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Social Media: A Tactic Seeking A Strategy

September 14, 2009 on 11:16 am | In Advertising, Marketing, Media, Social Media, audience, demographics | View Comments

Every time some new tool comes on the scene that possibly could be used in marketing or advertising, organizations jump on it with no forethought. The tactic du jour is social media. A recent survey indicates that a majority of media buyers are adding social media to their 2010 budgets. According to the 2010 Media Planning Intelligence Study from the Center for Media Research,

57.7% of respondents “ideally” plan, and 56.3% “realistically” plan to include social media in their media plans next year. That finding is significant, because it shows the rapid speed with which social media, including social networks like Facebook, micro-blogging services such as Twitter, and other new and emerging formats connecting people to each other online have taken a precedent with both consumers and marketing and advertising industry professionals.

Now, if you ask these buyers why they want to add social media to the advertising mix, you won’t get much in the way of solid, credible support for getting on the social media bandwagon. They want to be there because it is all the rage. Hello, people! What happened to hard-nosed number-driven media planning?

I ran across this piece from ClickZ Columnist Sean Carton, who agrees with me that this trend is worrisome. Says Carton,

Sure, plenty of clients (and prospects) I’ve spoken to in the past year or so made vague noises about viral video or being on Facebook or tweeting, but when I’ve pressed them for why they want those things, few can give me an answer.

They have been hypnotized by the steady media drumbeat extolling the virtues of social media. They, too, are probably being pressured by clients and organizational higher ups to add social media to the plan, strategy or not. It is up to us to help determine whether social media makes sense for our organizations. And if it does make sense, what should our approach be? Like every other media decision since time immemorial, your target audiences will direct you to the appropriate decision.

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The part that scares me, Harry, is that this surveyed polled media buyers and advertisers. So we have a rush to social media simply because it’s the “IT” thing combined with a “broadcast, not dialogue” mentality.

Buckle up…

Comment by Scott Hepburn — September 14, 2009 #
Agreed. Tactical thinking from a media buyer’s perspective will hurt the social media space.

Comment by Harry Hoover — September 14, 2009 #
I agree that strategy must always come first. However, I don’t believe that strategies should be created the old-fashioned way – sitting in a room with a lot of assumptions about what the “target audience” wants. For me, the best first step is doing a comprehensive social media assessment of your ecosystem – your customers, your company, your partners and your competition and all of the “places and spaces” they are in. Look at your product and your category and see what people are already saying, where they are saying it and who the influencers are. Once you have that information, then you can build a strategy.

Comment by Catherine Sherwood — September 14, 2009 #
[...] written about this often: strategy should drive tactics, no matter what type of business you run or what type of program you are planning to [...]

Pingback by THINKing » Social Media Confuses Businesses — November 3, 2009 #
Isn’t this what advertisers always do?

They discover some sort of current trend, and next thing you know, they’ve blown it up, saturated it and now the population has already moved on to the next big thing.

In the end, saturation leads to this.

Comment by Justin — November 5, 2009 #

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Social Media: A Tactic Seeking A Strategy

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