Social Media Marketing as Part of an Integrated Marketing Strategy

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working social into the mix
Social Media Marketing as Part of an Integrated
Marketing StrategyW o r k i n g S o c i a l I n t o T h e M i x Pa g e 2
executive summary
contents With detailed planning and execution by an experienced agency, social media marketing (SMM) can be a valuable channel within integrated marketing campaigns, complementing Executive Summary 3 and enhancing the results from other efforts.Problem Statement 4 problem statementRejected Options 6 With the explosion of social media in recent years, brand marketers and agencies are struggling to figure out how SMM Solution 7 fits into the total interactive marketing and advertising picture. Can SMM be effectively worked into the mix as part of an Implementation 9 integrated marketing campaign?
Conclusion 11 rejected optionsContact 11 Treating social media marketing exclusively as an "experimental, viral" channel that has no relationship to your primary marketing Sources 12 efforts and messaging is a flawed strategy.
solutionA social media strategy that seeks to develop long-term messaging channels in social media allows SMM to be a powerful, trusted channel for any brand communications, including short-term campaigns.
implementationDiscuss the key elements of an effective social media strategy that allows for deployment of integrated media campaigns.
conclusionA smart social media marketing plan looks beyond "viral" and sees social media's potential to add viewers and better statistical insights to integrated campaigns. An interactive agency with experience in SMM can offer marketers the social media expertise to make SMM work as part of a complete brand strategy.
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executive summary
Brand marketers are just beginning to tap companies from developing social media as a the potential of collaborative, community- more robust marketing and advertising channel focused websites, known collectively as social that can be integrated with the rest of their media or Web 2.0, as a communications marketing plan in cross-channel campaigns. medium. Early attempts to integrate social These marketers report inadequate support media into the marketing mix have often from traditional marketing vendors in their treated social media marketing (SMM) as SMM efforts, as traditional agencies often an experimental, "viral" channel that exists try to apply traditional tactics in an online outside the organization's primary marketing environment that is typically hostile to those and advertising initiatives. attempts.
These viral initiatives demonstrate a willingness Detailed planning, execution and reporting to innovate and can provide excellent of SMM by an interactive agency with SMM feedback on extreme changes in creative expertise can make social media a viable direction. However, the unpredictable nature and powerful channel within an integrated of viral success and the uneven return-on- marketing campaign, complementing and investment when such efforts are successful, enhancing the results from other efforts and make it an inadequate long-term SMM increasing ROI for the entire initiative.strategy. In addition, attempts to fake viral success by artificially promoting the content via paid "power users" (a technique known as "gaming") offers questionable value at best, outside of large, temporary spikes in extremely low-converting web traffic.
While brand marketers increasingly understand the need for ongoing participation in social media, the lack of dedicated time, resources and expertise in the medium hinders many
Make It Green. www.LeapFrogInteractive.comW o r k i n g S o c i a l I n t o T h e M i x Pa g e 4
problem statement
Unquestionably, social media has taken the Some brand marketers may still be wondering web by storm over the last few years. As why they should go to all this elaborate Internet users flock to community-focused, effort in the first pla... [download for more]