Brands that utilize social media marketing for their online presence influence consumers buying decisions almost as much as word of mouth marketing from friends does. While word of mouth marketing has been the marketers dream due to the high trust level of having your business referred to others by those they all ready trust, getting social with consumer can help you provide almost the same effect.
A local market survey that targeted 12,000 consumers aged 18-65. This market survey was conducted by Market Force Information and was completed in February of this year. About half the respondents were from the United States and the other half from the UK. Amongst the findings, 81% of the United States respondents noted that social media posts directly influenced their purchasing behavior at a moderate to high level. These posts came from their friends and from retail outlets, restaurants and other online and local merchants that they “liked” on Facebook, +1d on Google+ or followed at Twitter.
76% of the respondents said the reason they pursue adding brands and businesses to their social media network profiles by liking or joining the brand or businesses social media site is because they like to get deals and hope for news of discounts. 79% of them said they want to take advantage of incentives or deals and 70% want to keep up to date on special events and sales. Another 28% “Like” their favorite businesses in order to share them with their friends.
With this information, it makes sense for businesses to capitalize on it by reinforcing their social media marketing efforts. Announcing special deals, sales and discounts is welcomed by followers as long as it is not too often and does not sound like an advertisement. Along with announcing promotions, sales and special events, interact with consumers and ask them for their opinions about your products or services. When you interact on a consistent basis and consumers get to know you, they are more likely to purchase from you and recommend you to their friends.
In order to fully optimize your business’s social media marketing efforts, make sure and run analytics reports on a weekly or monthly basis to determine what content is most popular, who is interacting and why they are interacting. This will allow you to replicate what is successful and make adjustments to what is not working as well.
