Tag: social media marketing trends

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.”

Advertisers in the United Kingdom have clearly embraced the channel and the trend is only improving.

While mobile marketing is doing quite well in a number of different markets, in the United Kingdom, adoption has been considerable and has reached the point that eMarketer has concluded that it is “the new normal” in that country.

At a time in which a huge focus is placed on social media advertising, it is over smartphones that many people are reached.

In the U.K., there is a boom that is being experienced in mobile marketing, particularly over social media, that is expected to continue racing forward until it slows to a near plateau in 2018. eMarketer released a report entitled “UK Social Networking Trends: mobile Is Becoming the New Normal”. Its conclusions were that the entire forecast period of the report – which ends in 2018 – will see a steady growth in social media use over smartphones. It stated that this year will see 75.3 percent, but that this figure will rise to 90.2 percent in that final year.

As consumers start paying more attention to smartphones, advertisers are looking to mobile marketing.

Overall advertising and social media marketing are becoming a mainstream focus in the U.K. Brands and businesses are seeking to connect with consumers over the channel that they prefer the most, and in many cases, this means smartphones. The true opportunity is in the fact that most consumers have those devices with them and turned on, most of the time. This allows for a new and critical level of real time engagement that has never been possible before.

That new data aligns well with a study that was released in February 2014 by a social media firm called Immediate Future. It looked into the way marketers in the United Kingdom felt about social engagement offers in real-time. Though the most frequently cited benefit identified among the participants was general audience engagement, 35 percent also felt that it helped to increase customer loyalty and retention, while a quarter said that they experienced better return on investment as a result of social mobile marketing.