Social Media ROI
Time Magazine named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of The Year. The digital elite followed with dozens of accolades suggesting that social networking has replaced main stream business networking? Maybe that is because many a marketing guru can’t wait to spend your time and money on the next new idea, all the while ignoring what already works and ignoring how it must integrate into what is working.
New Media ‘Returns’
For my 2011 sales plan I took the time to evaluate the return that the ‘new media’ social networks promise to deliver. So I asked myself these questions:
- How much time am I frittering away with these new media tools and not spending on tried and true things that are working for me?
- Did I build stronger Client relationships with them at the expense of not improving what I am already doing?
- Did prospecting measurably improve e.g. did all this reach really generate good quality prospects and/or professional relationships?
- Did I rely too heavily on digital ‘magic’ to generate prospects as opposed to doing the hard stuff like picking up the phone?
- Did my existing clients benefit in real ways with these tools?
Just delivering information is not selling and building long term relationships.
Social networking looks tantalizing easy with equally easy returns. Besides, who doesn’t like easy. But looking at the massive ‘subscriber’, it is a numbers game played out in those industries with low value customer relations requirements like selling a CD or Pepsi drinks. So it is not for every organization. Another way to look at it is will the return deliver only low value customers.
Here’s my take: Delivering information via social networks is not the same as selling, although many who don’t sell for a living will have you believe so. It seems everyone is supposed to ignore the highly effective network tools e.g. email, personal calls and face-to-face meetings by declaring everyone get with the new ‘reach and connect’ media venues or die.
While I’m the first to admit that while these have garnered some traction for my company in very specific applications, there’s nothing universal about them. Especially when compared to the universality of email or the telephone for exemplary two way communication.
High value relationships are vital to my business.
The ever changing mosaic of social networking and ensuing chaos is not yet a place for organizations that require high value contact and deep relationships with their customers. So I question the ‘value’ of a twitter post, especially when big posters are paid by Twitter to post. High value anything is difficult, time consuming and expensive to do. Improperly done, these easy networks appear to magnify all the wrong things about relationships: spam, impersonal experiences, and low value, and ultra short term engagements, some lasting under just so many letters.
Frankly, I found that few clients have ever visited my network pages and have little inclination to do so. It just doesn’t seem all that imperative or important to them. That leaves getting spammed, open-prospecting and self-aggrandizement to stroke my ego in digital networks.
Is Social Media just a product looking for an application?
If you’re still confused by the social and business media digital age, you are not alone. Perhaps social networks may just be a phenomenon where product was looking for a market application. In my situation, it was damn hard to quantify success. I don’t feel so bad because media giants have failed miserably and lost billions on it. Does Time Warner’s AOL acquisition fiasco ring a bell? Compared to their traditional media empire, that included Time Magazine, that worked and how AOL destroyed it.
MosaicCRM Experts Tips – Social Media is radically different.
If relationship marketing is important to your organization, managing and collecting social network data is radically different from the traditional historical based ‘interaction-transaction’ type recording.
- Adapt your CRM to recognize the instant real time data provided by network media venues
- More than ever customer centric response models are vital – re-engineer your CRM to address this closed loop marketing process
- Evaluate the type and degree of customer information needed to assist sales efforts
- Use CRM to spread the results of the customer experience within your organization
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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM
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