Know your market
The mantra of marketing, since, well, marketing began, is "know your customer". This has ballooned into a multi-million (if not billion) dollar per year business centered around customer polling, website metrics, and customized marketing platforms to touch every potential customer. And yes, we're vying for our piece of that pie.
Skimming through the headlines of one of my favorite blogs (CRM Outsiders) I've been surprised recently by the number of articles (ok, only two in five days, but still) that are popping up about CRM and Social Media. The first one that caught my attention was about start-ups using social media as an effective marketing tool. Basically, the idea of the article is, that while you still need to focus on quality of work and traditional media outlets, social networking sites offer great word of mouth advertising that can't be beat for the price. The next article that caught my attention was an article on social network proliferation and migration and its perceived benefits for marketers. I took a bit of a different spin from the articles than I think the authors intended. The gist I've gotten from the article is that while there are networks with several million users (Facebook, Twitter and the like), there are also specialty networks popping up left and right, attracting very specific audiences.
Advances made by companies like elgg, ning and SocialEngine show that there is a huge demand for products to support niche social networking sites. "Out of the box" installations or setups of products like these often include advanced functionality like instant messaging, other network friend finders and built-in advertising compaign support, making them very attractive to low-budget entities that need to provide such funcitonality to a small group, but don't want to trust an outside entity with their data. Often overlooked, these types of smaller community sites may be a new point to tap in advertising campaigns, and for those that offer free or low cost of admission to their users may prove valuable resources in the long run.
The moral of the story? Sometimes, the broadest stroke advertisements are good. Sometimes, doing a little digging and providing pointed advertising can pay off, too.
