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Social marketing is no replacement for creative, strategic marketing

Guest post by: Harvey Farr

Article Overview: Marketing and public relations is all about getting attention. But how do you get the attention you deserve when there are so many others competing for air time, print and internet space? Technology can be both the problem and the solution. It's a matter of getting back to basics.

Social marketing is no replacement for creative, strategic marketing

In the world of marketing and public relations, it’s all about getting attention. You have a product or service you want to sell, but before you can sell anything, you have to get the attention of the people and/or companies who are in the market to buy your product or service.

The world today is one of information overload, and it is only getting worse. Not that many years ago, we had five or so television stations, a couple of newspapers, a few national magazines and a few radio stations in our respective cities. Today we are faced with literally hundreds of television stations, dozens of magazines, newspapers, millions of websites, millions of blogs, non-stop web video, text messages on our handhelds, dozens of emails a day, and the list goes on. We have come to believe that if we are not continually connected, we are lost. If our cell phone is not turned on, we might as well be hanging out with Gilligan on his island. We are trained and conditioned to feel that we must always be a button away from our loved ones, boss, clients, co-workers – everyone.

Some people have come to believe that living in a constant barrage of messages and always being available is a good thing. After all, if our kid scrapes his or her knee at school, we can know it instantly and take action. If we are at the market and forget what was on that shopping list, we simply call home and ask. Better yet, we take a picture of the grocery shelf and text it back to our wife or husband so we can make sure to buy the right thing.

So the question remains, how do we as business persons cut through the clutter and tell our target audiences that we exist, what we sell and why they should buy it from us?

Many marketing gurus talk about social marketing – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – and others as the new wave of marketing. Marketing via these media is different than traditional media because instead of telling your story in a newspaper article, you are engaging people in a conversation. This is a fascinating marketing approach, but unless you are Apple with everybody talking about the new IPad, it is a marketing route that is not effective for the average small or medium size business.

The answer to technology overload is not more technology. Just because computers are everywhere doesn’t mean you have to break through with more computer messages. There is no replacement for thinking smart, creatively and strategically.

What all business must do is come back to basics. Instead of relying on a Facebook page to attract customers, think about what your business can do that is so different and revolutionary that it will jump on the internet and jump into the minds of potential customers. Just having a presence on the web is not the answer. Everybody is on the web. But being on the web with a unique, different and strategic message is what separates the web message that gets 12 hits from the one that gets 1.2 million hits.

Technology is here to stay and we all must live with it and use it. But just being another website or blog will make you disappear into the vast expanse of the internet. There is no replacement for creativity, thinking visually and strategically to get your message out to your target markets. And when you stop and think of it, isn’t that what good marketing and PR has always been?

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Article Tags: advertisinginternet space, marketing, PR, pr, public relations, public relations, social marketing, strategic marketing



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