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Michael Radigan is vice president of interactive advertising at Javelin. Radigan’s team represent strong players that understand strategy, IA, creative and enterprise-level interactive solutions.

A long-time veteran of the online space, Radigan has worked on successful and award-winning campaigns for many Fortune 50 clients. Currently, he and his teams work with AT&T, ING, Mitsubishi and others to build smart user-centric solutions, regardless of the channel.

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How To Marry Social, Direct Marketing

Written on
May 19th 2008
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by Michael Radigan  |
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grouphug1.jpgADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — Because you can put a ROI to almost anything that is delivered online, and most social media interactions take place online, it’s natural to combine it with direct marketing.

To help you think about the marriage of the two, here are five social media topics from the perspective of direct marketers.

1) Everyone should not be doing social media

While direct marketing can help just about every business, it’s not so with social media.

Just because Company X has a MySpace page, YouTube channel, or a Facebook app, does not mean all companies should. Just because Gen Y spends time on these sites does not mean they don’t use Google or Ask.com to find things they want and need.

If you have a company that is easy to find online and offers products or services that everybody needs sooner or later, why waste your time with social media?

2) More than MySpace and Facebook

Social media attracts far more than Gen Y’ers, and it is a lot more than MySpace and Facebook. Check out AsmallWorld.net, or EONS.com to see the growth and understand the potential for social media to cross generational, demographic and socioeconomic lines.
Especially take a look at Capessa.com — this is a Web property created by Procter & Gamble to get an understanding of what “real women” are thinking and doing online. P&G doesn’t sell anything. They just kind of lurk. Imagine the insights they can learn just by listening — the research data from this alone is a bonanza for direct marketers, because from this we can figure out the best message to send to the most receptive groups.

P&G “got it” in regards to social media. First, social media is not directly about selling your products and services. Second, if users of your products and services have a lot in common with each other or a lot to learn from each other, and a social site does not exist for that group — create it! (Then shut up and listen.)

3) There is no formula for viral success

In my experience, if you want to try viral marketing, the best plan is the “noodle to the wall” process. Surely you remember how you or your friends figured out when spaghetti is done? If not, you should immediately check into the nearest college dorm room.

When dealing with such finicky variables such as “users,” it is best to minimize production costs and create as many variations of viral ideas as possible. Then take these tens or hundreds of variations and throw them against the wall to see what sticks.

How do you know what sticks? Keep it simple. Online questionnaires with several dozen to a hundred prospects for the site should give you a good idea. Pick the top several and build out sample sites and have closed, invitation-only beta tests. If one really seems to take off, open it up slowly to all comers, or better yet, get the founding members to set off a viral flame and see what happens. Be sure to monitor what’s going on carefully, and make changes or improvements that people seem to want.

4) Losing control of brand can be a good thing …

… unless your product or service sucks. That’s right, I said it. Why attempt to bring “viral” or “social” attention to your product if people can’t help but make fun of it?

The great thing about social media is that responses are immediate, worldwide and have no filter or libel concerns to it. But that’s also the greatest downside.

To help lower your risk, go back and take a look at the “noodle to the wall” technique (topic #3). If every idea you test results in people responding in ways you can’t stand then, well, maybe your product or service sucks in the social media world. Don’t fight it. Just accept it. And stay the heck away from social media.

At the company I work for, we regularly adjust traditional direct response marketing (direct mail, email, outbound calls) practices to social media. Because every action online can and should be tracked to some level, there is no excuse not to have a complete tracking and reporting solution in place that will give you daily or weekly scorecard reports on how your social media is performing.

What kinds of things should you track and report for social media? The same metrics apply for any online direct marketing efforts: clicks, views, duration of views, etc. But with social media you must also track and report on what is happening outside your social media site: blogs, forums, video sites, user groups, etc. The main difference is that the world you must track and report on is larger and, to some degree, more qualitative than quantitative.

The bottom line for social media marketing is that the principles of direct marketing apply perfectly: plan and test, execute as flawlessly as you can, measure all results and continuously improve based on what you’ve learned.



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Reader Comments.

Great article, smart perspective.

Posted by Julie Kennedy | 12:53 pm on May 19, 2008.

Awesome article and I plan to mention it on my blog, but I think you mean 4 topics instead of 5 in the second paragraph…unless I’m missing a “next page” link which is entirely possible.

Posted by DJ Francis | 1:21 pm on May 19, 2008.

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