Before the next social media maniac wants you to invest large swaths of your marketing budget entering into “conversations” with customers and prospective customers, watch this video.

Greet them at the door with a calculator and do a little math. Then, invest your money in marketing that really reaches your audience and sells your products. (Hint: it’s not social media.)

As Professor Ritson and Bob Hoffman continually point out, social media is great for conversations about things we like–our friends, our kids, our cats. We aren’t interested in “conversations” with brands. The math is clear.

Let me be clear. I’m not saying that your marketing mix shouldn’t include social media. Of course you should test every tool in the toolkit to see what works. But let’s define “work.” That means things that sell our products. There is no other reason for marketing and advertising.

Yes, you can have conversations with .02% of your customers. Your competitors (certainly the ones that work with me) might instead be investing time and money on segmenting the 99.98% of their customers to sell them more. Who’s going to win?

Having trouble judging the performance of your marketing mix? Wondering if you are spending too much on social media? Give me a call. I’ve got a calculator, a BS detector and I can travel.