Now that’s what I call ROI in social media

Written by Colin Gillman | 05 January 2012

According to the Office for National Statistics almost half of UK internet users are going online via mobile phone data connections. Some 45% of people surveyed said they made use of the net while out and about, compared with 31% in 2010. The most rapid growth was among younger people, where 71% of internet-connected 16 to 24-year-olds used mobiles.

I’m not surprised by this statistic given that my thirteen year old son wanted a Blackberry Curve more than anything for Christmas. When I was thirteen all I wanted was a Raleigh Chopper and a girlfriend. It’s a totally different world today. I didn’t get my first mobile phone until I was in my late 20s. It was the size of a brick housed in a briefcase. I thought I looked the bee’s knees with it at the time, but could never have imagined that such a thing would one day be reduced to the size of a packet of fags and I would be able to do my Christmas shopping on it.

I blame all this social media malarkey. I love it, but where will it end? It’s growing at a phenomenal pace and doesn’t look like ever slowing down. You only have to look at the graphics below to see how bonkers everything has become. Social media is everywhere and is expanding like the clappers!

Every 60 seconds or so some 100 new people join LinkedIn; 70 new websites are published; 600 videos are uploaded to YouTube; 1,500 blogs are posted; and nearly 700,000 Facebook status updates are posted. And all in 60 little seconds. Tick, tick, tick... there goes another 600 videos to YouTube.

What is surprising about social media though, is that despite its meteoric uptake it hasn’t caught on in the world of business to business (b2b) commerce anywhere near as fast as it has with domestic users. And this is because b2b marketeers still can’t get their heads around it, mostly because they can’t accurately measure its return on investment – which is marketing speak for not doing anything about it.

While domestic use of social media is growing at an exponential rate, a recent US based survey from Accenture Global Marketing, “Embracing Social Media in a B2B Context,” shows that only 8 percent of US b2b companies are taking full advantage of all that social media has to offer. However, some 65 percent of individuals surveyed indicated that they felt social media is “very important,” with 30 percent of individuals claiming it is “extremely” important and cannot be ignored” for b2b business.

The report also highlights that many b2b companies do actually believe that social media can make a significant difference to their business, yet they lack any form of social media marketing plan to help them take advantage of the opportunities it presents. The research also shows that where such a social media plan exists, many business managers need to have more confidence in their employers plans and strategies in order to make social media work for them, as opposed to simply using it as an add-on to their overall marketing efforts.

In my experience, simply encouraging your staff to ‘do’ social media is a bit like leading a horse to water. Some people readily ‘get it’ while others haven’t a clue and have no intention of ever going near it. You could say it was a bit like ‘horses for courses’; some are suited to social media and others plainly are not. Therefore, for the whole social media thing to truly take off in a b2b context (or until perhaps the 71% of the younger generation enters full time UK employment) many companies are going to have to start schooling their people in socialnomics. And this short video will explain why:

Some might see this socialnomics video as just another series of fancy graphics bouncing along to a Fatboy Slim soundtrack, but as far as I am concerned we are going to have to start working smarter in future when it comes to using social media in our b2b marketing. Now call me old fashioned, but the way I see it sales generates revenue while marketing generates profits. Marketing, including social media marketing, is about efficiency. Put simply, marketing is a process of decreasing the time, money, and resources required to communicate with customers and make it easy for them to buy your products and services. Therefore the more efficient your marketing is, the more profit you make, and this in my opinion (for many print service providers) is what you should keep in mind when making your initial first steps into social media marketing.

This doesn’t mean that all you need to do is set up a Twitter account; call everybody ‘tweeps’ and repeatedly offer business cards or pop up displays for thirty eight quid every other day. That is not social media marketing and you would be surprised how many printers actually do this. Instead, think about how you can generate greater profits with your social media marketing to make your company/products/services seem more interesting so that others might take a greater interest in you. You need to think of ways of creating hooks with which to catch fish. And those hooks need to be baited with something interesting in order to entice the fish.

One way you can do this is by setting up a simple YouTube channel with some short promotional videos about your company and its services, or a few customer case studies, and use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn etc. to drive potential viewers towards it. I know a printer that did such a thing and promoted his company video on LinkedIn and got more than 500 views on his YouTube channel. That’s 500 meaningful people that never knew he existed until then, and many of whom are no doubt potential customers that now know exactly what he can do for them and where they can go to get it. 

Now that’s what I call ROI in social media marketing.

Happy New Year!

Colin Gillman

colin@graphicdisplayworld.com