AMA Social Media Event

I was in San Francisco last night attending a social media event entitled, “Advertising, PR, and Marketing Suck! Now What?” hosted by the American Marketing Association. The event had a good line-up of speakers including Guy Kawasaki, Renee Blodgett (President and Founder of Blodgett Communications), Louis Gray (from louisgray.com), Loic Le Meur (Seesmic founder), and Steve Patrizi (VP of Sales, LinkedIn). Guy Kawasaki did a great job as the moderator and made the event fun, interactive and informal with his witty questions. Here are some of the highlights:

What would you do if you had a great product in a niche and zero dollars in marketing?

Reach out to your personal network such as friends, family, and colleagues and possibly get some thought leaders to use your product. Focus on the second tier of bloggers, make them fans of your product and they will market the product for you at no cost. Invest in building a community by being honest and transparent; however be aware that this takes time. Release your product as soon as possible, learn from mistakes, and be honest to your consumers about fixes. Another idea is to find your consumers on Twitter, follow them, and engage in conversations. However, be careful, since you are walking a thin line between good marketing and spam here.

What would you do if you now had $10,000 dollars in marketing? How would you put it to use?

Hire a community relations intern to listen to your customers, actively respond to every piece of feedback, and turn customers into advocates. You can also try creating a fun video of your product and distribute it virally. Thousand dollar press releases are an option too, but only for communicating major changes. One should also invest in targeted online marketing with Google AdWords. Louis Gray has seen success selling even $350,000 products using just AdWords.

What is role of an advertising agency specializing in social media for big companies? Should they just do it on their own?

Everyone agreed that advertising and PR firms add significant value. Especially since big companies need to change old ways and adapt to social media. Often CEOs come from a technical background, and an agency plays a critical role in getting the messaging and branding right. However, simply hiring a firm is not enough  –a company has to commit resources to working actively with the agency on responding to the feedback received from customers.

What would you do if a small handful of people are attacking your company on the web (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc.)?

If the complaint is genuine then acknowledge and communicate what you are doing to fix it. However, if this is some aimless ranting, then learn about who they are. Often such people have few followers and it is not even worth your time to respond.

In summary, the big difference between traditional marketing and social media is trust. No one trusts a brand, but we trust what our friends say. Word-of-mouth and viral marketing in the social media world have an unprecedented opportunity. However, social media is not end-all. Instead, it is new infrastructure, which augments traditional marketing in a way never seen before. Before one had twenty influencers to reach, now we have thousands! Nevertheless, marketing’s main purpose, like before, is still to get the messaging and branding right, identify target customers, and act on feedback.