Ask someone in your marketing department to go to the front of the room and sell you your company ’ s product or service . You will be shocked — and disappointed . Social media has blurred the line between sales and marketing . Selling is part process and part art form — just as marketing is . But they are two different processes and require two different artistic talents . What to sell to your community ? Use a sales person . I ’ m ok with marketing owning the social sales process as long as marketing is willing to adopt a revenue goal for that new channel . Suddenly not so interested in owning a sales channel ? I didn ’ t think so .
Big data ( derived from social and mobile sources ) can be used to determine the relationship between discounting and propensity to purchase , or nearly any other consumer-oriented fact ( if the data collection process are set-up properly ). In the first edition of this column we used it to identify our perfect customer ; in the second edition we used it to identify the perfect pattern of interactions and which consumers were most likely to conform to it . Too often marketing departments adopt social campaigns that do little more than offer discounts and coupons , training consumers to wait until that next discount is offered before they make that next purchase . Marketers do not make very effective data scientists — even though they now control more data than almost any other department .
Sales , customer service , product development and nearly every other department brings some specific and unique piece of information to the table that can positively impact the corporate-consumer relationship ; the average marketing department repackages this for reuse across the digital landscape . This is no small thing . It is a core competency that highly effective big social mobile enterprises rely upon . But this skill is useless of each of the other areas of the organization are first doing what they do well .
Their functions — and knowledge — is critical if an organization wants to use its digital initiatives to convert consumers to customers — too use it to create tangible results . Which is to say , if an organization wants to use social for more than just happy birthday coupons , advertising and product information ( with the occasional cat video mixed in ). And it won ’ t be long before social is required to deliver quantifiable results that equate to greater revenue and profit , not just more friends , downloads and data .
The realization that marketing may not be the best place for these digital initiatives might run against the grain , but ask yourself what you are really after with your social initiative ? What are all of those tweets , posts and pictures actually getting you ? At the end of the day it has to be more than just goodwill .
So , at this point you are expecting me to offer up an alternative — to tell you who should own social . My answer ? Marketing .
22 Strictly Marketing Magazine July / August 2016