Social Media Marketing means more Money!
Marketer’s Benchmarks 2011, a Focus Research study, found that about 50% of B2C marketers say that social media marketing and online content were number one in lead generation and sales for the 2010 Fiscal year. Social media marketing and online content was top for about 1/4 of B2B marketers as well.
Focus conducted 170 surveys aimed at marketers and they overwhelmingly responded by saying that social media marketing was one of the best ways to reach their company goals which include brand building and lead generation.
82% of those surveyed said that they would increase their budgets or remain the same, and not surprisingly, a large number of the marketers said that they will put more money into social media marketing and content. Social media marketing was one the top performer for 28% of the companies. And with social media’s global reach to millions of people, why wouldn’t it be effective?
Check out some of these astonishing statistics on social media marketing found by Focus’s Study:
- Fifty-nine percent of marketers say they will be increasing their social media budgets this year
- 51 percent refer to social analytics as a top initiative.
- Social media marketing is one of the top five strategies for B2B and B2C businesses (No.1 for B2C and No. 2 for B2B)
- 23 percent of B2C brands and 17 percent of B2B brands ranking user-generated content as key to marketing performance.
You Are Reading A Blog – Social Media Marketing
In addition to social media marketing, content marketing is extremely effective in building a larger consumer base. And what’s the number one content marketing strategy? You’ve got it: BLOGGING. In a way, I would say that blogging is a social media marketing technique as well, for example both Facebook’s feed and Twitter are both mini-blogs, and webblog sites like Tumblr allow others to post comments and socialize. The main problem with blogging is that companies are finding that they lack the resources and time to post solid material to these sites, but with tools like Tweetdeck, you can type all of your mini-blogs at once and schedule when they are sent out.
When Should I Post? – Social Media Marketing
One important factor to consider when using an application like Tweetdeck, is when to post. Although social media marketing is a top sales generator, if we aren’t using it at the right times we may miss out on a majority of our potential consumers.
Mashable.com posted an interesting article concerning this topic and shared with us when Facebook users are most likely to log on.
- The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET.
- The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays.
- Weekday usage is pretty steady, however Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period.
- Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week.
These are defintely important things to consider when you are thinking about social media marketing, because as you know the primary purpose is to engage with your consumers and knowing when they interact with your page is the best way to get your message across to them.
Social Media Marketing Summary
Any more, it’s not a matter of ‘Do I need a social media presence for my business?’ but ‘How can I best optimize social media for my business’. More business is done online nowadays than anytime before, and this trend will continue to grow. Can you really afford not to have a social media marketing presence for your business?