Web 2.0 Expo 8 - Social Marketing

Michael Lazerow, CEO at Buddy media gave a presentation about Social Marketing here at the Web Expo conference.

His presentation can be seen here:

http://www.slideshare.net/lazerow/social-brand-marketing-for-web-20-presentation/

Check it out – especially some of the cases are quite interesting.

Basically Lazerow’s point was that social advertising SUCKS!

It sucks because it just doesn’t work to throw banners in the face of people interacting on Facebook and other social networks. The old advertising model where you basically shout your message to your audience is dead and does not work in social networks.

What works is social marketing which is all about engaging in conversations with your customers. A conversation which can be more or less sophisticated and integrated with your CRM systems, but nevertheless a conversation where your customers participate by their own free will and because it creates value for them.

Lazerow then talked about the App as the new add. Apps are not only Facebook apps, but any kind of social network applications, where you use social components as part of your marketing and communication with your customers. These apps can live in Facebook, Orkut, Bebo, Myspace, Linkedin or even in your own community networks. Apps can also be integrated with existing webservices like iLike, Tripadvisor etc. etc.

Lazerow then showed some interesting Facebook App cases from FedEx, New Balance and Bud Light. Check them out in his presentation.

Finally Lazerow talked about how to generate traffic to your app, which from my perspective actually was the most interesting part of his presentation.

Lazerow basically declared the viral marketing of apps dead. Today there are more than 25.000 apps on Facebook, so the chance of your app becoming a viral success all by itself is almost none. Apps like any other product in a multi-product world must me marketed and it order to have success with your app you need to market it heavily and be willing to pay the cost of this marketing.

Marketing of apps can take place both within and outside the social networks, but Lazerow specifically mentioned that his company often used other popular apps to market their own apps.