Social Media Marketing Strategy - Your Objective is Question #1

Are you one of the many, many businesses who have jumped into the social media space without setting a clear objective or benchmarks to measure?

Information about social media is EVERYWHERE. Finding a social media tactic isn't hard but if you aren't clear on your strategy, don't invest a lot of resources - which, in most cases, is your valuable TIME as well as money.

Your social media marketing strategy should be an integrated component of your business' broader marketing and communications strategy. One of the biggest mistakes I see people making is addressing social media separately, apart from overall marketing and communications - both in planning as well as budgeting and management.

That being said there are three important questions to answer when beginning your social media strategy. 

Today we look at question #1. What is the key marketing objective?

• The big "why" are you making this effort? Are you launching a new product or service or are you trying to increase share in an established market?
• Are you trying to build web / foot traffic and drive sales or do you want to improve your reputation / brand image?

You will likely have multiple objectives (and yes, 99.999% of you eventually want to "ring the cash register"). However, there are a number of marketing steps between awareness and "ring" of the sale. What role do you want this social media effort to play? Your answer will determine the social media tool(s) (blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, etc.) best suited to help you achieve your objective.

Example:

Marketing Objective: Hershey's was introducing a new line of chocolates - Hershey's Bliss.  Awareness of product and Customer Feedback of the new product.

• Social Media Strategy: Get fans to sign up for a 'chocolate party', get bags of the chocolates, share the product and spread the word. Those who participated got to do a party blog or upload photos or videos.
  1) Invite 'fans' to host party 
  2) Live event hosted by fan for fans with product provided by company. In Hershey's case, 'fans' came from opt-ins to Hershey's e-newsletters and Web sites--or a special "House Party" website,
• Result: Over one weekend 10,000 parties, reached 129,000 people, and the campaign was "seen" (via 22,000 digital photo uploads and 15,000 blog entries published through Twiiter, Facebook, Flickr, etc.) by 7+ million people. Overwhelmingly positive response to the events and the product - most people hadn't heard of Bliss Chocolates before this campaign.

You don't have to be Hershey or have 10,000 parties to be successful marketing with social media. Your first step is to have a clear objective of what you want to accomplish and consider social media one of the components of your overall marketing strategy.

So to recap, Question #1 is WHAT is your key marketing objective? Be clear whether it's research information, leads, sales, branding, promotion or something in between. Then determine the role best suited to social media - and THEN pick the social media tactic.

*Hershey's hired Irvington, N.Y.-based House Party to line up "consumer advocates" to host parties for their friends and relatives; supply the product samples and other party elements; encourage hosts and attendees to blog and post photos in dedicated areas on the House Party site; and monitor the results. Read more on the House Party Design Blog.