A great deal of debate is occurring online about how to measure ROI for social media marketing.
By Roger Ewing
Those of us who have spent lavishly on print media over the course of our business careers are empathetic towards our digital new-age friends who struggle to justify investing in social media. This is particularly true now, given our recessionary cost control environment.
If the Tweeters, Bloggers and Diggers could measure the effectiveness of their social media platforms, would the management team finally stop harping about the amount of resources in time and money that are being applied to these strategies by the marketers? Probably. Consider this.
Only about 30% of traditional marketing has demonstrable ROI.
Then why did we spend all that money on traditional print media in the past if there is so little measurable result? I, for one, did it primarily because my competitors were doing it. And my competitors did it because I did, and so on. In the past, advertising wars involved keeping a body count of pages published in specific publications. If my competitor was at ten pages, how could I not commit to at least eight pages to remain competitive? It’s a lot like a legal battle where the lawyers get all the money, and the clients slowly go broke.
The marketing wars have begun anew, but this time the field of battle is digital. There are several aspects of our battle strategy we will need to consider if we want our enterprises to prosper. The first is, our old nemesis, print media. Second is the awesome power of branding. These two weapons combined with an intelligent social media platform, will conquer the competition in record time.
Sorry techies, print media is critical and necessary. The marriage of print and digital marketing, when managed correctly, is the formula that produces spontaneous combustion.
There is a tipping point of web visits that is achieved, when targeted print campaigns support developing web based marketing strategies.
Traffic to your site needs to be substantial, if it is going to achieve traction and grow organically. The quickest way to do that is to market your web site via traditional print vehicles targeted to your particular industry.
Branding has such awesome firepower that smaller entrepreneurs are often swept aside by the sheer magnitude of it. Brands are the nuclear missile that atomizes the competition. Look, you don’t have to be a genius to know what a well-known brand represents to the consumer. Brand identity implies, “It may not be perfect, but at least I know what to expect”. Why else would you drive around a strange town searching for a Subway Restaurant at lunchtime?
The Internet has given entrepreneurs strange powers. With a lot of SEO work and a very small investment, an enterprising young business can create brand awareness in a short period of time that rivals the larger brand labels. In fact, there seems to be a group of consumers out there saying, “I like micro brands, they make me look hip and contemporary”. Of course, a strategy built around the concept of pretentiousness won’t go very far if the product is not rock solid.
In practice, I don’t believe we can expect to know for sure what the actual result of our investment is in marketing. However, we can directly measure our web traffic and extrapolate a return. Many sources of analytical information exist to measure the effectiveness of our internet marketing strategy. Google Analytics is probably the most popular source of web traffic information.
Summary:
1. Lay your hands on a sold brand name, or in the absence of a great brand, work really hard to create online brand awareness for your business.
2. Spend judiciously on a print media campaign. Advertise your brand and your web site in direct mail, newspapers, or anywhere else your target audience may see it. Important rule: don’t do any advertising that is not memorable. You are better off sending 100 post cards with a great design and a compelling message, than sending 1,000 that will not be read or appreciated.
Once you have achieved a critical mass of visits to your web site, you can begin to wean off the print media, slowly. Do so carefully, and only after Google Analytics demonstrates your number one source of web visits is the result of organic search engines.
Happy Hunting!
14 responses so far ↓
1 Business Marketing // Oct 11, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Remember, web marketing is a cumulative proposition. Business Marketing
2 Roger Ewing // Oct 11, 2009 at 7:41 pm
You are of course correct. However, the power of social media has dramatically increased the speed at which viewers find and accept new products and brands. Google, Facebook and the ipod are prime examples.
3 Jon // Oct 12, 2009 at 7:18 am
Another great message Roger. You are sharing clariity with this new normal. Many of us struggle with the the many moving pieces – thanks for the insight.
-Jon
4 Roger Ewing // Oct 12, 2009 at 8:11 am
Thanks, Jon. Glad you liked it. I am looking forward to seeing you in New Jersey in a couple of weeks. I will have a great presentation to share with you on social media. The results from our blog strategy are remarkable.
Best wishes,
R
5 Stephen Roesler // Oct 13, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Couple thoughts on your blog. First, your writing is clear, as usual. You have good insights but I am a little hazy on your thesis. It seems that you’re saying the best formula for high traffic and pioneering a brand name is through the marriage of print and internet. I read this below and had a little trouble.
“Traffic to your site needs to be substantial, if it is going to achieve traction and grow organically. The quickest way to do that is to market your web site via traditional print vehicles targeted to your particular industry.”
It seems to me that in my case, for example, we have indeed implemented print ad’s, but our organic growth stems from capturing our audience in like mediums. For example, we put something on a social network site and the audience goes to our main site. We post a blog and traffic increases. Our growth may be attributed to print in some sense, but it is not measurable. What is measurable, however, is the traffic generated online. Furthermore, everything I learned in school seems to indicate that marketing is achieves optimal growth when staying within a specific media type. Someone is online searching, for example. What do you do? You drive them to your site while they are using the internet – while they are a “captive” audience. To make an ad campaign most dynamic, we must achieve what advertisers call “legs.” You likely know what legs are – they do not necessarily break the campaign but they may tremendously add to it’s effectiveness. If we communicate our message effectively in many mediums with the potential to grow into more campaigns, we have legs. It is the goal, but again, I don’t think I would say print and online combine to make the strongest army. This is not to destroy print ads at all, they are still effective. But, I am not sure the quickest way to grow online is from print.
Also, the debate about ROI, I would propose, is more on the side of traditional media. If any media holds the most potential for measuring ROI, it’s online. Additionally, social networking online is relatively cheap, you are primarily paying for the man power to produce content and post information. So, I would say there is a relentless debate on ROI that remain inherent in the ad world, but it’s slowly becoming more measurable with tools such as google analytics the tracking power that online offers.
Your branding rhetoric is right on. Your whole blog is good, I am of a slightly different philosophy on ROI and print media.
6 Aaron Savage // Oct 15, 2009 at 3:16 am
Thanks for this, its great reading. The only thing I would take issue with is spending (and I probably mean disproportionate spending) on brand. You are right that brand is an enormous thing to contemplate, but the odds are stacked so highly in favour of an established brand that often it’s better not to fight.
To take your example, people go for a drive to look for a Subway restaurant in a strange town because Subway are enormous with a truly humbling brand building budget. Instead of trying to tackle that why not do something different and deliver food to the car. Just turn up in the car park with food and sell it as people are about to get in their cars. If your food is good enough they will keep buying it and tell their friends about it so you get more orders.
Then get press releases and write about how so much time is lost looking for and lining up in Subway when there is a great alternative that can be delivered to your car or office or wherever else you are. By focussing on these channels a brand is built up as a result of your direct response activity.
Richard Branson didn’t create the Vrgin brand with the first sales of punk music, he had been quietly working away on direct response and PR channels with fanzines for years before he ever contemplated music publishing. I agree with you that a great and memorable brand name is important but spending money on a brand is an expensive and long road to profit. Many people don’t have enough gas left in the tank to get where they are going. Focussing on direct response (and supplement with free PR and whatever else is cheap) gets cash into the bank, preserves profit and keeps the engine running on the road to brand.
7 Roger Ewing // Oct 15, 2009 at 11:05 am
Great response, Aaron. Thanks for that. You are correct in your assessment about brand. There is no way one can spend enough money in advertising to compete with a large well know brand name. However, social media has created an environment where brands can be created quickly and cheaply. You are spot on with your ideas.
I have a video that you may want to see that really makes this idea of brand creation online very clear. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8
8 Roger Ewing // Oct 15, 2009 at 11:10 am
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. You are correct in many ways. I am basing my blog on direct experience. I have a powerful brand name. I advertise in continually in print and digitally. We have created a platform that is a sort of blogging net, designed to capture SEO and to communicate useful information to micro communities. The growth of our blogging platform in terms of Google visibility has been astounding.
There are many examples of pure organic brand creation. My point is that to achieve critical mass for organic growth, one needs a means of “priming the pump” so to speak. For me print has done that rapidly.
Thanks again for the insight.
Roger
9 Print Media And Web Marketing Strategies « Think Homes & Land // Oct 28, 2009 at 8:23 am
[...] Broker Roger Ewing of Ewing & Associates Sotheby’s International Realty in California recently posted a blog about measuring advertising’s Return on Investment – particularly as it applies to social media. Roger states that a marketing strategy including print and branding, “combined with an intelligent social media platform, will conquer the competition in record time.” Roger’s Blog [...]
10 Brylee // Nov 10, 2009 at 5:44 pm
I wrote a similar article on this subject but you nailed it here.
11 Jeff Biebuyck // Dec 4, 2009 at 9:33 am
Great response by Aaron Savage. Here is another reverse approach… Ever hear of the Kogi Korean taco truck, L.A.’s latest culinary obsession? Brilliant approach of leveraging social media to create a BUZZ online and then, getting the “print” press after.
If you google “Kogi beef truck”, you will find a plethora of articles that went to print and pushed this small business into the coolest thing since, sliced… beef. Check this article out published in print in Newsweek; http://tinyurl.com/bo2cd4
It all started simply by the owners posting Kogi’s ever-changing whereabouts on Twitter—the popular site that allows users to share short mobile updates with friends—was practical: the average al pastor truck simply has no way to publicize its next stop. But it soon yielded unexpected benefits. When the cops shooed Kogi from one corner, the Twitterati would suggest another. When the truck was running late, a quick Tweet—”Give us 10 more minutes, yeah??? TACOS FOREVER”—would keep wavering customers in line. Followers were asked to design t-shirts and name Kogi’s vehicles; fan photos and YouTube videos were promoted on the official blog. The result—now called Kogi Kulture—is an exponentially expanding community of chowhounds eager to escape L.A.’s isolating psychogeography by connecting, both online and on the street, with clued-in fellow travelers (and the accessible Kogi crew). “I can cook for 100 people a night,” says Choi. “But Twitter can hit, like, 5,000 people a second. It’s word-of-mouth times a million.”
So, create a unique buzz and the rest will follow? Definitely I say YES!
One more thing, there is nothing that excited about a beef truck in Los Angeles or a Blender by Blendtec, http://www.blendtec.com/willitblend/
What is exciting is the approach, that subtle paradigm that creating a tipping point for a business. If presented to “The Mavens” properly, they will do the work for you.
Great article Roger, thanks for the great and well thought out blog!
12 Alex Beattie // Dec 10, 2009 at 7:04 am
Hey Roger… Print is dead. Or, at least that’s what Dr. Spengler said in Ghostbusters, and that was 1984!
Spengler was wrong 25 years ago and the mere thought of tweeting would be as likely as the Stay Puft marshmallow man terrorizing the Big Apple.
But I digress. These tools we embrace, (i.e., blogs, twitter, facebook, ning) are a new way of connecting to one another which ultimately paves the way for what one advertises on any medium for: a transaction.
I like the insight Jeff offers about the power of twitter because that is the essence of twitter—permission. The people following you on twitter don’t have to. They opt in.
Press releases—referred to by Aaron are a dangerous proposition. Especially in a world where we have so many choices and I can get the information I want. Press releases are written for a specific reason. They are written to get ‘press.’ They are entirely self-indulgent and self-congratulatory. The consumer doesn’t care anymore about what you claim to be. The consumer (or client in the real estate business) is in charge—not the person writing pr—this, again is why social media is advantageous to any organization that embraces it as marketing tool. If it’s real, if it’s authentic and doesn’t read like spam… then even the clients that are upset with you will buy from you.
Branding, on the other hand, is important. Especially if you are in the business of selling something that very few qualify for in the first place. Tacos, not so much. (no offense, Jeff, your analogy is brilliant)
The luxury market lends itself to a very niche oriented buyer and seller. Also, effective branding and marketing is not easy to achieve. It’s never been easy.
That is why with the help of an authentic social media strategy ‘married’ with print media is the road to success and essential to a luxury real estate agent… I’d also pay particular attention to Seth’s Blog post today.
13 Roger Ewing // Dec 10, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Thank you Alex for your insightful comment. Your observations are correct with regards to branding and the niche aspects of the luxury consumer. Rumors of the demise of print media are indeed premature. However, the print that will have such a short life span that we are forced to make literal print-bytes of our message if we want to be viewed as relevant in that medium. In so far as print is concerned, less is clearly more.
14 Micro-interactions in luxury marketing: Roger Ewing & Co // Apr 11, 2010 at 5:33 pm
[...] [Just found this pearl on Roger's blog: [...]
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