Ask them if they have ever studied marketing?
Further to our previous article we shall now look at what social media marketing is within the context of an organisations advertising strategy.
Most SEO guys don’t see themselves (let alone understand), that they work under the marketing department. SEO strategy and efforts should be part of the overall promotional efforts of the organisation, with its own budget and KPI’s. People get
seduced by the technology and the hype without seeing it as an extension of existing activities. Somehow the same rules and disciplines that apply to a normal advertising campaign don’t apply to SEO. Efforts are not co-ordinated and somehow by throwing money at it and writing lots of articles and vlogs will double sales? Quite often this is an unrealistic expectation.
Link social media to the rest of your organisations activities.
The same marketing rules apply for most organisations. It takes normally 6 forms of contact before achieving a new sale (exchange business cards, follow up phone call, on-site demonstration, quotation, negotiation, sign off). On-line maybe some of the touch points along a customer’s journey but not all. If that is the case, then at what stage does your on-line strategy mesh with the physical world. Does someone visiting your website automatically lead to them filling a “contact form”? (My guess is very minimal unless you operate in a high demand niche sector). Does that contact lead get entered into a CRM system? Does that prompt a follow up call or maybe an on-site demonstration? Is a quote generated, tracked and negotiated to close the sale? If an on-line presence enhances that process, then at what stage does that fit in?
Social media is not the silver bullet.
Most SEO people wouldn’t even understand what I’m talking about, nor see it as their responsibility. Yet if the whole process is not mapped out or understood, you get disjointed messages and things falling through the cracks making that “customer journey” not as smooth as it should be. This then determines the budget and the amount of effort that should be applied, rather than “oh, you need to write more articles”. SEO is not a silver bullet and careful consideration needs to be given into what it can and can not achieve in terms of the model of business and the existing channels that exist to attract new customers.
Next in the series we shall have a look at “social media and Google rankings”.
