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08 Feb Despite fears of an economic recession and a reduction in ad spending, marketers plan to shift spending to social media marketing efforts according to a study by Forrester Research, described in Adweek. Under the social media marketing umbrella are word of mouth, blogging and social networking. These are fairly low-cost methods of promotion BUT they really are long term strategies. It's harder to tie ROI to these efforts within a certain time frame. Excerpts from the Adweek article: "Last time around, there was a lot of mindless investment in online," said Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff. "People were dong it because their competition was doing it or because it looked cool. Those are good reasons to stop doing it when money tight." "Procter & Gamble's BeingGirl.com, an online community for adolescent girls, is four times as effective as a similarly priced marketing program in traditional media. Initiatives like BeingGirl.com require a long-term commitment, Bernoff pointed out." Wouldn't it make sense to put more $ into improving conversion rates for traffic you drive organically and from word-of-mouth? Companies should be concerned with maximizing ROI over the long term, rather than buying traffic through expensive, traditional advertising. A great way to do this is through landing page optimization. Web Design for ROI is a handy book on site optimization and conversion rate optimization that will run you about $26 and give you a lot of tips on how to tweak what you've already got. Another avenue I think ecommerce retailers should invest in is affiliate marketing programs - which is incentivized word-of-mouth. You pay for performance. You get immediate sales results (as opposed to a whatever/whenever return with social media) that are also measurable. Just my thoughts on the matter. Social media marketing is great to experiment with - but if your budget is tight, stick with something that has a shorter payoff time.
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