Lets Smarket; the business value of Social Media Marketing Services
There's hardly a week goes by when I'm not asked about the business value of Social Media and the benefits a Social Media Agency such as ours (unashamed plug) can bring to the table — An Agency can also work in unison with Sales, Marketing and IT and in many cases help overcome some of the corporate departmental silos; it's also cost-effective. When Marketing and Sales combine it's Smarketing. These days IT should be involved — so lets call it "Smarketing-IT"
In a recent Promotional Products Industry article two recent studies conducted this past year aimed to answer what is the value of Social Media.
Social Media has a strong impact on sales as well as brand perception, according to Ogilvy's recent study "Does investing in social media create business value?" The main points of the study stated:
Social media exposure is directly linked with increases in sales. Integrated social media (social content plus one or more channels) exposure is linked to significant increases in spend and consumption. For example, social media plus PR exposure was associated to a 17-percent spend increase compared to the prior time period without these.
People who were exposed to social media plus TV were twice as likely to buy.
People who were exposed to social media were seven times more likely to spend more.
Social media plus out-of-home exposure was linked to a 1.5 times higher likelihood of increase in spend.
Exposure to social content was most consistently effective when it was combined with exposure to other types of media channels.
As marketers, we consistently ask ourselves what value social media brings to us internally. A recent study by CMO Council and social CRM firm Lithium found that in addition to building loyalty among customers, social media outreach has influenced marketing operations. Of those marketers surveyed, 55 percent said social media improved customer listening, engagement and conversations, and another 55 percent said it opened new avenues to gather and further market insights. Also, five percent said it helped lower the cost of customer service.
These numbers state the facts. Social media, when done right, can have a big impact on business value and relationships with customers. It also helps change our sometimes "drive-by" thinking and allows us to focus on building long-term relationships with our customers.
Source: Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist for Intel and a self-proclaimed bookworm. Read her blog at www.ekaterinawalter.com.