Marketing Myopia

The following Essay is from Daniel Cano, MA Marketing Communications Student:

"I read an article the other day by Theodore Levitt (Harvard Business Review, 1960) on the “Marketing Myopia” and realized that his theory was still applicable in today’s buzzing media industry, if not even more so.

A plethora of companies nowadays are soaking up buzz words and they all think they ‘need’ to incorporate Social Media into their marketing strategy and by doing this, they often end up having pages or groups that do not generate any value.

Therefore I must impress upon these companies to consider why are they setting up a social media page or presence in the first place; is it for fun, for networking purposes, to create awareness, to generate traffic to the company’s/ personal web page, to generate more sales or just for the sake of having an account?
If your end goal is not clear then it should be an obvious sign not to embark upon an activity such as Social Media that can not only be costly, but draining on your resource.

As the HBR highlights, petroleum companies are not just in the petroleum business, they are in the energy business, “virgin trains” are not just in the train business but in the transport business, which mean that those companies have a wider scope and a better definition of what market they are competing in.

Focusing on social media, the example of an individual whose main purpose is networking, the definition of its goal is not only randomly attracting as many followers/fans/friends as possible, but rather targeting people that the individual wants to connect with, and who is relevant to his business. Again, when the main goal is to generate more sales, is important to make clear who is going to buy, not all of the social media users are potential customers. My view is that even the people/companies who do not care about who are following them on social sites should establish a prototype of the people who will see the content of the pages.

The content uploaded to social sites defines the company’s persona and helps to mould an image of how they would like to be perceived to the outside world.

Therefore the content shown on a social media page should be linked to how the owner want to be perceived and be relevant to its viewers, even more when the account was created for business purposes.

My advice to brands would be to ensure that you are active, dynamic and constantly update your social media presence and avoid being myopic. Ensure that you have a real purpose for using a social media tool from the beginning, if it is to network and increase your brand awareness make sure you are targeting to a specific target audience and not grabbing every single person who is surfing the web!”