We have a tendency in marketing to assume that new channels make old ones obsolete. For example, when email began to gain in popularity and effectiveness, many marketers concluded that direct mail was on its way out.

 

Oddly enough, email marketing, to some extent, became a victim of its own success. Spam grew at a faster rate than quality email, and soon customers’ in-boxes were loaded with so much garbage that system administrators all over the country became more aggressive at filtering out unwanted email. Unfortunately, a lot of good quality email, much of which customers had subscribed to, got caught in spam filters. Deliverability rates of email marketing campaigns dropped precipitously and the whole medium has lost some of its effectiveness. The net result is that direct mail, good old fashioned printed offers sent through the USPS, has made somewhat of a comeback. The death of direct mail was highly exaggerated.

 

Something similar is likely to happen to social media marketing and I think it’s already started. For example, I get many emails telling me that people have started to follow me on Twitter. These emails contain no information about my new fans, just a cryptic user name, which I can click on if I want to see who it is. What I have discovered is that a growing number of these “followers” are providers of porn and are probably signing up to follow tens of thousands of unsuspecting Twitter users like me. If this continues unchecked, I will not be a Twitter user for long because, as it turns out, I am not actively seeking more junk mail in my in box. I suspect you are not, either.

 

My own company has yet to generate any business from our social media efforts. “Old” methods like telephone calls, emails, speaking at conferences and networking still drive most of our business. When I started Real Results Marketing five and a half years ago, I resolved to go through my contacts and either email or telephone people in my network every month. To this day, most of the business opportunities we uncover happen through this type of work and former colleagues are still the richest source of consulting deals. It’s a real struggle sometimes to make myself take time out of a busy day to make those calls or send those emails, but they’ve proven so vitally important to our revenue stream that I don’t dare let up on these efforts.

 

I realize that most businesses can’t rely on the founder’s professional network as a primary form of demand generation. Bigger companies have their own tried-and-true methods for driving growth. Your company may utilize a sales force, telesales personnel, advertising campaigns, sophisticated database marketing initiatives and other tools for creating sales opportunities, and I’d argue that the importance of those approaches hasn’t diminished one bit in the face of social media growth.

 

Whatever has worked for you historically should still be the primary focus of your sales and marketing. You certainly want to stay plugged in to social media and, by all means, attend workshops, conferences and seminars on the subject. It might even be a smart investment to devote a headcount or two to doing nothing but experimenting with these exciting new marketing tools.

 

Someday, someone will master how to market effectively and measurably via social media. Once that happens, all of us in marketing will need to learn how to adapt those discoveries to our businesses and use them to drive sales and profits. Until that time, however, marketers should focus most of their resources on the tools they understand so they can live up to their primary responsibility of driving profitable, long term growth for their employers.

I have joked that I have become the leading advocate for “antisocial media marketing.” I’m actually a big supporter of these exciting new channels – just not at the expense of marketing techniques that have been proven to work. Nonetheless, my less extreme position on the subject probably means I won’t be voted the most popular speaker at marketing conferences in the future. I’ll just to have to be sure I stay one step ahead of the lynch mob and keep making my networking calls month after month.

 

I hope your business is thriving. You may be hearing from me soon.