Traditional media is not gone, but it is no longer efficient on its own. When magazines require companies to commit to an ad six months in advance, from the time you design your ad to when it’s finally out there for the public to see, you run the risk of sending the wrong message because the environment around your industry has changed. This can be because of economic factors, competitors’ offerings or any other change in your customers’ purchase and decision making behaviour.
Social media has obviously revolutionised the way companies interact and engage the customer, in that it offers a chance to engage in conversation with the customer in real time.
Running a social media campaign is a lot like running a political campaign. It needs to be monitored on a day by day or week by week basis, while constantly changing the message, adapting to the changes happening in the world of the customer, talking to the them while they’re making the purchase decision and watching what the competition is doing and engage in a coordinated effort to differentiate the offering.
At a recent conference I have attended, James Whatley of 1000heads said it’s important to put a real human message behind your social media efforts (or any marketing efforts for that matter). Make your message relevant to the customer and don’t end your story like the average love story film: boy meets girl / girl meets boy, they go through a series of unfortunate events that keep them apart, they come to their senses at the end of it and kiss to suggest that they’re finally together. The END!
Is it really? Seems to me this is only the beginning!
So when you do meet / engage / get a confidence vote from your customer just let them know that all the efforts you both went through to get to this point are just the beginning of the journey.
How does your story unfold?
Great to see that you are now blogging and glad that you enjoyed James at the conference! From readin the post it looks like you have a good grasp of things already anyway! Keep it up
Thanks Niall! I’m a newbie still, but getting there!
The conference was great! Thanks for organising it! Learned quite a few things there, my brain’s still processing all the information and didn’t get around to play with all the tools mentioned in the presentations. Guess this proves your point from today’s post: there is a lot out there to get distracted by and miss out on actually getting done the work that pays the bills.