Can social media take the place of marketing automation platforms?
Our October Innovation Contest winners won a signed copy of "7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis" by Bill George and the right to have their article re-published here on Blogging Innovation. Here is the second of the three winning entries:
by Barrett Coakley
The Corporate Learning group at Harvard Business Publishing currently uses Eloqua as our marketing automation platform (MAP). Eloqua is very robust and does everything we need and more. However, I have been thinking lately as social media applications mature do they have the potential to be a free marketing automation platform, especially for a small business? Already today there are services that you can use to do some rudimentary tracking. For example, if I use bit.ly to shorten my URL and post a note on Twitter about a free article on my site I can track click throughs and retweets through bit.ly's tracking capability. I can then use Google analytics on my site to gain even more information.This certainly is not as robust as an Eloqua, but it certainly gets the job done, and it's free.
Another important aspect of social media that can't be replicated by a MAP is highlighted by the findings in the recent Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey as seen in the chart above. The survey found that recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising. Ninety percent or consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.
"The explosion in Consumer Generated Media over the last couple of years means consumers' reliance on word of mouth in the decision-making process, either from people they know or online consumers they don't, has increased significantly," says Jonathan Carson, President of Online, International, for the Nielsen Company."
Marketing is all about building trust and being relevant to the consumer. I know I regularly look at recommendations on sites like Best Buy before I purchase any electronics. I do not know these people, but it goes back to James Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds theory, "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." Social media has a much greater advantage over a marketing platform because a Tweet to people who follow you is more likely to be taken more seriously than an email from a campaign.
Think of the power of some of the services below and compare them to how you would react to items posted there versus an email in your inbox from a vendor that you may have a passing knowledge of but no real relationship. What do you trust and believe more?
What other services are out there that have this same power? Do you think that social media could eventually be the defacto MAP as the technologies mature and people start building applications to track items (like Metricly)?
Barrett Coakley is currently a Senior Product Marketing Manager for the Corporate Learning Group at Harvard Business Publishing.
by Barrett Coakley
The Corporate Learning group at Harvard Business Publishing currently uses Eloqua as our marketing automation platform (MAP). Eloqua is very robust and does everything we need and more. However, I have been thinking lately as social media applications mature do they have the potential to be a free marketing automation platform, especially for a small business? Already today there are services that you can use to do some rudimentary tracking. For example, if I use bit.ly to shorten my URL and post a note on Twitter about a free article on my site I can track click throughs and retweets through bit.ly's tracking capability. I can then use Google analytics on my site to gain even more information.This certainly is not as robust as an Eloqua, but it certainly gets the job done, and it's free.
Another important aspect of social media that can't be replicated by a MAP is highlighted by the findings in the recent Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey as seen in the chart above. The survey found that recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising. Ninety percent or consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.
"The explosion in Consumer Generated Media over the last couple of years means consumers' reliance on word of mouth in the decision-making process, either from people they know or online consumers they don't, has increased significantly," says Jonathan Carson, President of Online, International, for the Nielsen Company."
Marketing is all about building trust and being relevant to the consumer. I know I regularly look at recommendations on sites like Best Buy before I purchase any electronics. I do not know these people, but it goes back to James Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds theory, "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." Social media has a much greater advantage over a marketing platform because a Tweet to people who follow you is more likely to be taken more seriously than an email from a campaign.
Think of the power of some of the services below and compare them to how you would react to items posted there versus an email in your inbox from a vendor that you may have a passing knowledge of but no real relationship. What do you trust and believe more?
- LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Digg, Stumbleupon, etc.
- revver, knol (yes, knol), etc.
- Gist
- Meetup
- Youtube
- Hollr
What other services are out there that have this same power? Do you think that social media could eventually be the defacto MAP as the technologies mature and people start building applications to track items (like Metricly)?
Barrett Coakley is currently a Senior Product Marketing Manager for the Corporate Learning Group at Harvard Business Publishing.Labels: Barrett Coakley, Direct Marketing, marketing, Social Media, Social Network, Trust
posted by Blogging Innovation at 12:02 AM
4 Comments:
I believe social media will become increasingly important in the B2C world, were buzz is very important. But in the B2B world, were a person in marketing is tasked with getting qualified leads (how do we define that? MAPs can define this to both marketing and sales satisfaction), and sales is tasked with closing x% of them (MAP give them huge competitive advantage, especially in long B2B sales cycles), MAP are just beginning to penetrate. In 5 years, 7 or 8 at the outmost, MAP will be as common as accounting software.
Barrett,
I think you make some really good points, but I would argue that these two capabilities are not mutually exclusive ... I doubt that one will WIN.
Rather, it seems that anyone who can find a way to use MAPs in concert with Social Media / Social Media monitoring will be in the game for the long haul and can find the synergies between them.
Some of the assets that get shared to one person via a Lead Nurturing campaign may then get retweeted by them and get syndicated to a number of peers who trust them. Win win ... the key is that marketers must figure out how to measure those track backs from social media to understand what works and what doesn't.
Between the free tools and a number of platforms out there, I think there are some pretty decent starts and more emerging daily.
What I just described is also core to the methodology we at HubSpot espouse and build into our tools (full disclosure - I run Product Marketing for HubSpot) - but I really do think these concepts work!
Cheers and keep sharing!
As you mention in your post, social media enjoys some advantages over marketing platforms "because a Tweet to people who follow you is more likely to be taken more seriously than an email from a campaign." That's true until someone has hundreds or thousands of followers and s/he starts using more tools to search on keywords and relevant topics, rather than paying close attention to what the people she's following are posting.
A key in all our marketing efforts is to build upon the relationships that exist with useful, relevant content which can only be delivered at scale though automated lead nurturing.
Especially in a B2B context, getting the traffic to the site (using a shortener or otherwise) isn't good enough. A marketing automation platform helps extend your reach (including tracking social media through integrated URL shortening), convert the traffic, nurture the prospect until sales-ready, and negotiate the hand-off to sales and, when needed, hand-back to marketing. As Kirsten points out, Social Media won't replace marketing automation, but rather is fast becoming integrated with Marketing Automation.
Barrett,
great points, and an interesting discussion. I agree with the general consensus that the two are not mutually exclusive in the sense that one "wins" over the other. Rather, they are both mutually beneficial and provide value to each other. First, the insights we can gain on buyer needs and interests through the social media periphery help us as marketers understand what is most of interest to buyers.
Second, and inline with your point on email vs twitter, the main goal of lead nurturing is not to send unsolicited messages, but to maintain permission to continue to add value to your audience. Whether you lose this permission in email, or in social media, the effect is still the same.
Great post, and very thought provoking.
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