Social media marketing is not a replacement for other forms of marketing


Relationshipmarketing When talking about social media marketing, many people look at the social media themselves, focus on the seemingly endless opportunities of social media marketing and forget the global picture.

Many people also seem to look at social media marketing as a replacement of other forms of marketing.

That is one of the reasons why I don’t want this blog to become known as some social media marketing hype kind of thing but why I try to focus as much as I can on the integration of social media marketing with other forms of marketing (like email marketing) and on the cross-fertilization that social media marketing enables when you use social media the right way and in the right phases of the customer life cycle.

Yes, in social media marketing, people (customers, prospects, partners, fans,…) are key and relationships are crucial but this does not mean that social media marketing is some kind of relationship marketing 2.0.

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A multi-channel approach to email marketing

When we talk about communication or marketing channels, we’re really talking about all of the different avenues available to reach the target audience(s).

A list of possible channels might include email marketing, direct mail, social networking (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), blogging, online search features, advertising, article/editorial placement for educational purposes (in industry trade or consumer media outlets), exhibiting and conferences or trade shows, face-to-face communication, etc.

Integrating channels into an overall campaign isn’t simply about using more than one of the channels listed above.

It’s better to think of “integration” as incorporating a “multi-channel” approach to the campaign at hand. 

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