Today I read a truly excellent blog post by Wayne Kurtzman at Media Bullseye entitled “B2B Marketing Trends Away from Leads.” His assessment of social media’s role in small business and B2B sales and marketing is dead-on. He also calls attention to the all-too-familiar, knee-jerk strategies that so many companies execute before their teams have a chance to educate themselves on best practices and case studies, thereby setting their efforts up for failure in these new mediums.
My favorite part of his post:
“This becomes, in my judgment, the slippery slope that we saw when the Internet was new. Some of the best-known companies took their print ads and literally moved them onto the web. PLOP. Just stick it on that page. When that didn’t work, some fired their web teams because it became clear that you could not sell on the web. Enter Amazon to prove they were wrong. Not just a little wrong, but really, really wrong.
I see companies making the same mistake, especially with content, usability, and metrics. Some are cramming their sales in social media channels but are missing the larger point. Customers want to have a conversation with the company, or perhaps just a question answered. The new world demands accessibility and not just pasting your big Photoshop ad on a small cell phone screen. Sure, branding and maintaining a recognizable look and feel are important, but you need to remember how the media is being used, how people are interacting with the content and what they expect as an outcome.”
Essentially: Old tricks. New dog. I had a front-row seat to this in my last corporate job. Without naming names, I will say the entire organization was rife with persistent, infectious and highly dangerous “me too” disease.
“Everybody’s doing it, so should we.”
Me: “Yes, but what is the goal of our social media program?”
“Goal? What do you mean?”
Me: Sell product? Increase email subscribers? Improve customer service?
“We can’t service our customers in social media. The call center people would be really upset.”
Me: Wow. Do you know anything about social media?
“I know everybody’s doing it. So should we.”
Please, please, don’t be this company. Without goals and a thoughtful strategy, you will fail in social media. I promise. You may not fail right away. You could build thousands of followers and fans. But trust me, when corporate accounting comes looking for their ROI, you will fail to produce it. Because you failed to identify how you will measure it. Because you failed to set goals. And you didn’t really understand social media to begin with.
