Marc Andreessen claimed that, “Software is eating the world,” in 2011 with the rise of the software revolution. Does it mean that it is the beginning of the end for social media marketing agencies? First let’s define the term ‘software’ and how it affects the world.
Second, how does it play a role in digital marketing? Finally, how can social media marketing agencies incorporate software to become profitable instead of being doomed?
Software and how it affects the world
Software companies are categorized in two; as an application or as a component. As an application, software companies interact directly with end-users and provide endless effort to build an end-user customer base with marketing and support. As for component, it provides services that can be leveraged by other companies with a smaller customer base but an opportunity to cast a wider net to a much larger total user population through networking with other companies. In a nutshell, you are the supporting actor by offering a component and you are the lead if you are offering an application.
The majority of businesses today have integrated software and are delivering online services, from the movies industry to agriculture to even national defense. Amazon; the world’s largest bookseller is now a software company where its software engine sells virtually everything online and no retail stores are needed. Netflix is the largest software video service company with Comcast and Time Warner following suit. Meanwhile the Music industry has flourished with a growth of revenue from 2% to 29%, that’s $4.6 billion in total in 2010 for the Music Industry in the United States. Skype was bought by Microsoft for $8.5 billion became the fastest growing software company. Software is slowly consuming the value of chain industries such as software-run engines or the shift towards software-powered driverless cars that are perceived as the primary existence in the physical world. Software is already or slowly becoming part of our lives.
Software and Social Media Companies: Who will affect who?
Digital is now installed in everything we do, it connects anything and everything. Consumers in particular don’t think offline or online, in their perspective it is just part of their daily lives and society labels that a brand should have a name and a face. Thus, social media marketing agencies cannot escape this part of change in life. Google is the largest direct marketing platform is already a software company then others will follow suit. Software giants like IBM is already making moves by making multibillion investments in digital marketing especially with Silverpop: a cloud-based digital marketing provider that unifies marketing automation, email, social and mobile. So who needs social media marketing agencies if you have Silverpop?
Software can be a good thing after all.
Here is the good news. It is not all downhill for Social Media Marketing Companies, the key part of ‘survival’ is being able to adapt. There are a lot of improvements that can be made and here are a few ideas:
I. Network: Agencies grow by word of mouth especially the traditional marketing companies and to entirely rely on this is a big mistake. It is best to maintain a simple automatic marketing system such making use of Search Engine Optimization or SEO: the action of optimizing a website or a web page in order be easily accessible and located by companies around the world using different search engines such as Google with Google AdWords. This is a good way to ‘getting the word out there’, letting people know of the existence of your company.
II. Communication and Employee tracking: A lot of time can be saved by selecting an efficient way of communicating and tracking projects. Project management software such as Asana is a good example to track projects and communication with your co-workers. It lets your co-workers what are you working on and the deadline of a particular project. Other examples are Trello and Basecamp.
III. Accounting: An app called WAVE reduces ongoing accounting cost especially with account packages that includes invoicing, accounting, payroll and payments. It works as your personal accountant.
IV. Brand Awareness: A Social Media Marketing Agency should have the tools to provide and share content with an efficient content strategy to be distributed to various social media sites. These contents can be easily shared at a large scale through automated software such as IFTTT or Sprout Social. Create a LinkedIn account for your company, build a Twitter following and develop and maintain a content based blog that creates credibility to the brand. It’s time to get your brand out there.
V. Reporting: Agencies are usually judged heavily on their reporting professionalism. Clients and agencies are relationship driven and it is very important to show transparency in the reports and data collection. This creates greater trust and faith between agencies and clients.
At the end of the day
In conclusion, software is slowly eating the world as claimed by Marc Andreessen and maybe someday, one day the software revolution will eventually engulf companies in the field of social media or digital marketing and the world completely but it is up to the companies whether to indulge or ignore the software revolution that determines the success of their agencies.
