Social Media B2B

I am a geek. I am an early adopter. I love technology. I love the social web. I hate paper.

All of these things being said, I am here to say that offline marketing is still extremely important. Social Media does not do well on its own, and for that matter, no form of marketing and communications does. Offline communications still matters a lot in B2B, whether it is direct mail, print advertising, or traditional PR, all of these communication methods impact the communications success of a business in 2009. In fact these methods will continue to have impact in the coming years.

Social Media Will Force Integration

Right now we see a lot of stats about social media spending. We have published many of them on this blog. However, what we have not heard a lot about is the push towards integration that social media is forcing. Years ago marketing agencies were segmented into discipline only agencies: interactive agencies, media buying agencies, public relations agencies, etc. Companies have done the same thing by building silos for their different communications and business functions.

Looking specifically at marketing, social media is in the very beginning of forcing agencies and companies to integrate again. Social media is not a stand alone function. For example direct marketing can be a strong complement to social media marketing, but if you can’t do both under one roof it makes execution harder and sometimes less effective.

Dispelling The Myth That Social Media Is Cheap

A big reason that we hear a lot about the shift to social media is that organizations are looking to reduce their marketing costs. Yes, leveraging social media can be far less expensive then a large scale print advertising campaign. However, it is far from cheap. Sometimes the out of pocket costs like design and production are less then a traditional campaign. On the flip side the amount of time and staff needed to develop content, distribute content and interact with stakeholders online is often more than for a traditional campaign. To under-resource social media because you think it should only need 25% of your traditional marketing budget is setting yourself up for failure.

This post should serve as a reminder, that there are many things social media can’t do. Traditional marketing efforts are still critical in B2B. The true power comes when integrating social media efforts and traditional marketing efforts.

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