related to number one - we don’t have time for social media.
It’s true, social media experts do not recommend getting involved unless you have at least five to ten hours per week to dedicate to the effort. For busy marketers, finding an extra two hours a day sounds impossible. Perhaps another way to think of social media is to build it into everyone’s job. After all, product managers’ primary responsibility is to understand the customer, right? There is no easier way to do that than to have a daily dialog with them on social media. Many organizations allow the entire product team to contribute to the company Twitter account. Check out Oracle CRM and Salesforce.com for a few examples. By distributing the workload, it becomes less of a burden on any one employee and we think it will actually improve everyone’s marketing skills to receive real world insight about your products on a daily basis.

If I invest resources in social media my boss is going to ask, where’s the ROI?
We marketers are always burdened with justifying our existence when all we really want to do is create cool ads, right? Kidding aside, I believe it’s going to become easier and easier to prove the ROI of social media activities. First and foremost, a strong social media presence will raise awareness of your brand and contribute to lead nurturing. Yes, those things are harder to measure. I recommend you think of social media as simply another entry point into your marketing lead funnel. Integrate it with the other campaigns, collateral and events you are already doing. Post links to your blog, white papers, webinars and demos. Studies have shown active participation on social media sites can also raise your company profile in search rankings. Compare your overall marketing funnel statistics before and after getting involved in social media, and while it may not be immediate, I’m confident you will see improvement in your ability to retain and move prospects through the funnel. Best of all, there is no incremental investment to get started in social media. Other than your product team’s time, that is.

Have you faced these questions in your organization? Let us know how you sold social media activities to your boss. And how you are measuring its success.