CEO Series: 5 Tips for helping “make the case” for Social Media Marketing in 2012

With 2012 around the corner, many companies are analyzing the opportunities for marketing within social media. Frequently, the first step is to make a case to corporate marketers or executive management for social media marketing. This includes identifying key resources (both in house and agency or technology partners), applying budget allocations to the proper channels, and identifying both a solid policy and strategic roadmap for social media. Many marketers fear the internal pitch more than the actual implementation of the strategy. Below are 5 tips to help corporate and/or C-suite understand the significance of social media marketing for business in 2012.

1. Create Urgency
   Utilizing tools such as Google Alerts, Social Mention or Radian6 can help monitor the social media “misses” that are most likely already happening. Frequently, we can spot missed opportunities for engagement around the brand through this listening process. Simply set up alerts for the mention of your company’s brand name or products. This will demonstrate that the conversation is already taking place.
2. Competitors
   It is very common for a company to launch a new marketing initiative solely due to the strategy of the top competitor. Sometimes the simplest way to obtain high level buy-in, is a competitive analysis.
3. Create added value with Social Media
   Unfortunately, just having a presence on Facebook and Twitter is not always valuable enough for corporations to build a team and allocate budget dollars toward social media. However, additional important targets within social media can become difference-makers. Consider opportunities such as: lead generation, hiring and recruiting, product launches, viral video opportunities, customer service and more.
4. Integrate Social Media
   C level executives and corporate marketers need to understand new media in order to allocate resources. Often, they feel overwhelmed by buzz words and lingo around social media and online marketing. If social media marketing is integrated into the overall marketing strategy, following similar company goals and processes, it can be more easily adopted. In order to do this, it’s important to create a social media policy as well as a strategic road map including company approved key performance indicators and marketing goals.
5. Track and Analyze
   Smart marketers typically utilize dashboards and data analysis. In order to obtain buy-in for social media marketing, it’s important to get the right people involved. Using tools like Google Analytics, create custom dashboards tracking social media programs in an easy to digest format. Important metrics include referring traffic from social media sources as well as engagement metrics within social sites. These dashboards can help paint the picture for social media as a marketing channel and an important part of the integrated marketing plan for the company as a whole.