Exploring the Social Media Effect on eCommerce
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Social media has become the place where most internet users spend a large portion of their days. We use it to stay up-to-date on trends, news and friends. For a large segment of brands and businesses, social media has become an important part of their marketing and sales channels. In fact, it has revolutionized the way successful businesses market to their target consumers and made it possible for impersonal brands to build very personal relationships with their customers.
Exploding Adoption & Leveraging Your Audience
It is hard to fathom that less than 10 years ago, the majority of people didn’t even know what the term “social media” even meant. Twenty years ago, it didn’t exist at all.
Today, however, the likes of Nike and eBay demonstrate what an invaluable marketing channel they are by involving existing customers and leveraging them to share your products and push your sales volume skyward.
A great example of this is the fact that a person is 71% more likely to buy a product that has been shared by a friend via social media. Another great statistic that illustrates the social media’s level of importance is that 90% of customers have tried to reach out to a brand via social media.
That constitutes a huge potential market that must be administered to properly.
Eliminates Wastage of Marketing Campaigns
Social media is likely the most impactful creation of the internet and has changed our lives like nothing else in history.
It is now possible for a brand to spend less on costly marketing campaigns that usually reach a broad target audience. With social media, a brand can target their core client base and the demographic of consumers who are most likely going to actually become customers.
In the past, that was not an option and even banner advertisements online are not suited for the type of strategic targeting of social media marketing.
In a simple example, a billboard for a new shirt would have likely been viewed by thousands of people. However, that specific style of shirt would have only been purchased by a very limited number of viewers. On the other hand, a social media campaign for that same shirt can be targeted to only reach the sex, age and style preference of the intended buyer. This, in short, has eliminated a lot of the empty ad spending in the marketing budgets of brands.
These are just a few key factors key to social media becoming the go-to marketing platform for marketing in the modern world. That being said, they are by no means the only reasons why it is so important. For a full in-depth look at the sector, check out the infographic about the impact of social media on e-commerce.
