What your clients are asking about social media

If you've taken a minute from your busy schedule evangelizing social media, you may hear them starting to ask questions.  And they're good questions.  We recently compiled a list for an event of the local Interactive Marketing Association (GIMA) and added a few of what we've heard from our clients to the list.  I'd be interested to hear feedback, or use the comments section here to debate the answers.  There is never one answer, but there are some good directions, and great intel to be had in this list.  Take this and share it.  It will help you be prepared for your next pitch.

1. There has been a lot of talk regarding calculating the ROI of using Social Media in the overall marketing mix.  Do you think that we can decipher customer motivation from social media alone outside of the entire marketing mix?
2. Money is obviously a factor in today’s advertising budgets.  If we were going to add these lower-cost digital tactics to our plans and budgets, which ones do you feel have the biggest “bang for the buck?”
3. A lot of these tactics and strategies we hear work well for consumer marketing.  We do B2B work.  Do you feel these digital tactics and strategies have the same impact on B2B clients?
4. Target audiences vary by product.  There is a lot of push-back that these are not as effective for audiences older than 30 than for under.  Is this changing?  Are there things I can show my boss to help change his/her mind?
5. When staffing for these new marketing programs (or looking for an agency) what qualifications should we be looking for in a person/agency?
6. What is a typical budget for social media?  The tools are mostly free, but I’m assuming this isn’t as cheap as our budget planners think.
7. How would a company go about starting off a campaign using these new strategies if they’ve never done any digital marketing before?
8. There are lots of varying ideas on this, but I’m curious...who do you feel “owns” the brand?  (customers, companies, social media “loudmouths”, others?)
9. Why is everyone all of a sudden getting on Facebook?
10. What is your viewpoint on design in the new social media space?  It seems that there is less of an emphasis on good user design in these new tools.  Some of them are downright sloppy.
11. It’s clear that you can no longer “build it and they will come,” so how do you go about driving people to online programs?
12. How is mobile going to change what we all do right now in digital marketing?
13. Let’s say I build a great site where I want a community to start, use all the new social media tools to gain exposure, and have a good background of search, display ads, and other “block and tackle” digital marketing to get it noticed.  How then, so I get people to engage with the site once they are there?
14. Are there any digital marketing tools in the toolbox today that you think are going to be obsolete in the near future?
15. What are the top 3-5 research tools online buyers and planners use?
16. What is the set up of responsibilities for online/mobile buying and planning? Is the planner and buyer one role and handled by one position? Or is emerging media planned in a traditional way by a planning team?
17. How is the buy handed off to the creative team for fulfillment? What software is mainly used for contracting and reporting? DoubleClick or Pointroll or any other?
18. Investment in social media marketing requires a buy-in from all levels in an organization, from those who control the information to those who distribute it via the various channels. What advice do you have for organizations on how to engage all of the stakeholders?  Increase communication between layers?