UZoom Media's Online Marketing Blog

Turning your old boss into a young marketing savvy CEO

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Interning at an Internet Marketing company and studying social media in school, it never occurred to me that there are many naïve people who don’t understand social media’s importance in today’s market. Just recently, my friend, who is the marketing and advertising manager at a real estate firm, told me her boss doesn’t believe in the benefits of social media. Everyday is a challenge for her to debate and explain the necessity of social media and how powerful of a tool it is for their business. Does this sound familiar to you?

Maybe you had an epiphany reality check that the brick and mortar business you currently work at needs better advertising or more distribution outlets. Maybe as a young employee, you are (finally!) trying to convince your boss that you NEED to make a presence in cyber-space.  Or maybe you spent an entire business meeting explaining to your boss the difference between Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus and why these tools are NOT a “one size fits all” project.

Sometimes, like my friend, it can be difficult to get your (old) boss on same page as you. Does he or she still use Encyclopedia Britannica over Wikipedia.com? If this is the case, good old hard facts could be very persuasive. Here are a few to start:

• Pepsi dropped TV advertising for the 2010 Super Bowl. Instead, they invested in a $20M Social Media Campaign. (After 23 years of Super Bowl ads!)
• Dell has attributed over $6.5M in revenue directly to Twitter.
• In 2009, 91% of Inc. 500 companies report using at least one Social Media channel.
• Best Buy has over 2,500 employees helping customers on Twitter as part of the Twelpforce initiative.
• 53% of the Fortune 500 has at least one active Twitter account.

On another note with Internet advertising, businesses are able to allocate money smarter and more efficiently than with traditional advertising. With the powerful tracking tools available today, it is easy to track the number of people exposed to your ads online. Internet advertisements enable your business to detect specific details of each ad such as profit by impressions, clicks, and ROI. Information like this allows you to tap into personal information and create extremely targeted and profitable ads. This becomes much more difficult when advertising through traditional channels such as direct mail, newspaper, and TV.

In terms of CPM (cost per thousand views) Network TV is the highest paying medium with $28 CPM. Newspaper and magazines come in second with a CPM of about $17 and radio is third with an average of $10 CPM. Digital media has only a $2 CPM! Provide your boss with these hard facts to prove how much cheaper it is when using online advertising. 

In today’s generation social media and social networking overpowers all other forms of communication. People log onto Twitter instead of watching the news. When the earthquake hit the Northeast I guarantee young Tweeters (Twitter users) were the first to find out. Social Media is able to give and receive information in real time. To us, not having social media is like not having a radio in your car.

So unless you live on a small island where citizens use telegraphs to communicate, I suggest you find the marketing savvy within you and convert your boss into the social media guru he/she should be.