Jimmy Marks, Special Guest Author and DigitalMailer's Whippersnapper-in-Chief, talks about Social Networking dollars and digs (or is it "diggs"?) into the bottom line.
I woke up this morning and started on my routine. Toaster-waffles cooking? Check. Coffee brewing? Check. Paper somewhere close to the driveway? Not even close, so...check. And once all the unimportant bits are finished, I go for the laptop. E-mail first, then the morning cartoons, then Facebook. I'm a die-hard "facebooker" - I have been since Facebook's inception my freshman year of college. By the way (I'll bet you didn't know this), Facebook wasn't always Facebook: it started as "AboutFace", a web application designed to be a directory system for industry professionals. Don't believe me? I wouldn't either...which is why I included a link to Facebook's history, courtesy of the Wayback Machine.
So, we have Facebook, MySpace, YouTube - some of the biggest companies that came from some of the most simple ideas. Back in the day, when I was a foolhardy 12-year-old, we had Yahoo! GeoCities - little websites you could cobble together with a primitive WYSIWYG and show off to whomever. You could make a site about anything and, with enough patience (hey, remember dial-up?), you could be a web-wunderkind. But making web pages was tedious at 56k and the odds anyone would care to look at your page were slim. So, it seemed there was just no way to get a hand into the Internet.
Until the birth of Web 2.0, that is.
Suddenly, life was sweet: you could have a page that you didn't have to know HTML to maintain and update! It could have pictures, video, gadgets, information, lists of songs you like, blogs...anything! Best of all, the internet evolved into something that didn't take too long to understand or utilize. So, here we are, a few years older and lifetimes ahead of where anyone believed we'd be. Of course, capital has to come into play, so advertising gurus took aim at sites such as these with the goal of hooking "the youngsters" into purchasing their various wares. A smashing success...right?
No, not really.
Sure, if you choose to advertise on sites like these you'll get some return. But will it be what you expect? And if you're a financial institution (I'll assume you are), can what you're "selling" be boiled down to pure numbers?
Let's look at some stats: (from eMarketer.com article "Will Social Networks Remain Low-Ad Districts?" by David Hallerman)
Google: $65.55
Yahoo!: $31.25
Microsoft (MSN): $17.74
MySpace: $12.85
Facebook: $11.79
The dollar amount is revenues per unique visitor. According to the article linked above, that number is swelling, as is the number of businesses that are gunning for the social network market. It's not a bad idea - put your business out there on a site that people are visiting frequently (by frequently I mean multiple times an hour). Thing is, and I know I can't speak for EVERY 18-34 year old out there, but I don't go to Facebook looking to get sold on something. I go to check in with friends, post pictures from my relatively silly life, and let people know what's up with me. Advertisements are sparse on Facebook, too - which is a reason I keep using it. I get enough ads just reading blogs and news sites. Facebook is my hiding place from all that silliness.
So, where ARE those e-marketing dollars coming from? According to the good people at Nielsen - the same ones that want to know what you're watching on TV - more people spend time on email than anywhere else on the web by almost half. Hallerman's article seems to follow that, saying that direct marketing e-mails contribute to a much wider margin of purchases than do ads on social networking sites. The main means of swaying public opinion online remain search engine returns and positive feedback on the company website. When I look to make a purchase, word-of-mouth (or "word-of-web", as it were) makes a big difference for me. You can learn a lot about something/someone by using Google to see what about them stands out the most. If I find something I want on Google and the talk about it is strong, I'm more than happy to move forward. If people seem to hate it, I shy away.
This is not to say that there's no money to be made on Social Networking sites: clearly, there is. But when it comes to marketing to people my age there's not much difference between what we think and what our elders think. We want to find information, or have that information find us. When we get that information, we want to see that other people found it useful as well. What's the lesson to take away from this, then?
1) Make sure your SEO (search engine optimization) is strong, and that when people search for you they find you.
2)Make your "customer feedback" page a priority: it's common sense to put the good feedback up top, but don't dismiss negative feedback. Rob Banker, another in our DigitalMailer cavalcade, wrote a great article about how bigger companies are using Twitter to monitor customer satisfaction. You really want to make the most of Social Networking sites? See what people are saying about your company without any prodding. One person's angry post about poor customer service and support should be a COO's next "note to self".
3)Diversify, Diversify, Diversify. Advertising in one place is as good as putting on one article of clothing. Any successful marketer will place multiple sites in the marketing mix and never count on just one to make all the difference.
4)Keep watch on what booms and what recedes - Facebook and MySpace are king today, but who knows what's coming up in a matter of weeks? Stay on top of trends and never get thrown on the idea that "it's just a fad". They said the same thing about The Beatles.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go update my status so my friends know I plan to eat burritos later today.
Comments