The opening question that kick-started the course of conversation at this morning’s Journal of Marketing breakfast debate was: “You have to be on Social Media to be relevant. But can you monetise your involvement, and how do you link it with traditional platforms and manage the process?” – Jeremy Maggs –

So are we over-emphasising the need for social media? Herman Degener from Habari Group believes that if your brand is not on social media, you are missing out. “Your consumers are already there – you can talk to them, but do it in a strategic manner.” But where do we start?

1. Listen:

Before you set up your social media platforms, listen and research in order to find out where the best place is to set these up. Know where your consumers are; do they spend most of their day on Facebook or do they quickly check their Twitter feed at the red traffic light? Your social media strategy should start with an understanding of where consumers are talking about your brand. This may be difficult to determine with privacy policies in place, but on certain platforms, like Twitter, it is easy to search for your brand and to read what is being said about your brand.

Remember, consumers are not on social media to interact with brands, they want to interact with their friends, and this is who they will be speaking to about your brand. These consumers use your brand on a daily basis and interact with in at various touch points, meaning that they probably know your brand better than you do. Use this information to your advantage. Use feedback form consumers to improve business processes and customer service, to create new products and to improve the aspects of your brand that they deal with every day. So in short, there is no value in listening if you are not going to use the insights you gained from listening and push it back into your business with the goal of building a stronger brand.

2. Link your Social Media to other platforms:

What most brands are promising online is not translating to what they are delivering offline. It’s important that social media tie in with the rest of your business. Because people are spending lots of time on social media, it’s important to build a bridge between social and traditional media. How you interact on line will determine what you do in your traditional and offline media. It is no longer sufficient to say “follow us”. You should tell consumers, or even better, show them why they should follow you. Use traditional media to give consumers a reason to find and follow you on social media. People have their own impressions about a brand, whether the communication is online or offline, but if a brand is honest offline, it will work better online.

3. Engage

Carla Jones, form saidWot gives simple rules when it comes to engagement:  “Being on social media depends on your business goals. If you have nothing to say, don’t go on. If you have value to add and quality content, go for it.” Angus Robinson from Native added that social media is also not only about the platform – it’s also about networking and building communities of interest. People are passionate about the brand and will therefore follow it on specific social media platforms. This provides the opportunity to engage with them on a more personal level and in return reinforce their passion for the brand. Honesty is again mentioned as an important factor – Social media should not be used to try and fix bad products or services, it should be used to improve and interact. Brands should be honest about what they offer and not try and promote a wonderful product when in fact the consumers think the opposite.

4. Get them talking

It’s one thing to be on social media, and another to manage it correctly – it is important to always communicate in a manner that generates feedback. One way to do this is to follow the example of Woolworths who draws attention by using well-shot, professional images on their social media.

Social media should be used to get consumers talking about your brand. Herman Degener confirmed this: “positive or negative. If they can’t even talk about your brand, how are they going to buy it?” The problem here is that you cannot create a viral campaign – it can only become viral if the content is interesting and engaging. Suzanne Stokes, from MWEB explains this – social media is a form of word of mouth and brands should create content that is authentic and engaging in order to generate feedback from consumers to push back into the business. This creates trusts and loyalty as it leads to consumers becoming influencers. This is important as people listen to other people, rather than to brands.

So, is there a magic formula? Not exactly, but the best way to seed a conversation can be summarised as follows:

Value + Relevance + Engagement.

“Creativity is key to making a success out of any campaign”

– Xolisa Dyeshana -

These were the words that sparked the conversation at the Journal of Marketing breakfast debate on 30 July 2011, which lead to some interesting views on how Direct Marketing should be used. Direct marketing today is no longer about a junk pamphlet in your post box, it is about finding clever and attention grabbing ways to get the message across to a very specific group of people. According to Lynn Madley, CEO at Euro RSCG and one of the panellists at the debate, the shotgun approach does work in some cases, but targeted communication works much better. She also adds that brands should speak to consumers in a way that they want to be spoken to and Social Media plays a large role in this.

Today, traditional media is used in Direct Marketing to drive the audience to other platforms, like social media. Brands are warned to not be on social media for the sake of being on social media, but rather to have a well thought out strategy to work from. Because social media gives consumers the power to voice all their opinions, it’s better to just watch and respond if really necessary if your brand does not have the ability to provide quality content on a regular basis. On the other hand it is also important to remember that in this age, due to social networks, reputations are fragile. You need to know what is going on with your brand online and few brands can get away with not having a social media presence – brands need to engage on a personal level.

From a direct marketing point of view, what can be more personal and more direct than engaging on social media platforms? It provides the brand with the opportunity to become more than a brand – to become the consumers’ ‘buddy’. This will of course be strongly regulated by the new Consumer Protection Act (CPA), which defines direct marketing as a personal approach to directly or indirectly promote goods or services.

So, engaging directly and becoming the consumers’ buddy is important as we are no longer in the business of marketing, but in the business of engagement. And this again is important as the success of any direct marketing campaign can be measured by the interaction received from the audience.

That leaves one final question: Do consumers today, in this multi-tasking era, have the attention needed to participate in prolonged campaigns?

*A note of thanks to the panellists, whose wise comments contributed to this article.

Lynn Madley (CEO: Euro RSCG), Andrew Ambrogioni (CEO: Action Ambro’s) Danie Strachan (Senior Associate: Adams & Adams) Brian Mdluli (CEO: Direct Marketing Association of South Africa) and Xolisa Dyeshana (Creative Director and Partner: Joe Public)

The Journal of Marketing; Advertising; Media; and Branding is the official publication of the Marketing Association of South Africa MA(SA) and provides cutting edge reporting on all issues pertaining to the important marketing discipline.

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Here is one sure way of marketing your small business through Twitter. The author of a blog named Understanding Marketing says that “successful marketing is all about customer engagement“, and I wholeheartedly agree.

It brings people into your story, it motivates them to buy, and of course, it’s what brings them back again. If there’s one word that you must always think of first when you’re developing a marketing program, it’s “engagement.”

I like his thinking. You have to read the full blog on this so visit Using Twitter For Local Marketing

Just a quick update received from our colleages at the conference. It seems that one of our speakers cannot make it and has been replaced by another.

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In the latest press release distributed on BizCommunity, longtail eMarketing eluded to the fact that as a result of website owners wanting faster results and quicker return on their investments, they are looking at PPC and Banner Advertising rather than SEO when they want to market their website on the Web. Let’s look at some excerpts from the article with extra commentary on these.

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So as most people in the marketing field know (or should know) the 4 traditional P’s of the marketing mix are:

1. Product
2. Price
3. Place (distribution)
4. Promotion

Now this model was designed somewhere in the 1940′s and has served the marketing industry fairly well. However with the emergence of the World Wide Web and  the infiltration of the internet into the marketing fraternity I have decided to come up with the 4 M’s of the digital marketing mix.

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