A Social Media Examiner report has revealed a strong preference for this specific network in advertising.
Nearly every social network – including the current reigning king, Facebook, as well as Twitter and LinkedIn – have entered into a massive advertising war around the world, as each one attempts to become the leader in social media marketing.
This highly lucrative advertising channel has turned into a fierce battleground for brands of all size.
Marketers have been considerably increasing their social media marketing activities over the various different networking websites in order to be able to acquire new customers and maintain relationships with existing ones. Now, Social Media Examiner has published a document authored by Michael A. Steltzner entitled “2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report”, which involved an analysis of a massive global study.
This social media marketing study involved the participation of 2,800 marketers around the globe.
Among them, 92 percent felt that the use of social media for advertising purpose was considered to be critical for their businesses. This is a meaningful increase over the 2013 figure, which was 86 percent. Of the respondents, 89 percent felt that it was important for them to learn various different types of tactics that would allow them to use these channels for better results from their various ad campaigns.
Facebook was by far the “most important marketing platform”, as 54 percent of the survey respondents labeled it as such. In a very second place was LinkedIn, which was deemed most important by 17 percent of the respondents. Another 12 percent felt that Twitter was the most important. Not only is this good news for Facebook, on its own, but it also represents meaningful growth over last year’s figures, at which time only 40 percent felt that this social network was the most important for marketing.
In fourth place in terms of overall social media marketing was blogging, which was the top vote of only 8 percent of the participants in the survey. While some analysts have been predicting an impending death of Facebook, it appears as though the network is continuing to hold its own for the moment.
While advertising on these networks is considered to be vital a new survey questions their effectiveness.
Gallup has recently released the results of a social media marketing study that has suggested that this advertising channel is not nearly as effective as some of the leading networks – such as Facebook and Twitter – would have companies believe.
The recent “State of the American Consumer” report from the polling firm showed that few feel these ads work.
The Gallup poll results showed that only 5 percent of Americans feel that social media marketing has a considerable influence over the various products that they purchase. That said, a massive 62 percent of the survey participants felt that these ads had no effect at all on the decisions that they make with regards to purchasing. The survey involved the participation of 18,000 consumers in the United States.
The social media marketing study showed that offline interaction with brands were far more influential.
Participants in the survey stated that they were more heavily influenced by interactions with brands that occurred offline, such as those that occur during in-store visits and that they see in retail display windows. They felt that these were far more influential than ads that they saw over social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
It is expected that those social networks – and others – will be quite surprised by the findings, as will the brands that are expected to spend a total $11.4 billion on advertising over those two leading platforms by the close of 2014.
The Gallup report suggested that Americans are using their favorite social media platforms in order to interact with the people they know, and not necessarily the brands that they like. In fact, the publication suggested that those site users have learned to tune out the ads that are displayed in front of them while they use those social networks.
The social media marketing report said that “These channels do not motivate prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a brand to others,” adding that “Therefore, if companies want to acquire new customers, their best bet is to engage their existing customers and inspire them to advocate on their behalf.”
