The age of social media: operation First marketing second

This article is from Socialbeta special author @ wei, Mr. Wei is a new media expert, Shanghai Jiaotong University Media and design college teachers.

Originally thought of a "social marketing will die socialized operation of eternal life," the title, but think it is too headline party, so the ball.

This article in fact I began to ponder at the end of last year, to the Spring Festival before this year, more hastily rushed out to the "Sales and Marketing" published. Then I was cold, and after a few weeks I turned it over again and made some changes, especially in the last few paragraphs.

Marketing based on social media is a hot spot nowadays. Few marketers I've met are talking about it. But I think, a lot of people to understand this thing is wrong, even can say so, social marketing these five words, itself is debatable.

Three kinds of

Mistake one: Social marketing is bound to replace traditional marketing.

Conceptually, in fact, there is no so-called traditional marketing, in order to facilitate the wording of the past on the use of many marketing methods-including advertising and public relations-to write "traditional marketing."

Traditional marketing is the pursuit of a "breadth", that is to let more people know the better. In the issue of sales, the essence is such a formula: Target sales crowd exposure x sales skills = sales results. To improve sales, you can work on any variable on both equations. The former is related to breadth and the latter to depth.

Social Marketing-The word I'll discuss later on its absurdity, and here, for the sake of brevity, is the essence of interaction and communication. Since this is the case, it means that the relationship between the deep and the consumer will inevitably bring a consequence: not enough breadth.

There are cases, purely social marketing, of articles, such as a street snack in the United States, which uses Twitter and consumer interaction to make sales bigger. But extreme cases do not prove an "alternative" relationship. Try to get through the social marketing blockbuster, or to take shortcuts, or the social marketing companies to cheat advertisers to invest more in the budget of the amazing language-this thing I have done, it is not unusual.

Mistake two: Social marketing is a marketing revolution.

The person who said this, I bluntly pointed out: you do not understand what is marketing. Even today, the relationship between the various stakeholders in the marketing chain has not changed, and I can even say that not only is there no revolutionary change, but it is constantly being strengthened by the past trend.

The internet is a movement of attention economy, with the rise of UGC (user creation content), the content provider greatly increased, too much information supply and demand relationship become more and more biased information recipients: In this world, you want to let others notice you, become more and more difficult. This is what I call the trend in the reinforcement of the reason. The intention of marketing is to be noticed first, and to be noticed more and more difficult, do not understand what subversive revolution exists here.

The second trait of marketing is that it must be replicable. The six major tools of integrated marketing communication can not be separated from replication. Even in the marketing of people, there is the so-called "sales talk training", there are specialized customer questions and answers samples. Completely unrestrained to engage in marketing, can only win a moment, can not win a lifetime.

Another example is the number of dollars that Dell has sold on Twitter. This is actually a beautiful lie, and the lie is: does Dell's incremental revenue increase? Nobody knows this question. It is possible that someone was looking at the Dell official website to buy goods, heard that there is a discount account on Twitter, it naturally ran that account. What kind of marketing revolution is that? Just find another place to open a discount shop!

Some classic marketing theories, nothing out of date. For example, 4P theory, we take a look at the current quite hot future will have enormous space of the electric business industry, has been practicing the 4P theory: Product (Products), price (prices), place (channel) and promotion (various promotions).

Mistake three: Do not engage in social marketing, you will be quickly eliminated.

It's a classic resort to fear, like a bad doctor Who says you have a problem and then takes the opportunity to sell a bunch of pills you don't need.

Is it really that scary? The key to see how you understand marketing two words. Any product, there will be word-of-mouth, public consumption of consumer goods can be seen everywhere, the agency used products, also known as the Circle of Word-of-mouth. A lot of Word-of-mouth is naturally formed, even the so-called traditional marketing made out. But the most fundamental focus of Word-of-mouth is the product itself, relying on social marketing to preach or to try, but false after all is false, it is difficult to rely on social marketing to continue.

When the product itself is not so good and hard to do word of mouth, the direct result is five Mao party prevalence, micro-bo zombie users raging. In my opinion, the way of this social marketing will end up annoying the user, and in the end, it's not necessarily a good thing.

The above three kinds of false claims, generally are marketing intermediary agencies or what social media responsible for advertising sales people take out the advertisers. Of these three propositions, there is a common denominator is to say the words to the extreme, the so-called language is not astonishing death. In order to attract the attention of advertisers, so there is their business logic, but as a real brand marketing people, or rational, all things do not go to extremes.

Deviations and errors differ, the deviation itself with a certain correct component, but not completely correct.

Deviation one: The measurement of social marketing.

In real terms, social marketing is almost impossible to measure, but for business reasons, such as intermediaries accountability to advertisers, or brand managers reporting to brand directors, measurement must be done, and can be packaged. But to be very clear here is, do not put the packaging out of the number used to report, really as a social marketing goal.

For example, Sina Weibo often has a similar "attention to my powder I forward this message to get XXX" information. The purpose of this kind of information is clear, is to increase the number of fans, and the number of messages forwarded. The latter two are the numbers that can be observed. But what does the two numbers mean for this microblogging account? Can't say no, but is the meaning measurable? The answer is almost in the negative.

The first one to do this is CAI wins, using the ipad as a prize to pry, it does bring him a lot of popularity. But the two joints in this problem is: first of all, this popularity is very difficult to measure, and secondly he is the first to have new ideas, followed by, more and more people feel bored.

Easy to operate is: the standard of measurement is unchanged, such as the rate of the newspaper, the number of keywords, but the use of social media to make some activities, and then attract various media attention, so as to achieve these measures. The advantage of this is that it may save money. In other words, the number that is too much for 1 million to buy, now 200,000 may be enough. But the numbers are unchanged.

The second difference: Social Marketing Best boss personally

From many years ago, Wang Shi in the blog on the public interest on the comments caused by the Vanke price crisis, to the recent when guoqing in micro-Bo on the World War on Morgan Stanley, all show that the boss himself in the social media, is not a good idea. Because the boss is the last speaker of the organization, once the error, to restore the impact, the need for great costs.

But I stand for top brass. Consumers interact with business organizations in social media, always trying to get high people to communicate, rather than expecting to say anything to interns, because consumers are aware that interns have no power. High-level in social media can play a role in improving communication efficiency, but also for some of the organization's contingency to be equipped with the necessary administrative power. In addition, I also advocate that the boss should be anonymous in the social media, or, to observe more, but less say.

The third deviation: social marketing is to interact with the target audience

Social media is an important function of interaction, so the social marketing and audience interaction is right, but the problem is not all the audience you need to interact.

There is a very delicate operational problem, some unnecessary interactive behavior, only the more trouble, not all consumers are reasonable. In addition, the individual audience's influence size needs to be identified. If it is reasonable to impose price discrimination on the sale of goods in different regions, it is normal for different consumers to have different levels of interaction.

This is a very utilitarian approach: micro-blog This guy has a lot of fans, have to be careful to wait, the guy has no fans, just so-so and no problem. It sounds a little different, but don't forget the point is: marketing, itself is a utilitarian behavior.

Deviation Four: Social marketing can be effective quickly

Admittedly, there are quite a few cases in which business organizations use social marketing and consumers to narrow the gap and ease the strangeness of that business organization. But the problem is that social marketing is sometimes very much like the "upside down" behavior in Weiqi: You have to be prepared to lose something first.

Any product or service, there may be a consumer dissatisfaction with the place, it is not necessarily said that the product must be defective. If the consumer realizes that the organization behind the product lacks a communication possibility, if the dissatisfaction is not too big, often the result is "forget". But if consumers know that there is a channel on the web that can talk to the organization, this dissatisfaction can be said.

If it's just point-to-point communication, it's okay, but social media is not purely point-to-point communication, and conversations between consumers and organizations are most likely to be seen by other users. So, um, yes, I was going to say, "It's possible to trigger a small crisis that is not handled properly."

Therefore, the social marketing in the development before the Organization to do is: issue management, that is, some of the consumer complaints may be collected, to do some sample answers, and the organization within the process of processing links. I once said in an article that social marketing is the beginning of crisis PR, which I think is a good thing so far.

The existence and development of social media is an objective fact, and the larger the scale of development, the more it can not be neglected by any organization. But is it true that the reaction of business organizations is to use social media for marketing?

I thought, not exactly. Marketing is to talk about measurable, communication controllable, the pursuit of a certain breadth, and social marketing, at these three points, exactly all have congenital defects. So we're going back to the fundamental question of what we do with social media.

Social media focuses on communication between organizations and consumers, and this communication is sometimes designed to persuade consumers to accept an organization's claims, but more often than not--in fact, it's a lot harder. My view is that the purpose of using social media and audiences is to better improve products and services, even to discover a new business opportunity!

From this point of view, this is not much like the marketing department, more like: the Business Operations department.

As mentioned earlier, executives should be involved in social media, and I give two reasons: one is in line with the expectations of consumers to find a strong dialogue, and the other is executive power. What does this executive power do? Small improvement, or greatly improved, in short, is feedback to the organization within the various production links to meet the actual needs of consumers. This is not simply a collection of views, this "Meet the needs", is to have the implementation of the protection.

Today, a lot of so-called social marketing, is to make the effort to persuade the audience in the work, to be honest, the traditional marketing methods This work is also good. Social media gives consumers the opportunity to speak, a chance that business organizations have never encountered before: you have the potential to understand market trends and consumer expectations cheaply and almost free. Unfortunately, I don't think most business organizations are really aware of it and are implementing it.

If the revolution were to be said, the big change in the traditional and social media is that if the business organization is operating in a product-driven way, it is likely either to fail to meet demand or to be inefficient. Today's business organizations should know how to adjust their operations in a way that is based on a variety of native rhetoric in social media. And this, indeed, is to organize themselves to make a profound overall change.

The advent of the social media age is not marketing a single thing.

The difference between socialized marketing and socialized operation

Why do I have to die for words, marketing and operations? Just a short list.

First, socialized operation is a fixed position, social marketing may not necessarily have. There is a fixed position, that is, there is an official Weibo account number or SNS account, and then to do is to operate the account, rather than promote the account. The primary purpose of this account is to communicate with the consumer, rather than seeking to make the account 100,000 fans.

Social marketing sometimes does not have to have a fixed account, especially to buy five cents party to do this. There is no fixed account, there is no long-term goals, do is the picture of a happy thing.

Second, the socialized operation is to solve the customer's practical problems, as the result of a good solution to the spread, is a by-product. Social marketing is the primary purpose of communication. Can be described in an inappropriate analogy. For example, the company donated 500,000 to build a hope primary school, is building primary school heavy? Or do you have to tell someone else the importance of building a primary school? This is the difference between operation and marketing.

Third, the socialized operation is not pay attention to speculation, a knife and a gun to do, and social marketing must have "hype" the ingredients, because it is to spread as the goal. If the element of speculation, the use of five Maoist party is the next logical.

Four, the socialization marketing is the planning leading, because the dissemination channel, the platform basically is invariable, the key is how can let this path and the platform remember the dissemination function, then the creativity becomes very crucial. Marketing Campaign The word is very appropriate: planning, but also can be solved for the campaign. Therefore, the socialization marketing is the campaign type, the movement type.

But the socialized operation is the consumer's real interest as the leading, solves the question not? Did you help the client? This is the core problem. As long as the enterprise in operation, this kind of problem is long-term, it is not the campaign type, campaign for it, Auxiliary.

The social marketing is the core of the brand, but the socialized operation is based on the product. Brand is virtual, the product is real. Brand is based on the dissemination of products based on the actual function.

Finally, social marketing can employ agency operations, but socialization operations, agency can only play a subsidiary role, because it is a peripheral organization, a less than you understand the product, two can not change your internal process. I have written such articles in the Past (http://weiwuhui.com/3360.html) and can refer to them.

In today's social media era, where everyone can say a few words, ask a business company to be aware of the problem: go back and do your own products and services well. No mercury in meticulous operation, what social marketing, in the end is a cheat, useless.

Source: http://www.socialbeta.cn/articles/weiwuhui-talk-about-social-media.html