Your 10 Slides When Pitching Social Marketing Internally

(Part 1 of our series: Getting Started in Social Marketing)

I love the end of June. The dog days of summer bring a combination of family vacations, kids home from school, and weather that makes it hard to stay locked underneath uv lights. Budget wise, it also means the end of Q2, or even more importantly, H1. This is the time companies look into their crystal balls and decide where to scale back, and where to increase spending.

We’ve heard the same question for the last few years at this time. It always starts somethng like, “I know we want to do something in social this quarter, but I just don’t know what. And I don’t know how to free up a huge amount of budget for it.” The biggest difference between 2007 and 2010 though, is by now SOMEONE inside your organization has likely launched a Facebook page or Twitter profile. The number of employees actively blogging about your industry is significantly larger. And the press has caught up, joyfully adding employee blog and twitter feeds for their background research.

So if you are looking for some simple message points for a powerpoint deck to take control of your social marketing, here are a few sections I'd go with.

1) Where are we? It seems like such an easy question, but I’ve gotten solicitiations from people asking us to “start” a social medi aprogram for them. Meanwhile, they haven’t gone thru the due diligence to check all around the web to see where the company or its customers already have an official or unofficial presence. Start with the audit.

2) Who are we? Locked in the file cabinet in every employee’s office is the official positioning statement and messaging of the company. It’s great that everyone internally has a vision of what they want the company to stand for. But then there’s what the public thinks your message and positioning are. If these two things are wildly divergent, it’s a good place to start the process.

3) What are our competitors doing? Is this an area where you are losing market share by not paying attention the same way your arch enemies do, or is it a place to gain market share by leaving them in the dust?

4) Who do we copy? Let’s face it. Even by stealing money from print, radio or TV, you’re still going to be hard pressed to find 6 figures to put into a quarterly social program. So before handing the keys off to an agency, why not peruse the efforts of these agencies and see what works for you. For example, check out Comcast and Alaska Air for customer support, REI is integrating social and traditional advertising, and Starbucks is taking customer feedback and trying to make a multi-national company feel like the coffee shop next store. Then there are your own local pubs, wineries, taco trucks and snowboard shops making this look easy. Put together a list so your bosses can show that this isn’t such a scary proposition.

5) Who SHOULDN’T we copy? The real trick in budget requests is finding that number that doesn’t seem luxurious, but also allows everyone to sleep at night. Find examples of companies that are completely blowing it, either by a lack of quality, or an obvious excess amount of time being spent on negligble return. Two quick eamples – search for “Nestle Facebook” or “Motrin Momy Blogger.”

6) Who wants to own this? Social marketing isn’t easy. If you are doing a good job, you should get overrun with comunication from your influential customers and those who want to evangelize. So where should this live, should be it cross-functional, and how senior should the leaders of the program be? Getting the effort spread across the company turns this from a marketing campaign to a corporate philosophy. Also, you probably wouldn’t ask a 21 year old intern to shoot your TV campaign, so why would you put them in charge of your forward facing communication with customers? And who cares what division someone is in if they are the happiest, most dedicated employee in the company. Find the people who care most, then figure out how to set them loose.

7) How we know we’re successful? Every company has a set of metrics that go deeper than sales and expenses. And there are now more than 50 tools to measure the level of conversation about your brand in social channels. If you can get a little eductaed about what these tools can tell you, you can tell the powers that be exactly what you want to get measured on.

8) How does this fit in our current Marketing Plan? Your company has been marketing for years. It’s been successful, or you wouldn’t have a job. So don’t ask social marketing to go live in it’s own silo, away from the talented folks who have been driving messaging, positioning, campaigns and advertising for a long time.

9) How much is it going to cost? Is this a $500k annual project, or can it be done with existing resources and some consulting help? Do you have creative people to throw at the project, or is this going to take a whole new development shop? Can you manage the community aspect with current people, or will you need to bring in and train up a set of Engagement Leads? If the questions above have been well-answered, this kind of falls out pretty easily.

10) Selling the dream. End the deck by showing what the future looks like. Happy customers evangelizing the company, insightful employees supporting their employer, a thriving marketplace where creativity and ideas reign supreme. Unfortunately, most people start with this slide and never sell the details.