Does your 2010 Social Media Plan include Facebook? If not, it should!
A recent study by MarketingProfs surveyed business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) marketers showed that often times the most popular marketing tactics are not always the best ones.
Many companies are missing out on some of the best features and capabilities of Facebook. They often times focus only on driving traffic to a corporate website and materials through status updates and friending customers. As with everything we do in marketing we need to be asking, WHY and measuring the ROI. Many companies are doing the same thing. Sending a status update is so 2009! What are you doing that is different and will stand above the NOISE?
According to the study, creating a Facebook application was the most effective tactic but was only done by less than 50% of respondents! Yikes!
Leveraging surveys of fans is another great way to inspire and connect with your target audiences (fans). Surveys were the 3rd most common tactic attempted. Surveys help you learn about your target markets and enable your followers to learn from others and you during the process. It’s a great way to show them you also do customer research. It’s important we “eat our own dogfood” in the world of social media marketing.
Buying ads was the least effective type of social media marketing tactic overall. I would be interested to see the detail of this as I know many companies who are blindly placing ads without a lot of research, integration with their other marketing tactics. Without standard Marketing 101 ROI is going to suffer regardless of the medium or tactic. So it could be the ROI didn't exist on the ads because they were RANDOM and NOT INTEGRATED with a strategic marketing plan.
MarketingProfs survey
As I always say…. STOP the RANDOMNESS! Take the time to build your plan and work your plan. A 2010 Marketing Plan built on the foundation of Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) is going to get you just that…. RAMMIES! Rammies = NO ROI. Pretty straight forward.
I challenge you to take the time to investigate the best tactics for your business this year. Do something different. Do more than a Facebook page. Do a custom Facebook page that is dynamic, integrate a weekly or monthly survey and publish the results in your subscriber newsletter, integrate your email subscription into your facebook page. You can even go really crazy and ad video, podcasts, games and more.
You are in marketing. Inspire your customers to inspire themselves! Dare to NOT be RANDOM! Come on, you can do it.
Leave a comment and share your “RANDOM FREE” ideas or plege your commitment to INSPIRE your customers in 2010!
