FAQ

Why call your book Social IMC?

IMC stands for Integrated Marketing Communications.  Today, consumers are driven by what I called the “3 Any Challenge”.  Consumers want relevant content any time, any place and using any media they prefer to use.  To meet this challenge, it means companies need to have digital strategies which create a knowledgebase and are focused on the individual and their desires, needs and wants.  It also implies we need to understand their media preferences as well as design content which is highly relevant to them.

Social IMC is a proven strategy which fulfills the challenge of the “3 Anys”.  This marketing strategy is designed to embrace all of the prospects and customers in a target market and build a 1-to-1, big data driven relationship with them.  It is designed to link to your sales and marketing database to allow you to separate customers from prospects to allow you to develop a unique content strategy for each type of individual.  It also allows for real-time marketing as individuals return to visit your private virtual community or your company’s web and social sites.  When developing a name for my book, Social IMC represents the pinnacle as a Social Strategy with Bottom-line ROI and profits.

Who is this book designed for?

First, the book Social IMC is designed to be used by executives who are managing businesses and start-ups.  It gives you the perspectives, digital strategies and methodologies you need to quickly integrate social and mobile into your business strategy.  Whether you are a CEO, CFO, CMO, CIT or other C-level manager, Social IMC gives you competitive advantage in today’s digital marketing world.

Second, the book is designed for entrepreneurs who are in start-ups.  In a start-up, you need results fast.  Investing dollars in building a social strategy which does not immediately build a prospect database and allow you to see its ability to produce sales is a waste of your precious time and limited resources.  The Social IMC book will show you how to select the best business strategy to use social marketing and mobile technologies to immediately being achieving the goals you established in your strategic plan.  Social IMC allows you to invest with returns and positive ROI from day one.

Finally, the book is designed people managing the social strategy and mobile strategy used by their organization.  Social IMC gives you the concepts and social tools you need to establish the performance funnels, KPIs [Key Performance Indicators], and holistic strategies you need to best grow market share and build stronger customer relationships.  The book also shows you how to best identify areas within your digital strategy where you need to test new content, pages, or segments to improve the performance of your digital marketing strategies every day.

Can educators use Social IMC to teach digital strategy?

Social IMC is also an effective marketing text for colleges, universities and even high schools teaching business, marketing, and entrepreneurial courses.  The book not only teaches your graduate and undergraduate students the digital strategies they need to succeed in today’s real-time marketplace, the book also uses videos to show the different social strategies at work.  To make it even easier for the educator, the Social IMC website has the videos you need to teach each concept to your students.

Is Social IMC being used by business trainers?

Businesses and governmental organizations are purchasing Social IMC to help train their senior executives and marketing managers.  Social IMC is perfect for training seminars and is used to show marketing, customer service, and business managers how and when to develop different social strategies.  Our focus on business results and real-world examples allows management to quickly learn how best to manage your social and mobile investments.

What do you mean by a Holistic Social Strategy?

Many companies attempt to build their social strategy one site at a time.  They create a Facebook page, then a Twitter site, then a Pinterest site, etc.  Each site is viewed as a different social channel each with unique content and little relationship to the other sites.  In addition, because many experts tell business executives there is no ROI from social media, they view these sites as discrete investments with only an intuitive ROI for the organization.  This is a ridiculous way to build your business strategy.

Social IMC finds most successful organizations deploying proven, profitable social strategies are first defining their high value markets using social monitoring and traditional analytics and then developing a holistic marketing strategy to engage each market on the specific social and traditional media they prefer to use.  Social IMC moves your business towards the “Any” challenge.

Why not just create Facebook and other social networking sites as my social marketing strategy?

There are many points discussed in chapter 2 of Social IMC.  The biggest challenge to a Facebook centric strategy is Facebook comingles all of your markets – high and low value – on a single site.  To further complicate matters, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or LinkedIn develop anonymous relationships between your organization and your “followers”.  You don’t know if an individual is a suspect, prospect, customers, competitor or just an opportunity seeker.  The result of this anonymous relationship is you cannot prove the return you are receiving from your social investment.  In addition, your content strategy is to develop and deploy new content strategy, serve it up to the comingled market on Facebook, and then hope the right markets read it.  Not really an efficient way to engage your high value markets.

Why be consumer-centric or customer-centric in developing our digital strategy?

The “Any” challenge implies we need to “serve up” the right content to each individual who engages our business.  This means we must know who they are and their relationship to our organization.  In the book, we discuss how to build personas which defines the consumer experience, establishes their value to your organization, examines their likely product purchase propensities and establishes their position in the product purchase lifecycle.  Using these insights and targeting systems in the right social strategy allows you to tailor every contact – across your website, social sites, and integrated marketing efforts – to maximize results.  Social IMC shows you how to become a real-time, persona driven marketing organization.