The Marketer’s Foray Into Social Media…
January 28, 2008
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Lately we’ve been working with quite a few CMO’s at companies that are considering the leap into social media marketing, many of which are in the process of choosing a social media agency, nailing down scope of work, and all of which are still unsure if it will be a good or a bad investment. To be honest, this is a scary leap for marketers, who are being pushed from competitors and internal staff to enter this space , and who then feel the inevitable pressure to quantify their results.
And so the Marketer’s journey into social media begins as it usually begins: with the issuance of a request for proposal (RFP).
That is where it becomes interesting…For instance, instead of traditional detailed requests for proposals, most of the RFP’s we get are as informal as an email or a made from scratch “social media proposal”, totaling less than 5 pages in length. All of these have the same in common: they are requests to “propose specific social media strategies” and a “detailed list of pricing”.
From there, as a social media agency, we have to defend our tactics and strategies as they are met with skepticism and questions on every front - as marketers themselves are trying to make sure that they can answer the questions imposed from internal staff regarding timing, resources, and of course effectiveness and metrics.
And so, I figured that it was about time to reveal the marketer’s foray into social media by answering the most common questions/barriers that arise in the process . Some of the following questions I will be answering in subsequent posts are as follows:
1. How will a Social Media Agency Work with my current agency?
2. How long does a typical social media campaign last?
3. How will this social media campaign be measured?
4. How will content be developed?
5. What is the budget?
Hopefully this will grow into a conversation that we can all benefit from. Those on the marketing side will have a better understanding of what to expect, and those on the social media agency side will have a better understanding of how to answer these questions while sustaining ethics, generating results, and maintaining a sound business model.
Stay tuned…. And let me know any feedback or direction you’d like to see this take.
Comments
11 Responses to “The Marketer’s Foray Into Social Media…”
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Fascinating conversation. Shouldn’t a social media agency ultimately enable to company, not stay on? But the monitoring and coaching component seems to be necessary for the long-term.
Everyone wants to see case studies as well. The strategy always gets sold, they ask for metrics and example of other organizations success. They want Case Studies.
Would like to see everyone trying to product more case studies and be social about standards for social media marketing.
Lisa what a great post, this is a conversation that I definitely want to be a part of. It’s great to have a look inside and see how you are answering these questions, how you are relating these materials to the client. They are questions that all clients want the answers to and having answers that will be equally beneficial is great
Look forward to the rest of the posts.
Great post touching real life problems, I believe that sooner or later all people that are involved in similar projects we will deal such questions. I am not sure if practices and metrics from “traditional” marketing campaigns can help us here. I hope not.
The difficult part for me is to talk about a longer term relationship that has to be build here. A new open and interactive 2-way channel of communication has to be build ready to accommodate an ongoing dialog which certainly will take more time to be ready and much more effort and investment from their side.
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Hmmm..these post seem strangely familiar! As an interactive producer working for a very traditional client who views marketing in the forms of broadcast / print the idea of social media is about as foreign as can be.
It’s a tremendous challenge to answer the questions marketer’s ask me when they don’t understand the medium they want to dive into - it takes a lot of patience and training, both for them and me!
Putting together an RFP for social media agencies is a challenge as well because it’s such a new space and the possibilities are unlimited so it’s hard to say - we want you to do this / that for us, how much will it cost. Today’s marketing folks are going to be looking at social media agencies to help them develop the strategy and concepts of “what to do” - it’s definitely an interesting experience.
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