Summary: Where does Social Media fit into the traditional 4 Ps of Marketing? — 5th P of Marketing (Participation) — What are the first 4 steps in social media engagement for any company?
Click pic above to see the Social Media Cycle of Participation
If you were wondering where does Social Media Marketing fit into the classic “4 Ps of Marketing” model, check this out. Traditional 4 Ps of Marketing encompass Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Social Media as well as social networking sites enable the Promotion aspect, especially the Word of Mouth part of it. (Related question I posed on LinkedIn Answers — 44 answers). Subsequently, the Word-of-Mouth component enables the 5th P of Marketing – Participation.
So, if you’re a company wondering whether you should engage with your users through social media or social networking, here are the first four steps one should follow (marketers, listen up), all of which culminates in the 5th P of Marketing – Participation.
1. L – Listen
* Where are your customers online/offline?:
Blogs, Social media tools (e.g. LinkedIn Answers), Discussion Forums, Twitter, etc…/Events
* Monitor these conversations:
Use a central tool to track the different conversations happening around your company. Most online conversations are RSS enabled, barring a few Yahoo! groups that don’t support RSS. Use a RSS reader (e.g. Google Reader) to gather all these conversations into a central repository and create a folder that you check on a daily basis.
2. A – Awareness
* Calculate Brand perception within these conversations
– News & Blogs (Google search, Google Blog search, technorati search)
– Keyword mentions & incoming links
– Corporate Blog (Unique users, hits, trackbacks, comments)
– Brand Scoring system (similar to brand attitude survey)
(Source: Clickz article)
3. M – Measure
Any social media presence of your brand can be calculated by simple methods (example below):
* ROI of corporate blogging (Resource: Charlene Li’s new ROI of corporate blogging study)
4. P – Participate
* Create a strategy around how you wish to participate
* You have the following options:
– Be where the users are
– Facilitate easier means of communication with them
– Create brand evangelists
– Be a source of information on the company
– Respond swiftly and honestly
– Start publishing content
– Stir internal company conversations
– Improve product and user experience
(Brief outline/excerpts from last week’s keynote presentation at the Online Marketing Summit)
Quick Update: Another blog post on my presentation by Kelly Abner from Marketo – Click here
Filed under: Business Blogging
Mario Sundar's Speakeasy 
[…] מקור: Marketing Nirvana […]
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Hi Mario – great idea! I think that companies need to become truly customer-centric in order to succeed with the 5th P. Would love to discuss with you sometime! More thoughts here: http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2006/12/product_price_p.html
Let’s work the idea into a book and become the 21st century Ries and Trout…Sundar and Kim?
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[…] מקור: Marketing Nirvana […]
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Great stuff, Mario. I hadn’t read Charlene Li’s piece either, so this is like a two-for. Thanks for the great post.
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Mario – nice recap of the customer centric marketing model. I heard great feedback on your presentation at the Online Marketing Summit. Thanks for posting here.
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Peter,
I’m totally open to the idea. Let’s chat later… Nice post, btw. Esp. since it looks like we’re on the same page here 🙂
Chris,
Charlene’s ROI study is the most comprehensive I’ve seen. If you know of others, please feel free to share.
Bill,
I’ve had a chance to meet with some great audiences (~ 250 or so) and I thoroughly enjoyed. It looks like I’ll be speaking in a couple o places in the east coast over the next couple of months too.
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Thanks Mario. This is a great review of your presentation at the Online Marketing Summit in Palo Alto that I attended.
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This is a great blog! I don’t always think about participation as being one of the 5 social media steps. I really like your customer centric marketing model. It really helps to see the entire picture. Keep posting great information and I will come back to learn more.
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[…] 5th P of Marketing – First 4 Steps in Social Media Engagement […]
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This blog taught me how the 5 p’s affect business profits and failures. In the article I read, the business watched over each of the p’s equally and the business is doing good. I think that business should continue to preceed watching the 5 p’s because it will help them become succesfull
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