Social Media & ROI

I attended the Chicago Social Media Club gathering in Chicago last night with my buddy and mentor Al Lautenslager.  Al is a best-selling author (Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days w/Jay Conrad Levinson) and PR and direct mail expert.  He was influenced by a couple of books; Marketing to Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business by Larry Weber and The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott.  He and I have just launched the Marketing Community Inner Circle, a marketing resource subscription site.

The guest speaker was Jason Falls, the director of social media for Doe-Anderson, a brand-building agency in Louisville, Ky.

Jason works some impressive accounts, including Marker's Mark.  Here are my takeaways from his presentation on the future of social media.

1) Business is beginning to embrace the value of social media marketing and government will soon adopt it. He says "not' because of Barack Obama's comfort with Web 2.0, but because politicians will value the communication with constituents and the efficient collection of data.

Al & I are guerrilla marketers.  Guerrilla marketing is all about no-cost and low-cost marketing mixed with a little innovation and perspiration.  Social media fits very nicely into guerrilla marketing, whether it's blogging, Facebook, Twitter, posting quick & cheap videos, article marketing, forum posting - the techniques in your quiver are nearly endless!

Social media can be done for little or no money and create conversations that lead to sales and that can improve your site's ROI!

2) Mobile will replace laptops and other computers in the next 5-10 years.  The Smartphone will get better at rendering web pages and new applications will make it a better experience.  He predicts that public ports will become very popular for both charging phones and connecting to the Internet.

So, what are you doing about it?  You don't need to rush out and re-design your site, but you should be learning more about presenting your site on a mobile platform.  This will be especially important to lower demographic visitors initially.

3) Journalism will rebound with more ethics and unbiased content.  He says bloggers WILL NOT be journalism leaders.  Ethical, unbiased members of media companies will lead.

Al thinks many bloggers don't have much to say, and content is king, so many bloggers will fade away - I agree.  But in the interim and beyond, what you blog can have a significant impact on prospects and returning customers.  There is a time to be authoritative and a time for fun.  Depending on your organization's goals, you may want to be opinionated or attempt to promote a particular emotion.  You may want a journalistic approach and you may not.  Your voice can also be heard on Twitter, YouTube and other content distributors.  And, IT'S AFFORDABLE!

4) Marketing will become more consumer-centric.  Lately it's been about assumptions, but the ability to have meaningful conversations with prospects and customers will change that.

People will buy from you if they know you, like you and trust you.  Social media gives you all kinds of opportunities for people to find you, resonate with you and for you to demonstrate expertise, honesty, capability, etc.

Social media might hurt you too.  You should be thinking about what to do with negative messages.  Big brands have already established "listening posts" to determine what is being said about them.  It's important to know the good and the bad.  You can act with positive and negative data.

5) Education will get better, but it may get worse before it gets better.  Today's 15-16 year-olds will teach future generations. 

Your workforce may "get-it" better when they reach the workforce, but you must begin to embrace these new techniques. Al said social media techniques just add more options to your marketing plan.  Begin deploying and testing these techniques alongside things you're currently doing.

6) There will be a Social Media backlash, but that it will survive.  The barriers will dissolve once marketers experience social media marketing, they will embrace it, especially after today's teens begin moving into the workforce and begin consuming more.

Al And I both agree that many marketers and others who control organizational strategies and budgets will fail to embrace social media marketing because they don't understand it.  Unfortunately, I don't think a lot of people understand many traditional marketing techniques either, including recent online strategies, like SEO and Pay-Per-Click.

What do you think?

-- Kurt