“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one." – Jane Howard, British Actress, Model and Novelist
A few months ago my wife and I sold our house and moved to a home on a nearby gated estate, a home we had never dared dream we could own. But as of today, we’ve been living in it for three months. Here’s how it all came about:
We were thinking of buying a small beach flat as an investment but were battling to get any joy out of the rather un-ambitious estate agents in the small town where we live. Slowly one emerged however, not because we saw his ad in the classifieds or found his office at the mall. We became aware of him because of a runaway car. Thomas’s house is situated at the bottom of a small hill on our block. One night, a car’s handbrake failed and the vehicle rolled headlong into his garage, demolishing one whole side of it. Thankfully no-one was injured - the incident was humorous to say the least.
Thomas was our next door neighbour and one evening while walking our dogs, we stopped to inspect the damage. Amongst the “casualties” was a stack of peg boards that estate agents use to advertise show houses. Thomas, we thought, was a nice guy for an estate agent. Moreover, he was philosophical about the incident and dealt with it in good humour. Over time we established a rapport with him, smelt his braai from time to time and good naturedly asked whether we were invited – even when we clearly weren’t. He had a beautiful bull-dog called Winston who made friends with our dogs...and we even timed our walks to coincide with Winston’s daily patrol of the garden perimeter.
These sorts of friendships are formed in our communities all the time. They’re probably formed for similar reasons in yours. People became mates or acquaintances because they have something in common. Groups form and dissolve over common interests and needs, no matter how trivial or transient.
But here’s the point. We didn’t meet Thomas as an estate agent. He was the guy next door before he was someone with a job or a service he could sell. Though we met him as the victim of a runaway car, the incident was the gateway to a “he seems like a nice guy, shouldn’t we see if he can help us buy a house” discussion. It wasn’t long before Thomas was hot on the trail for some property.
Though he knew our price limit, he never hesitated to show us stock that was slightly out of, and at times radically adrift from, our price range. A case in point was the house in which we are now living. He’d picked up in an earlier over-the-fence exchange that my wife loved Simbithi eco-estate. He’d often seen us lacing up our running shoes and going out there both to exercise but also to dream wishfully about one day owning property there. He kept all that in the back of his mind so that when an opportunity materialised, he had all the ammo with which to persuade us to purchase.
And one week an opportunity materialised. Our first viewing of the house was more an exercise in wishful thinking than anything else...no way could we afford it. But Thomas kept on, keeping us curious whilst surreptitiously sussing out the bargaining arena with the seller. After some weeks, he came over and encouraged us to put in an offer – no ordinary offer either, one that was half a million shy of the asking price. Within 24 hours we were signing papers and two months later were moving in. And waiting for us in the kitchen was a bottle of bubbly and snacks – a gift from Thomas welcoming us to our new place. We’re going to miss him – not only was he a smart property guy...he was our sort of neighbour too. We still haven’t given up on our goal to buy a beach flat and, perhaps not surprisingly; it’s Thomas who’s out there looking for one.
No doubt none of this is very different from your own experience of buying or selling property. Nor should it be. This is how we humans have been behaving since we could first talk – in fact even before that. First and foremost, we are social beings. Yes, we have needs and those needs lead us to consume. To consume we have to buy and buying means dealing with a seller. But the most trusted sellers are people we’ve invited into our circle or who’ve invited us into theirs. We are social beings before we are buyers.
Social Media is the collective noun for a diverse range of online and mobile tools/mechanisms that facilitate the formation, growth and dealings of groups, communities and tribes that share a common interest or cause. Social media has mushroomed because it makes that primal urge we humans have to commune so effortless and accessible. The tools make the internet the huge draw-card that it is – they help most people use it as a place to learn, have fun and socialise.
But it does all this at a speed and on a stage so breathtaking and vast we could not have dreamt of it even a decade ago.
Social Marketing, (or more specifically “social influence marketing” as Shiv Singh calls it), is the practice of exploiting these tools to either form brand/product focussed groups from scratch or (more preferably) to infiltrate the conversations and dealings of existing groupings in order to achieve a communication and purchase outcome.
As I said in part one, there’s no single game book for how this should be done, only best practice. In part three we’ll look at why excelling at social marketing is such a challenge...
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