As the online community grows so does the use of Social Media. As a marketing tool businesses are increasingly using social media as it is an extremely cost effective and efficient means of targeting a very specific market segment. Going along with this is the statistic that well over 45% of companies plan in increasing their spend on marketing via social media while another 35% plan on maintaining their current spend in this media. That’s pretty powerful!
Video in websites
A very interesting increase is the rise in use of video. This is growing rapidly and despite fairly popular sentiment the statistics reveal that 55% of people use video for professional reasons while only 33% use it for personal reasons. It has been widely proven (in my business as well) that the use of video in a website increases the conversion rate dramatically.
Social media marketing is the Internet vesion of ‘Word of mouth marketing’
It is important to note that Social media is seen as the ‘word of mouth’ advertising section of the Internet which I whole heartedly agree with. 77% of top executives said they would increase their spending in this media segment with around 12% saying they would maintain current spending. Tell me that’s not significant!
Growth of Blogging and Twitter
Facebook is still the most commonly used social media for advertising but it is being caught at a rapid rate by Twitter, I think this can be seen as partly because of the emergence of Blogging as a means of communicating with clients and getting a message out there. Its important to note that the traditional methods of ‘push’ advertising are being increasingly filtered by markets and companies are being judged by what they actually do rather than by a fancy payoff line. Blogging is now a means of communicating with your target market, no longer only informing them but now also allowing feedback for a healthy relationship.
Monitor social media
The above has led to companies utilising skills like social media monitoring, wouldn’t you like to know what is being said about you on the web? This can be used as a lead generation tool or it may allow you the opportunity to enter the conversation, give yourself a voice and rectify situations by taking a negative comment and turning it into a lead generation opportunity as customers see you handle a situation well and trust you for their future transactions. What did I say about companies being judged by what they do rather than what they say??? CLASSIC example of how this could be valuable to you!
21% of best‐in‐class companies are increasing their social media marketing spending by 25% or more in the coming year! Why wouldn’t you?
Post by: Ian Thomas
Internet Marketing South Africa
