MarketingSherpa recently published an interesting chart displaying the results of a study exploring how highly marketers ranked social media as a marketing tactic versus email and search marketing, which have been around much longer.
The chart shows that almost all marketers (97%) agreed that social media will complement other marketing tactics like email and search, while a large percentage (88%) of marketers also agreed that social media will become a standard tactic for most companies (with 74% predicting social media will eventually have its own budget line item and staff).
Only a small percentage (24%) predicted that social media will displace email marketing in targeting prospective customers, and an even smaller number (12%) predicted that social will displace email marketing when communicating with existing customers.
Here's a link to a large version of the chart.
At the end of the day, what's needed is a holistic strategy of the kind we preach here at eLawMarketing that utilizes each online marketing tactic in a manner that follows "best practices" and maximizes ROI. In general, for law firms, we find that email marketing is most suited to marketing to existing clients and referral sources (simply because these subscribers are accustomed to receiving emails from attorneys at your firm on a regular basis), while blogs and social media are more effective at marketing to prospective clients, the media and other unknown parties.
Comments