Yesterday I wrote that in regard to the potential applications for small business marketing, I was not initially impressed with social media in general, or social networking in particular.
In short… I missed it. But this got my attention…
In July 2005, Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corporation is reported to have purchased MySpace.com and its parent company eUniverse (now Intermix Media) for $580M. Of that amount, $327M was attributed to MySpace.com, which had opened just two years earlier in August of 2003. Hmm…
Then there was Facebook, which was founded by a college student in February of 2004. Several months later, he reportedly received a private investment of $500K, and venture capital of $40.2M the following year. And in 2007, another private investment of $60M. Double Hmm…
Then came efforts by corporate giants to purchase a share of the action. Offers of hundreds of millions of dollars for miniscule pieces of the company were rejected, and the company is now rumored to have a market value of billions of dollars. Hmm… hmm… hmm.
It seemed sombody knew something that somebody else didn’t know… and it didn’t take long for me to figure out which one I was.
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I opened my first business in 1987, and marketed it the way we always did…
Cold calls, brochures, tradeshows. Advertise if you can afford it…get press whenever you can get it. Deliver great results, ask for referrals… and network.
There were lots of appointments… there were many disappointments… but our business grew!
Several other ventures followed; similiar tactics… decent results.
And yet, it seemed change was in the air.
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The explosion of media has altered the way we respond to offers, and the way we want to be interacted with.
How often do people look at their Caller ID before deciding whether to pick up? What percentage of U.S. households are on the ‘Do Not Call” list?
As we are inundated with advertising 24-7, studies show that Americans increasingly distrust the message, and even resent the advertisers for interrupting their chosen activity.
Why is TiVo popular? Or satelite radio… or pop-up blockers or spam filters? When it comes to information, we want… what we want. But we also want it… when we want it. And here’s the shift… more and more, we feel confident in our ability to find it ourselves… in the peace and comfort of our own homes, on our own schedules, and… from sources that we trust.
Yet, here’s the neat thing… as technology has increased our ability to retreat and to insulate ourselves from people and processes and environments that we don’t like, as social beings we still want to be around people and processes and environments that we do like… we want decent relationships, with decent people.
And that is what social media allows; it connects people who have important qualities in common. As marketers, it doesn’t replace all of the other means and media that we have to engage with the market. On the contrary, it establishes relationships that enable us to focus on meeting the true needs of our customers… it improves the effectiveness of all of our other communications.
To turn our backs on the new media would be to turn our backs on tens… maybe hundreds… of thousands of people who share the same goals, interests, or needs that we have. People who may have the solutions to the challenges we face… or seek the very answers that we can provide.
I look forward to speaking with you.
Principles:
The abundant access to media has fundamentally changed what we want from media.
Over one million people opened a social networking account last week; some of them may fit your ideal customer profile.
Questions:
If I had questions about your product, could you answer them?
If I look for those answers in an online forum, will you be there?
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