The Future of Marketing is About Way More Than Social Media

Here I am, in Boston, watching the live stream of Marc Benioff at Dreamforce while practically everyone I know is actually there in San Fran. But I digress' what got me excited and then had me reacting quickly was the new Marketing Cloud that Salesforce.com previewed. I highly respect Salesforce.com for considering their product in much the same way that Facebook does; provide users with everything they need in one login so they don't need to go anywhere else. This product does that and allows marketers to manage social media engagement within Salesforce and even tie activities back to revenue which is every marketer's dream (maybe we solved the ROI of social media question?).

So why react then to The Marketing Cloud?

I dont know about you, but what comes to mind when you hear 'marketing cloud', knowing that Salesforce.com created it? Marketing program management? Source attribution and tracking? Marketing collaboration and function management? Marketing/sales alignment? Does 'social media' come to mind at all? Maybe a little bit but certainly not 100%.

This product (from what I saw ) is 100% focused on social media marketing and very specifically on Facebook. Recent acquisitions of Radian6 and BuddyMedia led to it which is why it's so heavy on social (makes sense to me). But why does it have to be called 'marketing cloud'? Maybe they have something cooking that will make this bigger and better and social media was just the natural place to start ' that makes sense! But, if not'and we start considering 'marketing' in regards to lead gen, engagement, paid media, etc. in terms of social, then we are going to miss out on a lot. And that 'lot' is your future and potential customers which is rather important.

The future of marketing is about WAY more than social media

There's a lot of hype, a lot of talk, a lot of swagger about social media. You must do it, they say. You must participate, they bellow. You have to do it because your competitors are doing it, they cry. Everyone is on Facebook, they exclaim. It goes on and on. We get it. What we often don't get, or rather we forget, is the bigger picture. Social is one tiny aspect of marketing. It sure gets a lot of attention and we continue to have conversations about how the heck you track ROI, but at the end of the day it's still just one piece. Calling something a 'marketing tool' and then having it be 100% social media is misleading. This is not all we do nor will it ever be.

I guess I just wish they hadn't called it a 'marketing' cloud.