How Reach Of Social Networks Helps Marketers?
We know that many marketers and media agencies act like reaching consumers is the most important mean in the marketing value chain. Why I disagree it’s all about reach?
I know that reaching consumers is important too, but it’s a mean to an end. Reach is a term introduced by media agencies many years ago, but in my opinion reach is definately not always the holey grail!
I think massive reach can be powerful. But I also feel that reaching a targeted (niche) group consumers can be very interesting. I’ve also learned that reaching a small group of social influentials can be even more interesting to a brand.
Maybe we could even assume that the people reached by ads, do not always move into any direction at all? So creativity in ads is important to create emotion. And emotion is the next step towards engagement. And from many cases I have seen that engaging consumers drives purchase intent much more than just reaching people.
For Pros that believe in both reach and engagement, the InfoWorld article What social networks can do for users and marketers might be interesting. What do you feel marketers should do with social networks?
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Daan Jansonius March 2nd, 2008 at 23:00
Great article Igor, I completely agree.
Reach is great, but if it doesn’t lead to anything more there isn’t much use.
You can reach the homepage of Digg, get thousands of new visitors, but if none of them stick around, have a look at your site, add it to their rss feed, buy something, or whatever action is desirable it’s ultimately pointless.
Just thinking in terms of reach is the old way of marketing thinking and one I’m hoping most marketing practicioners are moving away from.