By: Linda Kaun
New Marketing Rules:
Ready or Not?
Are you "joining the
conversation" of Web 2.0 or Social Media marketing yet?
It'd be pretty hard not to be familiar with the tools
associated with social media by now...blogs, podcasts, online video, RSS,
customer review sites, social networking, webinars and so on.
When I look at various websites or speak with some B2B
marketers though, I still see a big gap in understanding what is behind
social media marketing and how it impacts their business today.
What does all this really mean? Does this actually make a
difference to how you do business? Can't you just add some of these new
tools to your marketing and expect better results? In fact, the point of social
media marketing is a 180-degree shift in thinking you must understand
if youre going to use it to your advantage.
First, think about how traditional marketing is a one-way
communication channel. TV commercials, direct mail, ads in a trade publication or magazine all
push their product or service onto the target audience. That audience can
accept or reject it, but they have no way to interact with it...to talk back.
Along came the Internet and completely changed all our
lives.
Suddenly the so-called target audience became marketers
themselves. All sorts of rating and review sites like Amazon, eBay, and Trip
Advisor got started long before millions of blogs, YouTube and social
networking sites came on board.
Consumers have gotten used to comparing others views and
expressing their own opinions, rating books they read, hotels they stay at,
restaurants they eat in...all online for all the world to see.
The key result of these changes for marketers is the shift
in perception of what marketing is all about. It has come to be known as "The
Share Economy." A model of collaboration. A give and take of ideas and
opinions. It's active listening and making a contribution that others can
benefit from.
The old top-down model is simply not going to work for your
business anymore. A marketer telling their audience what they should think or
feel about a product is taken with a hearty dose of skepticism these days.
So if that's not working, what is? Buying and selling of
goods and services is not going away anytime soon-regardless of what shape the
economy is in. What does that mean to say we have a share economy? How does
that change your marketing? And how does all this fit into the B2B market?
B2B and Social Media
The B2B market has been slower to catch on to the vast
opportunities new social media offers. The following briefly convey what the
new rules of marketing are and how they can benefit your business.
1. Build for long-term relationships
By offering your prospects a "slow drip" method of
getting to know you through a variety of channels, your chance of building a
long-term relationship is greatly enhanced.
And the key to the new marketing is just that-using these
new tools to build a relationship. If you have the old marketing mindset of
pushing your product or service onto an audience to make a quick sale, youll
miss out on the potential rewards social media offers.
2. Participate
Don't talk at your prospects; talk with them.
Join the conversation. Have a dialogue, not a monologue. The Internet has given
rise to many professional networks in your target market that cut across
geographic boundaries. Use social media tools to facilitate the conversations
among these groups. Don't jump in and start pushing your products or services.
Instead...
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