Social media is helping many CMOs to address these concerns, but the tools and functionality associated with these platforms can vary wildly.
Here are five things CMOs should think about before committing to any social media tools:
- Sales Management Tools – Any social media management tool a company chooses to implement should have sales management tools, which deal with the distribution and tracking of leads. Understanding where your traffic comes from and where it is routed in your organization is paramount to understanding where your profits are generated.
- Information to Aid Product Development – A social media management tool under consideration should contain at least one mechanism that can directly aid product development. Whether this is a feedback feature or something more sophisticated is up to the individual organization.
- Distribution Channel Management – Social media platforms should provide common ground from which to manage distribution channels. The manufacturer, customer, shipper, and anyone else involved in the supply chain as well as data on their performance should be available.
- Customer Service Functionality – No social media tool would be complete without robust customer service functionality. Indeed, one of the initial reasons social media gained popularity as a corporate tool is the flexibility it provides to companies in terms of providing good customer service to their clients.
- Promotions – Finally, a social media management tool has to be able to handle the creation and tracking of promotions. An example of a tool that does this is GroSocial; according to their CEO and co-founder Zach Mangum, the GroSocial tool has a feature dubbed the ‘Promo Plus’ widget, which “…[lets] small business create a promotion on their Facebook page that incentivizes their page visitors to take certain actions for them such as liking their Facebook page, following them on Instagram, Twitter…along with ten other actions.”
Paying attention to these five specific concerns should help a CMO select the best software and tools for their particular organization. Social media has an immense power to assist marketing at nearly every level, and selecting the right platform for your needs will help you unlock that power and turn it into revenue for your business.
Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.
