Forrester, a leading US research firm, produced a report “Purchase Path of Online Buyers’ report” in 2012 showing a number of startling conclusions concerning the usefulness (or otherwise) of social media as a sales lead generator.
Forrester tracked 77,000 purchases online and the report’s author, Sucharita Mulpru, found that
“While the hype around social networks as a driver of influence in ecommerce continues to capture the attention of online executives, the truth is that social continues to struggle and registers as a barely negligible source of sales for either new or repeat buyers.
“The reality is that even the most popular social image-sharing sites (like Pinterest) have failed to move the needle with respect to sales for most retail sites.”
He also found:
“The reality is that even the most popular social image-sharing sites (like Pinterest) have failed to move the needle with respect to sales for most retail sites.”
The best sources of sales, according to the report, are “search” and “email”.
Here is how new customers came by their purchase:
Direct visits to the website: 20%
Organic search: 16%
Paid search: 11%
Social media: <1%
Here is how repeat purchasers bought:
Direct visits to the website: 20%
Email: 13%
Organic search: 6%
Social media: <1%
Social Media Strategy for 2013?
If you are a small business owner and are considering an aggressive social media strategy in 2013 you would be well advised to ask yourself and your marketing advisor some questions.
Some inconvenient, awkward questions.
Questions about evidence of success of social media marketing for small businesses, questions about a direct correlation between your Twitter or Facebook account and sales, questions about proof of previous campaigns for businesses like yours.
You will be surprised at the answers you receive.
You will be even more surprised when you refuse to accept assertions as facts.
In the meantime take a look at this useful video when deciding on a social media strategy for 2013; if it doesn’t educate it will certainly entertain 
Filed under Social Media Marketing 
Social media marketing is hot right now. It has spawned a massive industry of self-proclaimed social media experts whose mission is to free you from the dark and dangerous concept that as a business owner selling stuff should not be your primary goal.
No. You should be “having a conversation” and “creating engagement” with your customers on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube etc.
The Pepsi Refresh Project
Pepsi-Cola did this in 2010 in spectacular fashion. They ditched their traditional Super Bowl advertising and shifted in excess of $20 million from traditional advertising to “having a conversation” on social media sites.
The Pepsi Refresh campaign involved the consumer having their say and voting on their favourite Pepsi Refresh projects on sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and various Pepsi blogs.
The result?
By social media standards it was a massive success: 60,000 Twitter followers, 3.5 million likes on Facebook, and 80 million votes registered for the various Pepsi Refresh projects.
Sales?
For the first time ever
- Pepsi fell to no. three in the most popular soft drink ranking in the United States behind Coke and Diet Coke-it was traditionally number two behind Coke
- A 5% loss of market share in 2010 for both Pepsi and Diet Pepsi
- An 8 fold acceleration of loss of market share in 2010 compared with 2009.
Ballad of a Thin Man (1965)
Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” contains the refrain
“Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones”
Just because “something is happening here” does not mean that you as a small business owner should be swallowing the bullshit about social media marketing.
Not if you want to sell stuff rather than have a conversation..
When did you last “have a conversation” with a brand on Facebook?
Filed under Social Media Marketing
This video looks at the difference between social media marketing and content marketing..which is marked.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Filed under Videocast (Videos Podcast)
Just last week I received an email from an old friend. He was asking me to “like” his new page on Facebook. It was promoting a new business that he has just bought. So I clicked on the link which took me to Facebook and I liked his page. It took all of 5 seconds.
I haven’t been back to Facebook since.
Most of my friends and family are on Facebook-they actually use Facebook for the purpose it was intended..”socializing”.
So they put up photos of their new baby, the house they are building, updates about their great weekend away, exchange and share stories, share jokes and all the other stuff that makes up..life.
My brother is on Twitter-he follows Barcleona FC, Peter Aliss the BBC golf commentator, Lionel Messi, Kildare GAA and other stuff that interests him.
The Biggest Mistake in Social Media Marketing
The biggest mistake for you as a small business owner trying to promote your business on the internet is to send your website traffic into these environments and expect it to be a winning strategy. It would be similar to gate crashing a party and handing out business cards.
Epic fail.
There are some other significant problems with expecting to generate business from Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.
The first of these is the distractions/noise on these sites because whatever you have to say or whatever offer your business has faces the distractions inherent on these sites ranging from advertising on Facebook to constantly updating streams of news/updates on both sites.
Twitter has promoted trends and promoted Tweets-can regular advertising be too far behind?
It just isn’t a smart strategy to attempt to overcome these distractions to deliver your commercial message.
It makes far more sense to do this on your own website. On your own website you can do a number of things which are critical to generating new business from the internet.
These include
- Ensuring there are no distractions between your message and the visitor
- Encouraging people to sign up as a subscriber by giving something of value for free
- Continuing the conversation, on your terms, on your website or through email marketing without distraction. This allows you and the visitor or subscriber to ascertain whether what you have to offer is a good fit for them.
There is another difficulty with social media sites and one which is likely to become a bigger issue in the future-their terms and conditions which have changed regularly in the past and likely to continue to do so in the future.
Investing a significant amount of your time building what you hope will be an asset on someone else’s site leaves you wide open to changing terms and conditions, privacy policies and so on over which you have absolutely no control.
This is akin to opening a shop on somebody else’s land and hoping they won’t decide to evict you or jack up the rent.
Not smart.
Investing your time and energy in your own virtual real estate, your website, is a smarter strategy.
Your goal should be to attract visitors from these sites, not send traffic to them.
A number of great things follow from this:
- It gives you an opportunity to demonstrate authority/knowledge/expertise in your industry
- It allows you to build trust with your visitors
- It helps you, eventually, to generate new business.
This isn’t a flashy or sexy strategy-but it works incredibly well and is a much more effective strategy than sending people to sites where your visitor will be bombarded with distractions and whose terms and conditions are open to change with absolutely no input from you.
Filed under Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has generated a lot of heat in the last few years with the growth of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and others. (See the video “Social Media for Small Businesses” below.)
Most people simply don’t have a clues as to how effective it is for their business, whether it is simply a waste of time or whether it has a real role to play in the promotion of your business.
What is social media?
Essentially social media is any online website which allows interaction between it’s users. They are also described as web 2.0 properties but if you keep in mind the social interaction, commentary, sharing of good or interesting stories or videos then you have a good idea of what social media actually is.
(Check out LinkedIn marketing for business, )
Social media sites interestingly have found huge growth rates amongst the over 60s age group but clearly they are incredibly popular with the 15-45 age demographic also.
Many multinational companies such as Starbucks and other leading companies have really embraced social media as a marketing channel with different degrees of success.
As a small business owner you too should have a presence on social media sites but the exact combination of sites you should engage with will depend on your business, industry and offering.
The most popular social media sites are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit. The raising of the profile of your business and the use of digital marketing to generate leads and sales for your business will require a combination of some of these sites.
However each site will require a slightly different approach and all of them will not be suitable for you even though each would have a part to play in getting your website content indexed in the search engines.
All internet marketing campaigns should have at their core your website and the aim generally from social media sites will be to drive traffic to your company or business website.
The principal reason for this is that you control your website and can determine what appears on it without the fear of it being closed down by the changing of terms and conditions by a third party.
However if your internet marketing campaigns are totally reliant on third party social media sites you will run the risk of seeing an awful lot of good work and perhaps money come unstuck with a change in the terms of use of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or whatever third party site you are reliant on.
So the epicentre or your online marketing campaign should be your own, self hosted website hosted on your own hosting account with your own domain name.
Then you can build some real valuable virtual real estate for the benefit of your business and which will show you a very effective cost effective return on your marketing investment.
To enhance your social media marketing Web Design Dublin can help with your
- Facebook page creation
- Twitter marketing
- YouTube marketing
- LinkedIn marketing.
Filed under Social Media Marketing
