Don't be Social without a Plan

Carwashes, detailers, fast lubes and car repair facilities have begun to pop up with regularity on social media sites, even if a large percentage of these business segments still lag behind other retail services in Web presence and site development. While a small percentage of these companies have optimized their Web sites and actively communicate effectively with customers online, there is a large percentage of social media business users who have bypassed building a meaningful Web site in favor of jumping head first into social media without giving much thought as to why.

Spouting off at 140-character increments may be fun and easier than crafting a Web site that truly serves as an online extension of your brick-and-mortar business, but doing so without goals or measuring the success of your efforts is a poor strategy to follow.

Ideally, the use of social media platforms should feed your primary Web site, which should lead customers to visit your physical store. This is not a simple strategy, nor can it be perfected in 140 characters or a silly two-minute YouTube video. But it is an important point to ponder because your marketing messages need to reach your customers, and your customers more than likely are increasingly hanging out online.

Nielsen reported in August that consumers are spending 43 percent more time on social media than a year ago, making social networking and blogs the top online activity, followed by online gaming and e-mail. The growing importance of social media sites to advertisers is obvious, but how to harness the medium effectively continues to elude the grasp of most businesses, not just those in car care.

According to national survey results released this summer by the Direct Marketing Association and COLLOQUY, U.S. companies that use social media primarily to enhance customer loyalty spend almost twice as much in their efforts as those that use social media for brand awareness, customer acquisition and other marketing purposes.

In fact, the amount of social media budget marketers allocated to loyalty objectives increased 293 percent during the last year. That jump in investment easily surpassed increases for all other social media-related marketing objectives and is understandable given the state of the economy and the need to entice more spending from your best customers.

What may be more significant, however, is the apparent widespread lack of planning and blind throwing of money. Nearly one-quarter of survey respondents didn’t know what percentage of their company’s overall marketing budget was spent on social media. More alarming, smaller companies, with tighter budgets, were more likely than large companies to indicate they spend almost 50 percent of their marketing budget on social media.

And yet, when asked to identify the most important measure of social media success, nearly two-thirds of respondents selected “don’t know.” Blowing half your marketing budget on any medium without following any clear objective is a waste of valuable resources that could be more wisely reinvested back into your business.

I’m all for being social. Many of these sites are entertaining to use and offer an enticing and effective way of communicating directly with valued clients. But any investment of money, labor or productivity is pointless without a clear idea of what you want to achieve and a reliable method for measuring your results.