Page 34 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Comparing Social Media Marketing with

Other Marketing Efforts

It isn’t enough to deploy social media marketing in isolation of every other mar-
keting effort. If you do, you’re sure to fail. Your customers will notice that you
have a disjointed, conflicted story — depending on where and how you’re inter-
acting with them. Therefore, it’s important to understand how you can integrate
your social media marketing within your other, more traditional marketing —
direct mail, public relations, display advertising, and promotions.

Some of the social media marketing philosophies are in conflict with traditional
public relations, media buying, direct mail, and promotions tactics. It’s no use
damning those forms of marketing and alienating your peers who focus on those
areas. Put extra effort in partnering with your fellow employees as you practice
these marketing techniques. Explain what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and
how it complements their efforts. If you discredit the other forms of marketing
and the people behind them, it only hurts you in the long run.

Direct mail

Direct mail is about managing an active customer database and marketing to mem-
bers of that database via circulars, catalogs, credit card applications, and other
merchandising materials delivered to homes and businesses. You’ve probably
gotten a lot of direct mail over the years — perhaps mountains of it — and at
some point, you’ve probably wished that these companies would stop mailing you.
That’s all direct mail, and whether you like it or not, direct mail has been a very
successful form of marketing. The catalog industry has logged billions of dollars
in sales because of it.
However, that has been impacted by social media marketing. Of all the areas of
marketing, direct mail is one that will be most affected in the long run. Before you
start worrying that your mail carrier will stuff your mailbox (or your email inbox
through e-mail marketing) even more than usual, consider this: Direct mail is
most successful when the mail is targeted and personalized. That means it’s
reaching the people who really care about the offers (or are most likely to take
advantage of them), and it’s personalized toward the recipients’ needs in a voice
and style that’s appealing to them. Pretty straightforward, isn’t it?

Direct mail is as successful as the marketer’s customer database. The database
should contain names and addresses of people who are open to receiving direct
mail. But when people stop trusting the marketing efforts of large corporations
and instead switch to each other for advice, that’s when direct mail loses its

18 PART 1 Getting Started with Social Media Marketing