As the economy continues along it's path, we all know what happens. Traditionally a downturn in the economy means cutting marketing budgets. A recent survey of marketing professionals conducted on behalf of PRWeek indicates that 68 percent of marketers expect their advertising budgets to stay the same or decrease in the coming year. Yet, 75% of those respondents indicated they were looking to increase the monies they allocate to digital marketing programs. (Manning Selvage & Lee Survey, July 2008)
Adding to that sentiment, Forrester Research in February highlighted the fact that online marketing is trackable (think search marketing) and that senior marketing execs were looking to spend more dollars there as well. (Forrester Research, Strategies for Interactive Marketing In A Recession, February 2008).
But here is the most interesting point: social marketing is seen as an up-and-comer in a recession since the resources needed to sustain a social media program are largely consumer-generated. Yes, there are dollars to set up the tools, and then there are dollars to monitor, encourage, participate, and otherwise stoke the conversation, but they can have a life of their own and maintain themselves with little expenditure. That is, if the community is compelling enough.
Here is a different take at social media and the recession. A colleague of mine blogged about (what he calls) The New Convergence and it goes like this:
New technology + recession/bad economy = massive behavioral changes
This is a great way of looking at the behavioral changes not only of our target markets, but of the marketers themselves. It also brings up another interesting point--earlier I blogged about the social media bubble and was intrigued as to what would happen if there were too many communities online vying for our attention? What would happen if no property had enough critical mass that it could attract advertisers attention?
Convergence may be one theory as to how marketers can handle the long tail of options. If consumers narrow their access to the Internet only on select devices, move even faster away from print to online (saving money in the meantime) and accessing TV (and other media) via the Internet instead of network, cable, and satellite TV, then maybe there will be a manageable amount of channels to once again begin reaching audiences in enough mass to make an impact.
That is, if the online communities can foster enough critical mass.
So, take heed everyone about to jump on the Social Media bandwagon next year. This is a participatory medium. You are competing for a lot of attention, and the interruptive communication of "old" marketing is much different than the attraction marketing of this new space.
- It's multi-way dialogue
- It's participatory
- It's user-generated
And, it's engaging. People will be attracted to conversations and communities that are engaging. Make sure you/we don't lose sight of this. Not everything is meant to have it's own dialogue.
More to come...
