How Social Media is Changing the New Marketing Mix
image credit: Dice and Diamonds
By turbocharging conversation with customers and market influencers, social media has made public relations central to the marketing mix in ways it never was before. Marketers now are powering their stories first through “earned media” via narratives developed in PR campaigns; next through “owned media” to tell their stories directly to their audiences; and, finally, through advertising and other forms of “paid media” that extend the reach of those stories. The marketing mix is rapidly changing. In the old world of top-down marketing, paid media (advertising) was dominant. Owned media such as direct marketing and corporate web sites merely extended the one-way communication advertising mindset. And earned media – public relations – was often relegated to a company’s publicity department and viewed as a “want-to-have” supplement versus a “must-have” element of the marketing mix.
