The Challenge

Rambles and Riff Raff about all this and that

Is Social Media the extremophile of marketing?

Published by Esteban on April 27th, 2008 | This post lacks all category except for: Marketing, Metrics, Social Media, Uncategorized, Web 2.0, Web Marketing, philosophical rant

For those who don’t have the luck of being married to a Biotech Phd (well, almost Phd) here’s the wikipedia definition on extremophiles:

An extremophile is an organism that thrives in and may even require physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to the majority of life on Earth.

Hopefully the definition helps in the hyperbole I’ll make an effort to build here.

For the past 2 years or so we’ve been hearing about the web 2.0 bubble. I have advocated this belief myself, stating that many companies are either overpriced or directly unprofitable; “doomed” for short. The most recent post from the “mayhem is near, repent” series I have read is one by Dennis Howlett, its title is worth of a Stephen King novel: “Are we headed for a nuclear winter?“.

It is true that the economy is cooling (more evidently so in the US) and that will drive costs cut, heads rolling and venture capitals to become as cold as an iceberg. Many companies will fall, particularly when credit starts to get crunched (an unavoidable step if policy makers don’t want to get us into a much nastier situation). The web 2.0 bubble will burst sooner or later.

But “Social Media” and many “services” that came to life under the two-point-oh label are here to stay. Sure enough many sites will disappear or evolve due to the harsh economic conditions, but the same way that “portals” didn’t just vanish into nothingness in 1999, web 2.0 will not become just a mere memory overnight.

A recession is to Marketing what “physically or geochemically extreme conditions” are to microorganisms: not good. When the belt starts to tighten we all know that Marketing spend is one of the first to suffer.

I won’t get as optimistic as Jeremiah and say social media will be “effective“, but rather keep a more moderate point of view. I’ll say it will “survive” I have to admit that I tend to be more conservative on expectations because I know that not every single CEO and CMO out there shares (or gets) the enthusiasm for Social Media. Jeremiah writes:

(…) Social Media, which tends to have lower costs than other forms of marketing (commodity tools) can be very cost effective for those wanting to get customers to spread and share messages. On the other hand, marketers need to be careful, because doing it wrong will result in more work, and in some situations, brand backlash.

Cost effective is good, particularly under economical uncertainty, but I think the most important features that will keep the social media marketing boat floating are adaptability, accountability and being (somewhat) measurable. (For honesty’s sake I must say the latter two are sketched on Forrester’s report).

Here are the thoughts on SMM’s advantages:

Adaptability.
Social Media Marketing is adaptable due to what I believe is its definition (for once the wikipedia definition of SMM didn’t please me, so I’ll give my own): “A direct engagement from a company to its -prospective and existing- customers through online community (social) tools”.

Note: although I do believe that things such as transparency and authenticity are premises for a successful Social Media Marketing strategy, I left the terms out of the definition because I can certainly picture scenarios where strategists would leave them out of the equation.

Engagement is constant and tools are variables. Processes are variable as well. This makes SMM a very adaptable task; it can downscale our upscale depending on available budget, tools and bandwidth.

Accountability.
One of the most beautiful things about SMM is that it puts real people’s faces to otherwise faceless companies. People relate better to other people rather than to logos or press releases. This is a double-bladed weapon, though. As Social Media Marketers our visibility goes up, but so does our accountability. If I say something or do something wrong on a public site it is my head that’s out for chopping. And that is refreshing.

I’ve witness lack of accountability for far too long in the corporate world. We, as corporations, have grown the awful habit of shielding behind teams and collectiveness when things don’t work. I have as a personal premise that if I screw up I’ll stand for my mistake (and hopefully learn something out of it).

The same happens when a campaign or social media marketing initiative backfires. There is -quite usually- a personal “touch” (for lack of a better term) on this ideas that can be backtracked like breadcrumbs to the intellectual author. So bosses always have someone to shout at, and that is always cathartic for those in decision making positions.

Measuring.
Social Media Marketing’s metrics accuracy stand someplace in between Internet and traditional advertising. It is not possible to relate sales with spend as effectively as with, say, Ad Words but it is not as nebulous as TV ads. Yet, there is a lot that can be learnt and turned into numbers, figures, pie-charts, trends and power point presentations with SMM. In the worst case scenario it can serve as a barometer for the general sentiment towards a brand.

Bonus.
There is one other very powerful reason why SMM will be around even Marketing budget will equal to a take-a-penny tray: People. Fortunately there is a growing number of customers who have grown numb to traditional marketing BS. There is still value on traditional Marketing, but the signal-to-noise ratio on consumer’s ears is tilting towards the noise side. There’s a whole new niche that won’t ever get engaged by a TV ad but will become active participants and even evangelists for a brand if the messaging is good enough. Many companies would of never turn around part of their negative image if they didn’t engage into SMM.

I’m quite certain there’s a big chunk of the pie of customers that would be lost if SMM was ditched. And that is something no companies are willing to do.

My prediction: SMM is like roaches; it will survive the nuclear winter.

This post was adapted to Spanish and posted @ Denken Über. Thanks to Mariano for the invitation.

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