Not Your Grandma’s Marketing

Posted on May 26, 2014 Updated on May 26, 2014

So I have a cool job. A really cool job actually. I get paid good money to be on Facebook and Twitter all day. I’m a social media manager and, in my opinion, have the best job in the world.  Ten years ago, job’s like mine didn’t exist. Most people didn’t even really know what social media was. Today, we can’t live without it. How many times do you think that you check your social media accounts per day? How many times do you actually check them? Tomorrow, keep a running tally of your social media account usage. I think you’ll be really surprised.   

Over just the past ten years, social media has not only changed how we communicate in our everyday lives, but has also drastically changed the dynamic of corporate marketing. Just when researching how marketing has changed since the appearance of social media, the University of Florida’s social media program ad popped up on top of my screen! That just happens to be the master’s degree program that I am currently enrolled in. How convenient that a marketer can target you based on what you’re already searching for online. Can the more traditional advertising mediums target people with such precision? Absolutely not.

One of the biggest differences between social media marketing and traditional marketing is the ability to communicate with customers on an entirely new level. According to the infographic below, customer interaction was “well considered and reviewed” in traditional marketing. When you had 30 days to carefully construct an advertising campaign for a magazine, you were able to get buy-in for corporate stakeholders as well as from the legal and PR teams. Since social media has become a prominent marketing medium, “well considered and carefully reviewed” happens on the fly. Companies now have to put more trust and responsibility in the hands of the social marketing team.

In contrast with the typical customer complaints associated with traditional marketing, when a social media manager responds to the customer, both the complaint and response are available for anyone to see. Customer service exhibited by the social media manager has to be impeccable. Not only will the customer in which you are responding to see it, but other customers, potential customers, and your competitors will see it as well. It is more important than ever to not only have great customer service, but respond in a timely manner. Thanks to social media, this is now a marketer’s job. How great would you feel about a company if it took them three days to respond to your post? Not great.

Which leads me to another key difference in traditional marketing versus social media marketing—availability. If a customer starts a rant on social media on a Saturday night, it’s the social media manager’s job to respond to the customer and try to keep the situation from escalating. Customers don’t care if it’s outside of normal business hours; they want to be listened to and get an answer. This was not the case in traditional marketing. If a customer calls and leaves a voicemail on a corporate customer service hotline on a Saturday night, they don’t really expect to receive a return call until Monday morning. Even if they do expect to get an immediate response, other current and potential customers don’t know that. They can’t see a call log or voicemail. Social media changes that customer service dynamic and establishes the need for availability on part of the social media manager.

Increased two-way communication and the readiness to react are just two of the many differences that we’ve seen between traditional marketing and social media marketing. As technology continues to advance and as people become more and more dependent on social media, I believe that the differences between the two will continue to increase and develop. Ten years ago, marketers didn’t see any other way of doing marketing aside from commercials, print ads, and tradeshows. Looking ten years into the future, I’m sure there will be entirely new marketing mediums and new job titles to go along with them. Who would have ever thought that “Social Media Manager” jobs would exist?

What are your thoughts on the evolution of marketing? Do you think social media will continue to evolve? I’d love to know your thoughts!