Social Media: Marketing Myths and Universal Truths

Tapping into B-to-B, user-driven communities allows advertisers to reach an attentive target audience and leads to positive marketing results.

Myth: The barrier to entry in social-media marketing is too high.
Truth: Marketers can lower the barrier to entry for social-media marketing by taking advantage of existing online communities focused on their businesses or industries. Rather than undertaking the creation of their own online communities and social-media tools for their existing customers — which can be a significant drain both on time and money — advertising with existing social-media sites both lowers costs and allows marketers to reach out to new customer bases.

Myth: It’s hard to ensure brand consistency across social-media sites.
Truth: Social-media marketing, like any other marketing campaign, doesn’t afford the opportunity to control every message focused on a particular brand. However, safeguards can be implemented to help with brand consistency. These safeguards include careful selection of the social-media site to ensure that the community’s focus and tone is aligned with the brand; a thorough review of the community’s moderation policies; and, perhaps most importantly, active engagement with customers in the community.

By monitoring and taking part in conversations where they are advertising, marketers can address any concerns or negative feedback about the brand that may be expressed by members of the community. And, by exploring social-media sites in the target market before pursuing a campaign, marketers can ensure that target sites include high-quality, user-generated content and focus is aligned with the corporate brand.

Conclusion
Social media and online communities offer marketing opportunities that have the potential for high ROI. In many cases, the campaigns and creative content already being used in standard online opportunities can be repurposed for a social-media marketing campaign to achieve superior results. FS