Social Media Marketing

John Hope-Johnstone

At HPR Internet and Social Media Marketing Seminars we not only coach corporations and organizations to market their brand by using social media and other Internet marketing tools, but we also help them develop integrated strategies for their marketing. The two key words are “help” and “integrated”. If there is anything the last three years have taught us, it is that unless social media is integrated into a complete marketing strategy, including as many of the marketing tools as economically possible, its likelihood of success does not rise above the level of “brand awareness”. The other key word is “help”. We have found that if HPR develops the strategy solo it has less adoption possibility than if it is born out of collaboration.

Another discovery is the disturbing rise of a split in some marketing departments into legacy and Internet marketing under one individual and social media marketing under another.

The marketing industry has spent a lot of time working to get all the marketing tools under one leadership. One VP/Director of Marketing who conducts all of the instruments (tools) of marketing, not just a couple. Today, we hear more and more use of such terms as “marketing and sales”, “marketing and social media”, this is a backward step and leads to a bunch of marketing silos and should be discouraged. Sales is a tool of marketing just as social media is a tool. Social Media may fall under the PR department (in fact we believe it should), but it is a tool none the less. The fact is, there are many heads of marketing that really don’t understand social media and are confused by its role in the total marketing picture.

At HPR we encourage campaigns that integrate all the tools of marketing to create a maximum effect. Our collaborative strategies are often campaign oriented rather than only about brand awareness. Our campaigns utilize legacy media such as print, TV, radio, (where applicable), and Internet and social media marketing.

We don’t discourage ongoing “brand awareness” marketing, in fact, we believe it is vital. However, we develop our strategies around campaigns/promotions that involve a beginning a middle and an end and that are highly targeted and always have built in objectives and analytics to measure success. In this kind of marketing environment using as many of the tools of marketing that a budget will allow, being highly targeted, and highly objective oriented, the campaigns are nearly always successful.

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