Social media doesn’t replace strategic thinking

You can’t turn anywhere in marketing without hearing more and more about how social media is transforming the marketing mix.

I don’t doubt that it’s going to be an important part of the way that businesses conduct their B2B marketing. But the buzz around social media must not create a rush to embrace it as a medium at the expense of strategy.

The principals of successful marketing will remain grounded in a strategy which properly acknowledges where the customer is and where they are buying.

For many B2B companies, that’s not necessarily on Twitter or Facebook. I couldn’t put it better than Mark Schaefer who says on his blog (https://schaefersolutions.blogspot.com) “…a company selling wheels to Chrysler is not going to Twitter its way to success.”

Of course, social media is about more than Twittering; it is a time consuming approach to marketing which, unlike producing a new shiny brochure, requires the engagement of the whole company. It’s not about marketing so much as an entire company ethos, committed to authenticity and transparency.

Companies who are starting to look at social media as a route to reaching their audiences need to ensure their company culture is ready for it, and they have a properly thought out strategy about how it is going to reach those audiences and how it’s going to add value to them. A knee-jerk rush on to the web has the potential to disconnect the process from the rest of the marketing. Without a properly planned long term strategy which integrates with the marketing and business strategy, businesses may think they’re panning for gold, but will only dredge up a few pebbles.