Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing - Summertime Hot or Summertime Blues?
An update on recent social media marketing and behavioral trends
Businesses everywhere are continuing to ask the question – "what can I do with social media?" The data indicates that some are finding success, but most continue to struggle and/or spend money without an acceptable return. This article is a summary of findings over the last few months about what consumers and marketers are doing and experiencing with social media. Perhaps at the end you won't feel so alone in your struggles.
First of all, the major social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) are more popular than ever. Facebook has become the 2nd most popular website (according to Alexa.com) after Google. YouTube is now #3. Facebook boasts more than 500 million users but only half are active. Twitter has about 190 million users tweeting about 65 millions times a day. Do the math and you can understand average engagement level is low (average user produces 0.3 tweets a day). LinkedIn reports about 60 million members.
The demographics are interesting with most trends showing social media activities reaching further into the "older" populations. In fact, users of Facebook 35 years and older have increased 5 times in just the last year compared to 83% growth of those 34 years and younger. Users of social media sites are expected to grow by 21% in the next 3 years – certainly meaningful for marketers. As the population ages, there's little doubt that social media trends will be more and more significant to how we communicate with each other and how we shop for and evaluate products and services. Clearly there's a future for marketing your business on the social networks - but how and when?
Spending on Social Media to Increase 121%
Experts predict that businesses will increase spending on social media marketing by about 121% in the next 3 years. Unfortunately, a good portion of this investment will not produce a return. In fact, a recent survey indicated that nearly all Fortune 500 companies had a thorough social media strategy but fewer than 50% of them will be effective. This poor performance was largely attributed to three things: 1) failure to identify a specific set of objectives, 2) failure to allocate adequate resources and 3) inability to measure return. Wow – sounds similar to some other failed business initiatives.
B2B vs. B2C Social Media Performance
It is becoming very clear that social media marketing plays much better in the B2C (business-to-consumer) marketplace than B2B (business-to-business). The chart to the left illustrates the leading social media marketing initiatives in both sectors. Blogging and reputation management are the most frequent activities on the B2B side while advertising and gaining consumer feedback are more prevalent for B2C marketers.
Further reinforcement of the criticality of social media marketing on the B2C side is the comparison of customer acquisition data. A recent survey sponsored by Hubspot found that about 39% of B2B companies were able to acquire a customer through social media site marketing. This compares to nearly 60% for B2C companies. Interestingly, among social media marketing activities for B2B, blogging was the most successful tactic to acquire a customer.
While there is definitely a good deal of success using social media for branding and customer acquisition purposes, there remains much room for learning how to be a successful social media marketer. The pie-chart to the right shows some relatively sobering statistics about how social media marketing has affected revenues and profits - only 35% of US marketers reporting a positive affect.
B2B Social Media Marketing
The data on the B2B side is even more discouraging. A recent survey sponsored by a leading lead generation provider found that 63% of Facebook and Twitter users who were referred to a B2B site only viewed one page in the website – indicating a low engagement level. Not surprisingly, LinkedIn, clearly a more B2B social media platform, performed much better. 65% of visitors to a B2B site from LinkedIn viewed more than one page on a website.
Visitors coming to a B2B site from a social media site found the About Us page to be the most popular, followed closely by a blog. Coming in third was the management page. This data reinforces the importance of B2B social media marketing activities for visibility and branding, but doesn't say much about its effectiveness at selling products and services. That remains very unclear.
In summary, it is reported that the top 3 reasons US executives use social media are 1) brand building, 2) networking and 3) customer service. Sales generation was sited by only 21% of executives surveyed as a reason they are using social media.
Why Do Consumers “Follow” Companies
The aforementioned statistics paint a discouraging picture for social media marketing. The reality is that social media works very well for many companies, especially those in the B2C arena, as long as you know what consumers are seeking. The two charts below illustrate the reasons consumers follow brands on Twitter and Facebook. 
It is not surprising that consumers are looking for value when following companies on the social networks. The lesson here is that if your social media marketing plan is entertaining and/or at least provides ongoing information about special promotions and new products you are significantly increasing your likelihood of success doing social media marketing.
Even though consumers are following brands on Facebook and Twitter, data suggests they prefer to hear about special promotions and things via email. EMarketer.com reported a survey that asked retail consumers how they wanted to be informed about sales, promotions and special events. Email notifications ranked highest at 37%, followed by a mailer (23%) and text messaging was preferred by 18%. Only 9% of respondents indicated their preferred method was via a social networking site. This suggests that the social networks are fine for communicating socially, but when it comes to learning about sales and promotions, the convenience of email trumps them all.
So What To Do with Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is important and will continue to gain steam as a means to communicate with your marketplace. The behaviors of consumers and the features of social networking sites will continue to evolve and ultimately become a very critical resource for online marketing. It is becoming a routine for people to use the search engines to find products and services and then evaluate them via the social networks. Stories abound about how companies have succeeded on the backs of social networking sites. Social media marketing does work – you just need to know how to make it work in your marketplace.
The chart to the right shows what US companies are including in their social media plans. Realize there's more to social media than marketing. Reputation management of your own company is one of the most important elements to consider. As the chart indicates, many companies are setting up policies to manage how employees use social media networks and how companies respond to consumers posting information, positive and negative, on the social networking sites. The internet essentially allows anyone to say anything about anybody, so make sure you are prepared to handle/respond to negative things posted about your company.
Summary
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites are here to stay and they will continue to become more popular and prevalent to businesses and marketers worldwide. A great deal of time and money is being spent trying to figure out how social media marketing plays for many companies. Due to the social nature of this space, B2C companies are finding quicker success doing social media marketing, but B2B companies can effectively leverage this phenomenon if they have the right plan. All businesses should work to understand social media and evaluate how it fits within their respective marketing plans. To avoid this analysis altogether will put a business further behind the competition as trends evolve.
