Social selling is much discussed and often overused. People sending out endless tweets about your products gets tiring fast, and is unlikely to get anyone's attention. But if you can leverage the power of social media to influence your customers at the research stage of their buyer journey, it can be a very powerful tool.
A new study, which surveyed 2,017 people aged 18 and over, shows that 41% of people follow brands to see new product ranges when they launch and 35% use social to get ideas about what to buy when they next go shopping. This is somewhat higher for 18- to 24-year-olds at 47% and 40%, respectively.
Once someone knows what they want, organic social is no longer necessarily the best tool for targeting that person. By that point, email, on-site optimisation or remarketing via social or display networks may well be the best way to convert them. But at the discovery stage, social media offers a great way to influence your customers' priorities, and make them want what you offer. The research shows a majority of social media users under the age of 34 use social media to inspire purchases of all kinds of products, and over 60% are influenced by social when it comes to buying clothing or gifts.
Over half of those following brands on social media are there to see products, an interesting stat for any kind of retail business, and people are also interested at seeing new ranges when they launch.
People have also announced they would be interested in purchasing products directly through social networks, although the numbers here are not huge. 30% of 18-34 said they'd be interested in purchasing directly through Facebook, whilst only 15% of the same group said they'd want to purchase directly through Snapchat.
By Robert Allen
Rob Allen is Marketing Manager for Numiko, a digital agency that design and build websites for purpose driven organisations, such as the Science Museum Group, Cancer Research UK, University of London and the Electoral Commission. Rob was blog editor at Smart Insights from 2015-2017. You can follow Rob on LinkedIn.
Turbocharge your results with this toolkit containing 12 resources
The Social Media Marketing toolkit contains:
Start your Digital Marketing Plan today with our Free membership.
Recommended Blog Posts
Audit your digital media effectiveness to build stronger campaigns and an efficient marketing funnel Reviewing your use of digital media is a crucial starting point for creating or optimizing your digital marketing strategy. But how do you tune in and …..
Are you practicing always-on marketing, and if not, why not? In the pre-digital era, marketing activities were planned in campaign ‘bursts’ around new product launches and promotions. My belief is that to be effective, digital marketing needs a change in …..
Use our updated digital marketing tools infographic to audit the types of marketing technology you use As marketers today, we’re fortunate to have a huge number of free and low-cost digital marketing tools to give us insight into our customers, …..
