Who Has Time For Marketing?
Everyone involved in online marketing has been through this experience: you meet with a client, discuss strategies for their internet marketing campaigns, and the topic turns to social media. Almost without fail, small business owners react with something like: “Who has time for this?” or “How am I supposed to take time out of my busy week for Twitter or Facebook?”
As someone who sees the value of social networking for businesses, this attitude has always frustrated me, but today I think I realized the real source of the frustration: Social Media marketing is just that – it’s marketing.
It’s human nature that we have a built-in aversion to tasks that we don’t perform on a regular basis. For me, a perfect example is blogging – I have ideas that I want to communicate, but as I’m not a practiced writer this takes more work and time than I would like. However, the reality is that if I blog more and write more it will get easier and I will (I hope, for your sake as the reader!) that I’ll get better as well.
Back to my epiphany: Small business owners don’t hate social media marketing (SMM) because it’s new or different. They don’t hate it because it’s harder to pin down an ROI figure than other forms of online marketing. They hate SMM because it’s marketing!
I realize I’m painting with broad strokes, and there are many exceptions, but for the majority of small business owners, marketing is not an ongoing project. To them, marketing equates to an annual YP renewal, a sign on the sidewalk and – in a moment of inspired passion – a one-off direct mailing or flyer distribution. There is little thought point into strategy, branding or perception. It’s no wonder, then, that to a small business owner the thought of routinely investing a few minutes a day, or a few hours a week into monitoring Twitter, blogging or posting on a Facebook page can seem overwhelming.
I’m not trying to be cruel – it’s my love for small businesses that prompted the formation of Strider in the first place! What I’m suggesting is that small business folks need to first gain a better appreciation of marketing as a whole before taking the plunge into any particular tactic like social media. Take some time, discuss with your employees, and decide what story you want to tell, develop an Unique Value Proposition, consider what image you want to portray and who you are trying to reach. Then, make all your marketing initiatives work in concert with your overall goals.
Otherwise, your attempts at social media will be doomed to join your flyers, coupon books and YP ads in the dusty pile of half-hearted marketing failures.
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