New Dog, Old Tricks

Something that I should make note of before proceeding with my blog; I am employed as a ‘Digital Marketer’, with the vast majority of my role being solely focused on marketing within the digital landscape. My initial reaction after watching Professor Mark Ritsons keynote presentation (even after just hearing about the tone of it) was defensive. After all, my role does of course involve a significant focus on social media- mostly specific to paid advertising within this space. However, he does make some very strong points…

Marketers are often drawn to the “shiny new object” (or social media platform in this case)- often driven by an urge to stay current and relevant, as well as competitive and “cutting edge” in what is an ever increasingly competitive market. Is the problem that social media channels aren’t appropriate for marketers to be involved in, or are marketers simply approaching their strategies within these channels wrong?

So many Marketing professionals (qualified professionals) still don’t know how to create an effective strategy for their business or clients within social media. In fact, some of the best users of social media for marketing purposes that I have seen in my career to date have been business owners with no marketing background or training/education. It comes from a strong knowledge of their target audience and how best to engage with them in a non-disruptive manner, and reflecting the same values held by their target audience (as small business owners often begin with a passion themselves for the particular product or service they are making a venture out of).

So why is it going wrong for so many marketers and businesses? There are of course many reasons. I believe a major one however is approaching social media with a traditional marketing mindset. So to an extent it can be argued that some social media marketers might be “poorly trained”, but “idiots” not so relevant. The age of social media of course pre-dates any education or training specific to the medium. So yes, when it comes to putting in to action a social media marketing campaign, even for a marketing professional, there may be a bit more guess work involved than with traditional advertising where there is much more literature, case studies and so on to refer to for guidance and expectations.

The more we work in this space as marketers, the more we will learn about it, and the more we can teach others about it. 4 years ago when I began my undergraduate degree in marketing and advertising, there was no talk of digital- and certainly no units dedicated to it. 4 years on and I’m studying a unit dedicated to social media marketing. Armed with this knowledge I will (hopefully) be able to effectively execute marketing activity within social media. All learnings are gained through actively seeking, and participating in the topic which you want to learn about. From a business perspective it may seem silly to persist with marketing in a space where there is no measurable ROI, but the marketers aren’t idiots for trying.

As with every new medium there is a period of learning how to interact in that space with consumers, and as marketers it is our job to figure out how. What may seem fruitless for some businesses now is providing a foundation for future activity through learning. Time to learn some new tricks with the new dog!