Can Social Networking Help You Reach Executives?
June 26th, 2009 by Bob Bly
Not according to an article published this week in BtoB’s Vertical Insight Guide.
The article reports that only 20% of senior executives belong to one or more social networking sites — which would seem to indicate that all the noise about marketing with social media is either misplaced or premature.
If you want to reach senior executives on the web, your best vehicle, according to the article, is webinars, which 77% of C-level execs listen to at work.
Close behind are blogs, read by 58% of executives, and streaming videos, watched by 56%. In addition, 41% listen to podcasts.
And how do these senior executives spend their time at home? Blogging? Participating in virtual worlds like Second Life?
No — 76% say they watch television after work.
So TV advertising may not be as old school and archaic as the new media evangelists would lead us to believe.
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June 26th, 2009 at 8:57 am
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June 26th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Interesting read. Thanks!
June 26th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Bob,
I don’t play golf but I like to watch golf on TV on the weekends.
I especially like analyzing the B2B commercials. The good ones always have a URL that goes to a direct landing page (i.e. company.com/offer).
I would say that if you can measure the response to a TV ad — and you’re reaching your audience — then TV is a good use of advertising dollars.
However, most companies simply send people to their home page, which is what I cover in a newsletter I wrote some time ago:
http://www.dhcommunications.com/free/mcn1007.htm
June 26th, 2009 at 11:12 am
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June 26th, 2009 at 11:47 am
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June 26th, 2009 at 11:55 am
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June 26th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
That’s good to know, but Social Networking can help you reach Influencers who recommend products to Executives.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Morgan: who are these influencers? How many of them participate in social networking? How do you know?
June 27th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Bob;
I think this study clearly over looked LinkedIn. Nearly ALL executives use the site to connect.
In fact 100% of the Fortune 500 has executives on LinkedIn.
Mike
June 29th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
I’d like to echo what Michael, above me, said.
Linkedin has been a very powerful tool for me to connect to top level execs for a long time now, if done right you can really boost your revenue by rubbing shoulders with the peeps on Linkedin.
David