Social Media/Networking a Marketing Flop

In the rush to tap new tools, always a mistake, companies using social media to deliver marketing results are disappointed. That's what Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, will share when he delivers his research results at the annual Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2008 between October 12-16 in Orlando, Fla.

In a recent interview with CNET News, Sarner says that "over 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with Web sites have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes. Fifty percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures.

"(Businesses) will rush to the community and try to connect, but essentially they won't have a mutual purpose, and they'll fail," Sarner said.

Sarner is saying that businesses are unable to balance their interests with that of their customers. To that I add very few consultants and so-called social media and social networking experts are telling them how to do so. Too many have become social media and social networking evangelists and then consultants, many without marketing or communications backgrounds. They all too often sell tools instead of integrated plans, strategies and goals that meld traditional marketing with Web 2.0 tactics to achieve measurable goals, including ROI (returns on investment as measured in revenues and profits not hits or links).

It's the same old story, which is told not only by non-marketers but by marketers themselves. It's easier to use a tool than to create an integrated marketing plan using carefully constructed strategies, tied to measurable goals and based on customer data that shows what those customers want and need and how they want to be communicated to about those things that meet or exceed their wants and needs.

In my opinion, if a company launches a blog, offers podcasts, jumps into Second Life or has a Facebook page without a plan tied to the business annual strategic plan, they likely will fail in their efforts to engage customers and to achieve ROI. Just as advertising or direct marketing should not be used alone to achieve sales and marketing goals, neither should a social media or social networking tool.

The Bottom Line: Smart companies and their marketing departments should not rush headlong into social media or social networking or any other set of tools without first creating strategies and goals. Once the objective is set and strategies and measurable goals are created to achieve the objective, then tactics (tools) should be carefully chosen to make the strategies successful and to achieve the goals.