Marketers Seduced by Social Media and the Affair is Heating Up
By John Riley
It was an affair like most affairs. It started quietly and discreetly. As the participants exhibited a growing passion for the union, they could no longer contain themselves and word spread. Such has been the evolution, some would say revolution, of social media and it’s impact on marketers. And today Nielsen tells us two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit a social network or blogging site which now accounts for almost 10% of all Internet time.
Thanks to the following Nielsen’s statistics, we have a better picture of social networks and their growth. Remarkably, the time spent on social networks and blogging sites is growing more than 3 times the rate of overall Internet growth.
Online Marketing Growth for Facebook is Stratospheric
Facebook alone has increased by 566% from December 2007 to December 2008 and replaced My Space as the world’s most popular social network. Historically, much of the growth started out in younger audiences, but over time that has changed. Facebook is attracting almost twice as many 50 to 64 year olds than the under 18 year old youngsters. This has resulted in social networks being able to offer advertisers a way to reach all demographic groups.
We also know from McCann Global Research that blogs play a major role in the spread of social media. Their 2008 study revealed that 77% of all Internet users read blogs, an increase of 11% from the previous year.
All of this growth has not escaped marketers. Since consumers have been flocking to social networks and spending increasing time there, advertisers naturally followed. But it’s not the same. Social networks are both suppliers and consumers of content while traditional media is only a supplier. Because of the highly personal data their sites contain, many of the social networks are reluctant to accept advertising and that complicates matters.
Marketing Plans Start with Target Audience Analysis
When a marketer starts to plan an advertising or sales campaign, it starts with an objective that defines the target audience. Trying to identify which social network tool can best supply the audience the marketer wants to reach can sometimes be quite easy because of the digital underpinning of social networks, particularly if it’s a consumer audience that’s targeted. If the target audience is in the business-to-business sector, it may not be so easy because of the type of data needed for the analysis.
Once that analysis is complete, the next step is to follow the same process with traditional media and then see how they compare in terms of reach, frequency and cost/thousand to the social media data. Then there are the intangibles that need to be taken into account such as the editorial environment or the vehicle’s influence in the market(s) it serves.
This process has led more and more marketers such as J. C. Penny, Dell Computers and Kodak to shift a bigger share of their market development budgets from traditional media to the social media. Almost daily, announcements appear in the trade press about one company or another moving more of their marketing budget to social media. The trend has almost become a stampede in terms of the number of companies incorporating more social media into their market plans, but it terms of dollars spent, traditional media still clings to a fair share of marketer budgets.
So what does the marketer get for his or her money? The payoff comes in sales lead generation and brand building and its working.
