Social media marketing is gaining momentum especially for startups and small business owners. Recently conducted Social Media Marketing Industry Report has revealed some astonishing facts. This survey report is going to shed light upon hitherto unknown or ignored aspects of this industry as because not less than 3720 business owners, marketers and solopreneurs from Europe and USA have took part in this survey. This article will focus upon a few important points that are as follows:
The survey was conducted on a pool of 300,000 self-selected participants and among them 96 percent agreed that they use Social- Media Marketing as an important aspect for their marketing strategy whereas another 92 percent agreed that they need it for their industry.
Around 41 percent of B2B participants have agreed that their first preference is marketing through LinkedIn. Contrary to them, B2C’s first preference is FaceBook. This trend is because B2B is dependent upon facilities managers, marketing people and buyers those who heavily rely upon LinkedIn for news and industry connections. In other hand FaceBook caters to broader base of customers.
Among all respondents, 93 percent use FaceBook while 79 percent others use Twitter. Both Pinterest and Instagram have doubled their visitor traffic in 2015. In next year some more 62 percent of respondents want to use FaceBook for its marketing procedures.
One of the most interesting information is that in spite of the fact that FaceBook is dominating the arena of social media marketing and the majority of small business owners prefer it, they do not have a clear idea if FaceBook is really helping them or not?
Now what does this ‘working’ mean? It generally means building up of relationships with more customers and promoting brand awareness. ‘Working’has a different meaning too and that is bringing in more leads and sales. Most important matter is that majority of the respondents who have gone for promotions on FaceBook either do not have an idea if their aims have been successfully achieved or responded in negative. Many of the marketers lack in the formation of a precise aim. Only 1 in 3 respondents agreed in positive.
Despite ignorance 62 percent plan to expand activities on FaceBook. Around 68 percent of respondents said that they want to learn more. A good number of 53 percent respondents want to increase their expenditure on FaceBook marketing. Here one important thing is to be added and that is most of FaceBook’s marketing capabilities are still untapped.
Social media marketing is not a quick process. It needs time. Engagement of audience on social media channels is a time consuming affair. Some tools have significantly cut-down on time such as Post Planner and Hootsuite.
Among surveyed respondents 33 percent told that they spend about 1 to 5 hours on an average on weekly Social-media marketing activities. A good 25 percent said that they spend about 6 to 10 hours on an average. Most of these respondents are solopreneurs or running a small business having 2 to 10 people.
Increased exposure is hard to measure but according to small business owners, it is one of the biggest advantages of social-media marketing for them. The owners achieve wider audience base through Google Analytics referral data source, engagement through social channels and customers sharing processes.
77 percent of the respondents have acknowledged the benefit of social-media marketing for increased traffic via referrals through social sites.
More traffic is generated through longer use of social-media marketing.
FaceBook allowed marketers to promote business via its platform for free before 2014. This offer seemed to be irresistible for many because of its reach to an immense pool of audience. After spring 2014, it started charging people still 51 percent respondents admit that it is a cost-effective means of advertisement. These are either solopreneurs or owners of small businesses who command a company with 2 to 10 employees. But big companies having more than 1000 employees generally hire separate marketing people thereby enhancing the total cost of marketing.
Aim of all marketing tactics is to avail increased sales through increased leads. Social-media has greater challenges in comparison of pay-per-click or search engine optimization.
Marketing experts who have invested more than 2 years in social-media marketing record that it has significantly improved their sales.
Not only cost-effective but also narrowed down demographic markets benefit the business owners in a tremendous manner. Gradually gaining in importance are Google ads, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram respectively. 53 percent of the respondents do wish to spend more on FaceBook ads, 38 percent on Google and 31 percent in Twitter.
71 percent of user engagement is gained from visual contents whereas 70 percent is gained from blogging. A whopping 79 percent of it is achieved by blogs put by the self-employed. 10 percent of marketing is done by podcasting and next comes the video contents.
Small businesses should spend its dollars intelligently. Less crowded social-media platforms should be further explored. If small business owners keep a tab upon survey reports then they can gain higher success rate. In this matter you may take the help of local SEO services.