When some business owners hear the term “social marketing”, they often think of it as some sort of overly complicated, super fancy mumbo jumbo that was dreamed up by a bunch of Internet geeks. “Traditional Advertising” is the type of lingo they are more comfortable with. Newspaper ads. Television spots. Radio ads. Billboards. You know, mass media. That’s what you do if you are serious about advertising and growing your business. Right? At Laser Burn Media, we refer to this mindset as “Carpet Bombing.”
For decades, if the Air Force wanted an important target destroyed, they would use a tactic known as carpet bombing. Carpet bombing involved using dozens (sometimes even hundreds!) of large, slow bombers to drop millions of tons worth of bombs on the target. The idea was that even if only 10 percent of the bombs hit the target, it would still be destroyed. Mass media advertising is the same exact thing. Marketers throw up an ad in front of as many people as possible, hoping that maybe 10 percent of the people who see the ad actually visit the store and, of those ten people, hopefully two or three actually buy something. This is as inefficient as it sounds.
But, much like the Air Force, marketers had no other option besides carpet bombing. For the Air Force, that changed with the introduction of “smart bombs.” A smart bomb could be dropped exactly where the Air Force wanted it. One bomb equaled one destroyed target. For marketers, the Internet provided a similar ability. Through the use of various social media technologies, a marketer can identify the target audience, decide the best way to engage them, and then target those people with individual, relevant marketing materials. It’s the marketing equivalent of dropping a laser guided bomb through the front door of the building that needs to be blown up.
Think about it. Traditional advertising prices are based, for the most part, on how many “impressions” they can make. A radio spot during rush hour costs more, for example, than one aired during the middle of the night because more people are listening during rush hour. The radio station has no way of knowing, exactly, how many people are listening to the radio during rush hour. They don’t know how many people change the station once the music stops and the commercials start. And the radio station has no way of knowing how many people that are listening are actually paying attention. All the marketer can hope for is that a lot of people hear the ad and that, of those, at least some people respond to it.
Considering the capabilities of social marketing, this approach is stupid. It’s a waste of money, time, and marketing resources. The radio station will try to convince you otherwise, but that’s because their revenues depend on keeping this backwards, inefficient system operating. Just like a dial-up Internet provider will try and convince people that high-speed Internet is over rated and too expensive. But social marketing, if done correctly, is multiple times more powerful and more effective than traditional media.
For example, a social marketer who is marketing a new beer can scan blogs, Twitter, and social networking sites to identify people who 1.) Like beer 2.) Live in the target geographic region and 3.) Talk about beer to their peer group. The marketer can then customize relevent, value-adding interactions to these individuals via things like Twitter direct messages and replies, responding to blog posts, providing links to YouTube video clips, invited to Facebook groups, etc. The result is that the marketer’s efforts are being targeted directly at the right people. People who have no interest in drinking beer, for example, aren’t targeted. The marketer can then track the effectiveness of the marketing campaign and make adjustments to make it even more pinpoint and more effective.
I’m not saying that traditional mass marketing doesn’t work. I’m saying that compared to social marketing, traditional mass marketing is less efficient, both in terms of time and money. At Laser Burn Media, for example, we are constantly looking at ways to make our methods more pin-point and more effective. Are the owners of billboards doing that? CAN they do that? Probably not. So to all you “carpet bombers” out there, maybe you should consider adding a few smart bombs to your aresenal.
Enjoy the day, everybody!
-Dan Cheek
www.LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
