Tag: social media mobile marketing

The industry is now wondering if the social networking giant has finally mastered this channel.

Facebook has been the recipient of massive criticisms due to its lack of mobile marketing revenues, which had lead to its exceptionally disappointing initial public offering (IPO) stock nearly a year ago.

At that time, there were hundreds of millions of users accessing the service without ads on smartphones and tablets.

Investors were disappointed that mobile marketing had apparently been ignored by Facebook, when it could have been used to reach these millions upon millions of people, but it was not. What has since been discovered, is that the executives at the social networking giant were perfectly aware of this trend and they were already well on the way to building their strategy.

The Sponsored Stories mobile marketing social ads were only the tip of the iceberg.

That element had only just been introduced at the time of the IPO, but what the investors didn’t know at that time – and what has only recently been revealed – is that Facebook had a great deal more up its sleeves for its mobile marketing programs. It took several months, but it has now been proving itself capable of exposing ads to the smartphone and tablet using masses in compelling and effective ways. This was far beyond what most people at that time could have predicted.

The mobile marketing ads at Facebook were not an instant success, but they did gradually build traction until they were earning $305 million by the fourth quarter. This represented approximately 23 percent of the overall ad sales revenue for the company. It is also one of the main reasons that the social network stock price has nearly doubled the low to which it plummeted shortly after the IPO, hovering near the $30 mark.

One of the main reasons that the ads in the Facebook mobile marketing strategy are considered to be successful is that they aren’t the same as those that are used on the desktop site. On the standard website, the ads run along the right hand side of the page. Instead, the smartphone friendly ads are worked right into the news feed and have both a look and a feel that are comparable to the posts that are made by their friends and the other brands and pages that they have liked.

These two industry leaders are generating more in store action than other networks.

A new social media marketing survey conducted by ACTIVE Network has revealed that 47 percent of social network users have taken offline action in some way following an interaction on one of those sites.

These actions consisted of such behaviors as making a purchase, meeting someone, or participating in an event.

Social media marketing and consumer behaviors from five networks were examined within the survey. They included Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. Among them all, it was determined that Facebook was the greatest driver of offline actions. In fact 87 percent of the users of that site had taken part in at least one offline action as a result of an online interaction there.

The second social media marketing position was taken by relative newcomer, Pinterest.

Pinterest’s social media marketing generated offline action among 70 percent of its users. Next was LinkedIn, with 60 percent, then Twitter, at 56 percent, and finally Google+ at 37 percent. The ACTIVE Network study was entitled “Beyond the Click”.

Also determined through this study was that Facebook and LinkedIn were the leaders in social media marketing that brought about personal connections and meetings in person. These two networks frequently led to meeting offline as well as building direct contacts. In fact, 70 percent of the users of Facebook have gone on to make direct contact with someone because of an interaction that had occurred on the site. Comparatively, 56 percent of LinkedIn users experienced the same result after an interaction on that network.

Similarly, among Facebook users, 40 percent had actually met someone in person because of an interaction that had occurred on that website, where 25 percent of LinkedIn members had done the same thing for that reason.

When it came to event attendance, the leaders were Facebook and Twitter. At Facebook, 58 percent of users had attended an offline event following social media marketing on that site, whereas 31 percent of Twitter users had done the same thing because of what they’d experienced on that network.