Selling Social Media

Web-based social media advertising is in its infancy—but that doesn't make it child's play

Earlier this year, five agencies pitched a pharmaceutical account over the course of two days. By the end of the second day, one of the agencies got the call: “Congratulations—we’ve assigned you the account.”

The reason: according to my source, of all the agencies that pitched, it was the only one that had included a social media proposal as part of the recommended campaign. For the client, that was the deal-maker.

Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Sermo, and others are quickly becoming mainstream. The Web-based discipline of social media advertising is so young, however, that best practices for pitching it are only just beginning to emerge.

To find out more, PitchSmarter interviewed Helen Klein Ross, a writer and founder of Brand Fiction Factory, a pioneering digital storytelling/marketing firm. Ross speaks nationally on social media topics, earned fame developing a Twitter persona, based on the “Mad Men” TV series, that attracted thousands of followers, and blogs regularly as “Ad Broad”, an Ad Age Top 150 blog. If anyone in these early days is a veteran of social media pitches, she is.

Toe in the water. Don’t assume clients know what you’re talking about when you speak about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Sermo, and other social media. Relatively few clients have first-hand familiarity with social media, particularly among the older generation. “They’re new to the experience,” says Ross. For them, there’s both the fear of the unknown and the reluctance to admit they’re not social media-savvy. Ross says one secret to getting clients hooked on social media is to help them stick their toes in the water, then and there. Ross does things such as set up a Twitter account for clients on the spot during a pitch to show just how easy it is. “You need to think of the pitch as a training session,” she says. (Don’t try this with Facebook, she warns, and be prepared to deal with Twitter’s ‘fail whale’ every once in a while.)

What’s scariest about social media to clients is the loss of control over message and image. They need to be reassured that they can speak in these media without being shouted down or ridiculed. They also need to be reminded that the genie has already been sprung from the magic lamp. “You’re already out there, even if you haven’t made the concerted effort to be out there,” says Ross, “and it’s better to make the effort to control what’s being said about you, because you are definitely being talked about.”

Indeed, no social media pitch can afford to omit a search of Twitter mentions, or a look at what’s already on YouTube that uses the brand’s name. Ditto for competitors. The issue isn’t whether social media can affect the brand — they already do — but rather how the brand is going to participate in the conversation.

Quash the notion that amateurs can do it. There’s a widespread perception among clients, says Ross, that since the youngest people in the agency world have the most experience and involvement with many forms of social media, they should be the ones handling social media advertising. “They’re under the impression that it can be done by kids”, Ross says. That, coupled with naivete about the impact social media can have, result in interns becoming the ones posting the company’s Tweets. “Handing your social media to an intern because he knows how to use Twitter makes as much sense as trusting him with customer service because he knows how to use a phone,” says Ross. That’s about as scary a Hallowe’en nightmare as a marketer should ever have.

Clients need to recognize how profoundly consumer-initiated dialogue about their brands can influence choice, and ensure that their part of the conversation reflects the true essence of their brand. Few twenty-somethings have sufficient marketing maturity to do that well. Social media need to be pitched as integral parts of the overall brand outreach effort, not as one-off tactics.

That means social media belong in the advertising world, not the world of PR, according to Ross. “That is my biggest bugaboo,” says Ross. “I’m so tired of PR taking all the social media budget. Nothing against PR, but they don’t have the advertising background, the birds-eye vision of the entire campaign. They think in a completely different way. In advertising, you’re trained to look at everything from the perspective of the brand.”

Money talks. According to Ross, the hardest part of pitching social media often is getting funding. The major frustration of people trying to sell in social media isn’t that clients don’t like it, or don’t appreciate the creative efforts involved. “Clients love it in the presentation, but then there’s no money for it in the budget,” says Ross. “We’re still in this pocket of time in which it’s difficult to prove return-on-investment (ROI) for social media.”

To help clients include social media in their budgets, agencies should try to ensure clients think of it not as a separate silo, but rather as part of the core marketing plan, along with print and TV. “Your Twitter can pimp your Web page, which has a link to your YouTube videos of your commercials—it’s all connected.” Social media, says Ross, are more like brand advertising than CRM or direct. “There often isn’t an immediately obvious ROI, but over time it shows a distinct benefit to the brand.”

There’s also the misperception that because the media ‘buy’ is free—that is, if you’re participating in an existing community rather than trying to set up your own—content generation for it shouldn’t cost anything, either. “The strategy isn’t free, the creative isn’t free, the thinking isn’t free, but the service is” on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media channels. Make sure clients understand that crafting engaging and authentic stories that transmit brand values in just 140 characters a shot can be every bit as challenging and valuable as writing a great 30-second radio or TV spot (although clients will save a lot on production costs). Ross cites a recent American Association of Advertising Agencies study that suggests social/digital media creative is actually more expensive than traditional, because the content has to constantly change and adapt.

What do clients asks when Ross pitches social media? “‘Do you think it has a future?’ That’s the most frequent question,” she says. Today, she adds, clients often don’t know enough about it to know what to ask. That’s changing rapidly. The way things are trending, it’s not unreasonable to expect social media to be part of every pitch conversation. The sooner you’re fluent, the better you’ll pitch.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 9:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.