What recession? Social Media Profits Are Exploding Right Now!

By now, most businesses have come to understand that how and where the public consumes (and now interacts with) media is changing, but few consider the long-term impact of the subsequent shift in dollars. The changes in how customers connect with products and services is transforming the way you need to market to your industry. To say that it is changing "quickly" is an understatement!

Social Media is exploding by the month, so the same tactics that worked the previous fiscal quarter have evolved several generations in this quarter. In particular, the large corporations and larger ad agencies are burdened by too much sluggish infrastructure to respond quick enough and are dragging in the dust in the rear view mirror.

Unless you have a dedicated Social Media person on staff (or outsource your social media marketing campaign to experts like Covenant Designs), it is frankly changing faster than many companies can comprehend. This leaves even the best-intentioned companies generations behind in their taking advantage of social media marketing opportunities.

The economy is an easy scapegoat; most people conveniently blame the recession and are simply awaiting the recovery out of laziness, fear, or a lack of other options. The truth is that there are amazing opportunities right now for short-term and long-term profits for companies that position themselves properly in their marketing.

For the first time in history, the most important entity in the media equation is the advertising agency and its marketing strategies.

Yes, you heard that right!

Historically, advertising agencies have always controlled where ad dollars are spent. But times have changed. Media budgets now include social media marketing. Advertising agencies control how many media dollars are being spent in media as compared to social media -- a completely different industry. In most cases, dollars spent within the social media space are dollars not spent with a traditional media outlet--TV networks, newspapers, or gawker-esque blogs. The media dollars used to pay an agency (whether a social media shop or an international giant) to create, manage, and grow a Twitter profile are media dollars that once funded a banner campaign. The money used to pay an agency to create a brand's own viral site content and then get that content bookmarked on the homepage of Digg once funded a TV campaign. And so forth.

Marketers may not all completely understand what it is or how to do it, but they want (and need) social media. Savvy companies that will survive the economic downturn all want engagement with their consumers, they want conversation with their target market. They aren't getting these things on NBC. They aren't getting that on CNN. They aren't even getting them on NYTimes.com.

The age of interruption is over. No longer should your company's value proposition interrupt a TV show or article. It will be placed where people want and need it. In other words, you will not attempt to gain marketplace mindshare by force, but rather by attraction.

The "interruption" mentioned above refers to interrupting the consumption of traditional media with advertising. That interruption is over not because the media world is changing its branded executions, but because brands have moved past the era of traditional-based advertisements.

This development is very significant. For advertising agencies, it means they need to be creative and learn how to advertise within the social media world. Today's smart marketers are doing a very good job of that. The media world however, can't change that fast--and the marketing executions (ad dollars) themselves are actually being removed from their airwaves, pulled from their pages, and nixed from their websites.

Talk to the icons of advertising and you will hear them uniformly say that "traditional media outlets are freaking out." They should be. They no longer offer as much value as interactive media online and on cell phones and so they have been bypassed. Today's average iPhone user, for example spends more time each day getting information through his phone than through newspaper, TV, radio, magazines... combined.

What characterizes the successful business of today.. and of tomorrow? Expect change, embrace change and prepare for change. Evolve with the times, not against them. Shred your old business model and don't wait to react. Instead let industry changes inform how you change the way you operate.

Got expertise? Got results? Got strategy? Let Promise Productions show the way with effective online marketing and social media campaign management. Call 972-822-3587.