As for the social marketing aspect, I think the term “social marketing” is becoming more focused on things like blogs and forums and social networks, etc. By this definition, you are right in that it is not for all niches or companies. Still, the concept of Social marketing has always been there and in its true definition, it should never be ignored by anyone. Building a good reputation with your company and your brand should never be ignored (even if you are trying to be discrete with yourself). Social marketing is not required, but I cannot think of a niche market where it could not help.

Cheers…matt

I agree with you that social networking may not be appropriate for every company or every landing page. Other things being equal, I think we share the same core philosophy: the point of landing pages is almost always to keep people focused on a very specific goal, and you want to be very careful about distracting from that mission.

That being said, I think there are creative ways in which social networking might actually be able to help achieve that objective.

One way would be to move the social networking component to be AFTER the conversion. And to actually promote that as one of the bonus reasons a respondent should convert. The offer becomes something like, “Sign-up to download our free white paper on [topic] and network with other professionals implementing this in their company.”

In this scenario the social networking interactivity exists on the fulfillment page. It’s no longer a distraction, because you’ve already achieved the goal. But from a branding/bonding perspective, it’s a great opportunity to reinforce your firm being at the center of [topic] in the mind of the respondent, get them further engaged, etc.

I think there could be a lot of interesting variations on this theme. Frankly, I’m as curious as anyone to see all the imaginative ways marketers might start to merge direct response marketing and social media marketing.

What do you think?