In its 2010 Outlook Report, Razorfish explains why social media marketing requires a different approach from traditional adverting.
“Social media,” states the report, does not garner a huge share of media dollars.” 20 percent of the total 2009 digital ad spend was in ad networks, only four percent in social media. While a few ad networks include social media advertising as an option, it is a reasonable deduction that the social media buy within any network would be a small percentage.
Dude, social marketing is free.
No. Your Facebook account is free. Building a Page for your business is free. Social media ads are cheap (in part because the jury remains out on their value).
Strategic social marketing is not cheap because it is labor intensive. Effective social marketing costs good money.
Social changes the equation for advertisers.
Traditional advertising has a labor component but the great majority of expense comes from the advertising buy. A TV commercial or newspaper advertisement is designed once; the larger investment comes thereafter in location, location, location. Position and repetition, i.e. where and/or how often the ad is seen, is the more critical and costly metric. Even then, the media strategy is constructed and the buy negotiated once; then we launch, monitor, hope, track and adjust.
Not true for social. Designing an interactive campaign or even just a Page, managing a community, responding to comments and tweets and so on presents a much more intensive ongoing labor equation. Companies that carve out a separate section for social media or place it under the jurisdiction of customer acquisition or advertising rather than PR are demonstrating that they don’t get it.
Case Studies
Next Tuesday, I’ll do a quick comparison of two traditional advertising powerhouses integrating social to their mix. I love one and can’t seem to feel anything but pity for the other.
What are you noticing? Do you see advertisers doing things that make you shake your head or lean forward in your seat and say, “Hey, now there’s something…?”
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