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Introduction

When this book was originally written only a few years ago, business owners and marketing executives were only just starting to realize the power new media marketing strategies could bring to their business. CEOs and company executives were just beginning to step outside their corner offices, take down the corporate walls, and open themselves up to the public on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media channels. Customer service teams were just starting to leverage new media channels like text messaging, blogs, and live chat to remedy consumer complaints and provide real-time solutions. And marketing directors and creative teams bravely opened the door to their world by allowing actual consumers to create television commercials, submit ideas, and even become brand ambassadors on sites like YouTube.

At the very core, marketing in the new media revolves around catering to today’s consumer’s demand for control. Control over the information they receive. Control over when they receive that information. And control over how they can respond to it.

Opening yourself and your business up to the public through new media channels can be intimidating and in some cases even frightening! It can mean putting pieces of yourself out there, online for the entire world to see … for good or bad. No matter how daunting it may feel be to get started, participation in the new media world is no longer an option for business owners, it’s a requirement. Whether you want them to or not, consumers will be using new media strategies to find information about you, whether they are sharing feedback about your product on an industry blog, or posting a review on their favorite shopping portal. As a business owner or marketing executive, you also want control. And in order to stay in control of your reputation, brand, and messaging, you need to be part of the online conversation.

Throughout this book you will read a few case studies and “lessons learned” from companies that jumped into the new media space without adequate forethought, resulting in some brand-damaging results. However, you will see even more case studies about companies that have leveraged new media successfully … so successfully, that the efforts literally helped catapult them ahead of their competitors, gain more customers, and in one case, even helped to win the US presidential election in 2008.

Now more than ever marketing teams and business owners understand the importance of seamlessly weaving elements of new media into their marketing mix.

This book provides an introduction to combining traditional and new media effectively to strengthen your company brand. We’ll take a close look at case studies that combine television, radio, and/or print marketing with Internet and mobile marketing elements to make a huge impact. We’ll look at how you can use Internet marketing to enhance your company image in the public eye (as well as combat any negative publicity). You will also learn elements of successful website design, and how to analyze web traffic reports and online customer behaviors on a deeper level, so you can make informed decisions about how your campaigns are performing and how customers are interacting with your brand. We’ll explore how to get a mobile marketing campaign (using SMS — the short messaging service to send text messages via mobile phones or wireless devices) off the ground and explore why big businesses cannot afford to ignore this new “uncluttered” advertising medium.

Finally, in this second edition of Marketing in the New Media, you’ll see a whole new chapter on social media (see Chapter 3). In this chapter, you’ll get insights, case studies, and even a few “lessons learned” on how to leverage yourself, your company, and your brand message through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, and others.

What Defines Traditional versus New Media Advertising Methods?

Throughout this book, when I refer to traditional advertising, I am specially talking about “offline” marketing activities such as radio, television, print ads, billboards, and other outdoor advertising. New media advertising includes promoting your company through new technology such as the web or through mobile devices such as cell phones or iPods.