integrating social media across marketing channels: 9 rules for success

Integrating Social Media Across Marketing

Channels: 9 Rules for SuccessEric Anderson

VP of MarketingWhite Horse

Like all great movements, social media need its revolutionaries. And there are no shortage of them.

Traditional marketing is dead! Long live the glorious social media revolution!.

But when the dust finally clears, is social media marketing a revolution or an evolution?

Banner advertising

E-mail marketing

Paid Search

Social media

Integrated paid and social media

Social media marketing is a natural, inevitable stage in digital marketing’s maturation (provided we don’t kill off the species).

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White Horse’s own survey of corporate marketers found that only 12% have made this final evolutionary leap.

Source: White Horse’s The Pulse of Social Media Marketing, March 2010

The case for integration is in the numbers. Let’s say you manage to create the 2nd most successful viral video of the year…

Social media impressions

Display advertising impressions

26,464,846

12,695,903,000

That’s 479x more impressions!

Yes, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story! Everyone loves the revolutionary spirit of the T-Mobile flash mob! Who loves a banner ad?

But that’s why integration can be so powerful: it combines the strength of each medium…

Social media has credibility but no guaranteed volume.Paid advertising has guaranteed volume but diminished credibility.

Paid advertising

Social media

It’s useful to think of each channel in terms of the signals conveyed by their particular strengths.

Doritos is everywhere. It’s a major brand, a part of people’s everyday lives, and a natural part of big events like the Super Bowl.

Doritos cares about its customers enough to pursue a direct relationship with them. It wants input from its customers in order to be a better brand.

Medium Message

Doritos advertised during the Super Bowl but crowdsourced its ads through social media. That sent a new kind of signal:

Doritos is a big enough brand to trust its advertising to its customers. Doritos chips are so much a part of our everyday lives that the brand’s customers are its greatest creative asset.

Doritos got not only sustained attention before and after the event, but the highest recall and highest favorability of any advertiser.

Yet out of 40 Super Bowl advertisers, Doritos was the only one to truly integrate social. Why?

Maybe other brands don’t know the ground rules for integration.

So here they are:

Rule #1: Nope, this doesn’t cut it.

For consumers, a brand’s social credentials are a baseline; by themselves, they don’t provide a reason to interact.

When you add social credentials to advertising, go the extra step of telling consumers why they should interact with you socially.

Rule #2: Kill your marketing funnel! Replace it with marketing circuitry.

Paid Media Impression

Visit Site

Convert

Check Facebook to see if my friends are

fans

Facebook Fan Group

Search blog entries

Review Social Seeding Posts

Visit forums

Ask questions of other customers

Send Facebook Message to Friend

Rule #3: Socialize your advertising.

Pledge that all campaigns will have a social media component.

Rule #4: Your customers trust your other customers more than they trust you.

Rule #4: Your customers trust your other customers more than they trust you.

Embrace this. Bring your customers into direct contact with each other, early and often.

Rule #5: Start the conversation in the advertising itself.

Social integration gives you one more reason not to rely on clickers. (As if you needed one)

Heavy Clickers:6% of the Online Population50% of all clicks Like Gambling, Job Searching, Games

Non-Clickers:68% of the Online Population0% of all clicksLike Portals, Search, News, Finance

Heavy Clickers

Non

Clic

kers

Rule #5: Start the conversation in the advertising itself.

Social features give the other 94% of the population a way to engage.

Rule #6: Integrate not just your ads, but your ad planning.

A campaign that relies on social to drive leads has to be planned alongside paid media every step of the way.

Social profile

Web profile

Social audit

Social seeding

Referral tracking

Media placement

Ad tracking

Paid

Social

Media planning

Rule #7: Activate your brand evangelists.

You don’t have to do all the social heavy lifting yourself. Eager evangelists are ready to shoulder the load.

Rule #7: Activate your brand evangelists.

Especially caffeine-addicted brand evangelists.

Digital marketers Brand marketers

Rule #8: Tear down this wall!

THANK YOU!

For a free copy of our report, The Pulse of Social Media Marketing: A Survey Report, email us at

sales@whitehorse.com

Eric AndersonWhite Horse

eanderson@whitehorse.com

www.whitehorse.com | Twitter: @whitehorsepdx

© 2010 White Horse Productions, Inc. Content may not be reused without permission.

Rule #9: Hire the right agency.