High Value Adopters Gone Social

Should the still limited universe of corporate participants in online communities dampen the interest organizations have in adopting social media marketing in their external communications mix?

It's an issue that comes up in nearly every sales presentation I have given during the past 18 months.  And it's a fair one. 

Marketing leaders in business-to-business and public sector oriented companies continue to struggle with the appropriate resource investment for a channel that reaches a fraction of their targeted audience.

Even in vertical markets like government with significant adoption of social media by the customer and partner communities, the non-participants still far outnumber those engaged.  For instance, there are hundreds of thousands of buyers, yet only 35,000 have signed on to Govloop. 

There are a near equivalent number of prospective teaming partners, however govWin and the Federal Contractor Network combined offer access to only about 40,000 users.

My counsel to clients is two-fold:

1.  Social media should be considered another channel to reach key audiences, yet does not replace traditional communications activities such as advertising, event participation and sponsorship, public relations and direct marketing.

That being said, consistency in messaging, as well as a credible amount of cost efficiency can be gained through the appropriate re-purposing of promotional content for social networks.

2.  Social media participants tend to be early adopters, often vocal in their support of vendor solutions and influential in the buying interests of their peers.  This makes them of great value to organizations seeking a measurable ROI from their marketing communications activities. 

By ROI I'm referring to lead generation, cultivation of prospect relationships and deal capture, rather than merely brand positioning and awareness.

Ultimately, this is the reason why I believe the shift in influence from traditional sources of credibility (i.e. trade press, industry analysts, conferences, etc.) to social networks and online communities will continue to accelerate.  It's the most engaged and opinionated who have gotten social.