Page 128 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Recognizing Who You Serve

Marketing used to be about identifying customers, building brands, and encour-
aging purchases of your product and services. The marketing funnel, which
included taking the customers from awareness and consideration to purchase and
loyalty, served as a foundational framework for all marketing. That still matters
today and in fact, one can argue more than ever, even though how customers
move through the funnel may have changed. But there is one fundamental differ-
ence today relative to the past. And that’s about who marketers serve.

Marketing used to be just about serving customers and customers alone. However,
what you do in marketing has significant ramifications for other constituents
in society. As a result, you need to be sensitive to their needs and address them
as well.

You may think this is the responsibility of the CEO or the entire company, but a lot
of this responsibility invariably falls on you as the face of the company.

Here are some of those other constituents and how you can play a more thoughtful
role in serving them as well.

Employees

If you’re a small business, you may take this for granted and assume treating
employees well is the normal course of running a successful business. How you
treat your employees is extremely important and with size and the complexities of
a social media world, it only becomes more difficult in time.

When it comes to treating employees well, the first step is to compensate them
fairly and provide them with important benefits. It also includes supporting them
with training and education that helps them develop the new skills needed in the
transforming world (and a world where every customer is on social media and one
tap away from you). The training needs to include how to present themselves as
employees in social media — how to identify themselves, what to talk about, and
what topics to avoid.

Treating employees effectively also requires treating them with respect and fos-
tering diversity and inclusion. As the saying goes, when you hire employees, you
shouldn’t just look for “culture fits” but also “culture adds,” people who may be
a little different but add something more to your culture.

112 PART 2 Practicing SMM on the Social Web