Successful social marketing requires dedicated resources and support from Leadership

Strike up a conversation about social marketing with senior leadership and chances are they will roll their eyes and tell you a story about someone posting something to a Facebook page. The reality is that very few understand how to implement or integrate social marketing within established marketing channels.

10 reasons why social marketing efforts fail:

1. Leadership is comprised of non-marketers. Face it, very few in the leadership suite have come from the marketing side these days. Because social marketing moves at such a fast pace, they have not kept up with new platforms and strategies for customer engagement.
2. Mindset that social marketing does not apply to the aviation industry. This is a baby boomer perception. Generation X and Y entering the workforce today have grown up with social marketing and use it to make informed decisions.
3. Underestimation of time and resources needed. Social marketing is about delivery of valuable content. There is no button on the keyboard that magically produces content. Authorative content is developed from research, customer insight, and the creativity of content developers.
4. Are not staffed with the skill set. The administrative assistant or college intern is not trained to write for the web or develop engagement strategies.
5. No clear responsibility. Social marketing is a joint effort by everyone in the organization.  If there is not a leader with access to the executive suite, then social marketing will take a back seat to other departmental priorities.
6. No content strategy. Posting bits of news feeds, pictures of the company  picnic or articles from trade journals does not define a leadership position. Valuable content is based on industry knowledge and customer insight.
7. No strategic plan. Jumping straight into tactical execution is a recipe for a short social marketing experiment. What are you trying to accomplish? How will you get there? How will you define success?
8. No library of content to work with. This is probably the quickest way to short-circuit a social marketing effort. Without a library to draw from, the pressure to constantly produce content will sap energy and lead to burnout.
9. Valuable content is buried in email archives. Adopting a different way to share and access information across the entire organization requires investment in different processes and platforms than are currently in use.
10. No ROI data chains. Management won’t support anything for very long without a way to determine if it’s working or what resources should be allocated toward it.

Aviation manufacturers that have implemented successful social marketing programs have had to adopt a different point-of-view about marketing in the digital age. Engagement, conversation, and content are the new currency for gaining access to customers.

I’m interested in hearing from my fellow aviation marketers. What have been your greatest challenges in implementing social marketing? Please share your experiences in the comment section below.