The Incubators of Marketing Success Through Social Media

Where does innovation in marketing and social media thrive today?

So why is an NFL running back frequently 200 lbs. or less, rather than over 300 pounds like an offensive lineman?  The answer is that smaller and more agile can move the football more effectively.  And so it is in marketing today.

Ten to fifteen years ago, I saw small companies trying to mimic the ways that large companies reached potential buyers.  It seemed that the philosophy was to make a small company look large, thereby giving the appearance of stability and reliability.  Smaller companies also spent far too much on traditional print and broadcast media advertising to achieve the “big company” appearance.  This created huge barriers to entry and obstacles to competing, even when an entity brought something new and innovative.

Thankfully for small business, social media has turned all of that on its head.  Where large, well established firms were looked to for ideas and guidance in how to market a product or service, today, small companies are leading in the development of techniques that utilize social media and are leaving the dinosaurs behind.  In fact, large companies are at a loss to understand why the traditional marketing techniques are no longer producing qualified leads in the same volume as they did years ago.  Their lack of understanding of social media has led them to fill the space with more spam than welcome content.

I’ve seen this development first-hand.  Through my association with small business operators, I have seen how a modest effort to stay on top of developing social media tools can pay huge rewards.  In contrast, I have seen how a large company fumbles with creating effective marketing campaigns, because they are stuck in the rut of spam email and cold-calling.  In a 2010 study, marketers were asked about the effectiveness of various marketing techniques today compared to 10 years prior.  The results were startling.  Marketing executives could not identify a single marketing technique used over the ten year period that was more effective today than a decade before.  So, why?

The traditional methods of telemarketing, email campaigns, print media, broadcast media and the like are operating in much more crowded spaces and are not a welcome interruption for their targets.  Phone calls are routed to “round-file” voice-mail boxes, emails are either captured by spam filters or deleted on sight, and trade publications are seeing their circulation cut dramatically as the internet becomes a favorite source of information.  So what is effective?

Even within the social media world, the tool of choice constantly changes as new tools emerge.  Where a flashy website and search engine optimization used to be paramount, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest have evolved as more effective platforms, not only for consumer targeted content, but also in the commercial B2B space.  Consumers and businesses alike have gravitated to using YouTube as a search engine that delivers reviews, product comparisons, implementation guides and more.  Twitter is still a source of up-to-the-minute updates on the commercial activity of many companies.  Buyers that follow their strategic vendors can stay at the forefront of technology offerings and emerging products.

So who is emerging as the most effective incubator of marketing strategy in both B2B and B2C spaces?  The answer is small business.  Small business is more effective and efficient in developing and testing new techniques.  They network better with other small businesses to share best practices and collaborate to spread the time and resources required.  As with the NFL running back, smaller and more agile moves the ball.

So the lesson to be learned is simple.  If you are a small business, find communities of small business people with whom you can network and share.  For the large business, segregate marketing functions into organizational structures that work like the small business.

Two resources to learn more on Social Media are:
Martin Brossman – ProNetworkingOnLine.com
Martin Brossman with Greg Hyer – LinkiningIntoSales.com
( Find the podcast on iTunes under Linking Into Sales )

by David Phillips

Connect to me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidlphillips