The role of social media with traditional marketing (part one)

Let’s face it, for most of all this modern marketing stuff is at best confusing and often dismissed as a fad or over rated .

But after reflection most realise that all this ‘twittering’, ‘face-booking’ & ‘googling’ is here to stay … And for good! But where does it all fit in with our previously cosy and comfortable marketing techniques.

The answer to that is simple; It’s part of 2010’s marketing mix. Marketeers can no longer ignore this as temporary or something that’s going to go away. The facts prove this is here to stay (see video from last post). If people want results then they have to ‘engage’ and ‘collaborate’ in a marketing arena with some new animals to master.

Just because you’ve mastered the art of killing the lion you’ve had around for ages doesn’t mean that you can simply ignore the tiger that’s been in the vicinity for a while; sooner or later it’ll come and bite you. That is unless you’ve decided that it’s got so much power that it cannot be ignored, and you’re going to build up a skill set which helps you to tame the tiger.

A simplistic analogy perhaps but you get my point. Yes it means spending some time getting used to these new tools and understanding their power, but don’t be fooled into thinking that you can just open a Twitter account and then go and demonstrate how you’ve single-handedly increased profits or brand awareness for your company or clients – It’s not going to happen! You either need time to understand the new world and how best to act; or help and support to do this.

As a rough outline the following should be adhered to:

• knowledge: understand what, how, why, where, which social media tools are best for you. Work out how to play in each arena before jumping in and what you want to achieve
• listen: don’t get too ahead of yourself and start throwing your weight around. See what people are talking about. Get a feel for what they’re saying in your sector. Gauge reaction to your company/brand (all accessible through the social media world)
• Look at your current activity and see which areas can be used. Multi-purpose content. A press release posted on a web site can be sent out to the right twitter community in seconds & may encourage traffic and lead generation
• Understand: It’s a communication tool, one that marketing has been craving for some time. How many other tools in your armoury allow you to engage one-to-one with your audience? Which other marketing mechanism lets you collaborate & engage with such ease? But remember conversations are 2-way. Let others speak and make sure you listen to what they say; Good & Bad

To give yourself the best chance of success the following must be implemented:

• Objectives/Goals
• Strategy
• Tactics
• & Analytics

If you don’t plan then the journey is over before it began. We’ve created two methods to ensure there’s the best chance of reaching those objectives. The first is the ‘Tigerfish Inverted Pyramid Decision Process’© which forces you to answer key questions in order to make sure the right parts of the marketing mix are used. This may mean that different strands form part of a strategy; as long as we answer the questions then we will be able to determine which are the correct routes to take.

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The second is the ‘Tigerfish Cascade Principle for Marketing’ which shows the relationships between the different marketing methods. We have created the Cascade Principle© to explain the importance of 4 key components of online marketing in a diagrammatic form. This demonstrates the importance of the initial building blocks and how activity in these key areas can automatically cause a cascade effect to produce an “economy of scale” in the online marketing arena.
The diagram also prioritises the level of effort for content creation from low to high. High effort, towards the base of the cascade is harder to generate and usually requires a formal sign off which dramatically slows the process.

click image for full size ©Tigerfish™

More detail to follow on both and by all means get in touch by posting comments below , or if want to discuss any of the article on twitter or other links on my contact us page above please do.