Social Media. You simply cannot ignore it. Although it is difficult to measure ROI and it is constantly changing, it is a form of emerging media that business owners must embrace. It may be difficult to find the time, to determine the best channels and best strategies, but if you want to play online, you have to play in social.
Interestingly enough, the following infographic states that 94% of marketers have used social media and it lists “increased sales” as the last reason to participate in social media.
Unlike search or PPC (pay-per-click) marketing where one can measure web traffic generated by their investment, and possibly even track every sale and every call, social media doesn’t lend itself to this kind of tracking. I know that I have personally purchased products and services based on facebook status updates and tweets, but I’m sure the business owners had no way to track my purchase back to social media.
Perhaps business owners can see the bigger picture. Perhaps they themselves are using more social media and therefore have a better understanding of the dynamic.
Let’s back up five or ten years. Can you imagine selling a yellow pages ad to a business owner who had never seen or heard of the yellow pages? It would have been hard to convince him that every household in the community used that little book to make buying decisions. But since business owners all have (or had five years ago) yellow pages in their homes, it made sense to them. I think the same thing is happening with social media. When Dave the plumber sees his wife constantly checking her facebook on her iphone and maybe even choosing their family dentist based on a friend’s recommendation, Dave is going to want to start participating on facebook.
Infographic courtesy of Go-Globe.com.
