We all know the importance of social media and have its pretty good understanding. Did you know Twitter has six different forms of communication networks? You need to illustrate the importance of social media marketing and the online marketing services that offer to make sure you stay on the top of your game.
What and why social media?
The question arises in your mind is that what is marketing? Marketing is an activity and process of creating, communicating, and delivering offers that have value for customers.
Now, what is social media marketing? The simple answer is marketing on social media. So, the purpose of social media marketing is to build a brand and increase a brand’s visibility through developing relationships and communication with potential customers.
Nowadays, social networks are one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.
Social Media Influence to Consumer Purchasing Decisions
Many organizations dive into social media to increase brand awareness and grab more customers. Some got success and others may be disappointed. Here, I will discuss different ways that you can adjust in your social media tactics to improve your brand’s influence on customers purchasing decisions.
1. Change Social Conversations
Recently a Gallup poll published in State of the American Consumer Report demonstrates that in spite of the colossal number of Americans using social media platforms; just 5% state those platforms affect their acquiring choices. Moreover, 62% state that social media does not influence at all!
What’s the matter? Business owners think that they can use social media to influence the way consumers think. The hardest thing for business owners is to learn the use of social media channels in the way that consumer wants to use them, not the way the business wants to use them.
Consumers use the social medium to make connections. Researches show that consumers’ use social media to connect with friends and family, follow the latest trends, and find the product information. They also comment on hot trends or new arrivals and write reviews about the product.
Since the 2008 subsidence, customers have turned out to be progressively suspicious of businesses and more cautious with their spending. Henceforth, it's profoundly unlikely that organizations influence consumers' acquiring purchasing behavior by discussing themselves and their items on Facebook.
The only way to motivate your audience and convert them into customers is to change the conversation and engage fully with your existing audience.
If social media users perceive your messages, sincerely, they will engage with you. On other hand, if they feel you are trying to market to them, they will hide you or block you permanently from your feeds.
Basically, social media is not primarily about driving sales or influencing consumer’s buying decisions.
2. Appeal to Millennials
The Gallup poll report shows that Millennials, in particular, a key social media audience should not easily influenced by social media. It is considered as only 7% of society has a great deal of influence on purchasing decisions, while 48 % has no influence yet.
The companies need to understand how that demographic consumes information to influence Millennials via social media. After this, identify how to deliver a marketing message that appeals to them.
Millennials consume content on multiple platforms and devices as they are hyper-connected. They are enthusiastic about honest, authentic marketing; they want to be in charge of the conversations. They are interested in what their friends think and not interested in the opinions of those outside their social group.
You should build trust with Millennials by showing there is no clash between policy and practice. Take an example; if you mention in your Twitter’s bio, you will follow back everyone who follows you, make sure to do precisely.
If something goes wrong with your services, apologize publicly on social networks.
3. Engage Customers Online and Offline
Social media doesn’t function in a vacuum. If you need to influence consumers, you must engage with them offline and online. The researches show that customer engagement depends on how well an organization aligns all of its touchpoints.
For example, in the USA, an ABC company encourages customers to create their own t-shirts design as a way to join in the fun of their advertising campaigns. In this way, they turn their customers into brand advocates through online offerings that translate offline.
It’s not so difficult to leverage both online and offline customer engagement. You need to understand your brand’s emotional connection with consumers and act upon it. If you don’t know about your emotional audience connection, the best thing is to ask your audience.
4. Start Authentic Social Media Conversations
Social media is highly personal for users because they want to interact with other people, not with brands. They like to respond to companies that are personable and genuine.
Relate your posts with consumer’s problems so that you can grab their attention. In short, back off from hard-sell techniques and focus on open dialogue with consumers.
5. Be Available at All Times
Consumers want immediate responses from brands because social media is 24/7, even nights and weekends.
It is considered that 42% of consumers who complain on social media want a response maximum in 60 minutes. Moreover, 57 % expect the same response time at night and weekends even if it's not in business hours.
You can scale customer service with social media. Just take an example, if one customer service agent talks to a customer on the phone, another agent can respond to several queries at the same time via social media.
There is another option; you can launch an online community to enable customers to help each other. Within this community, you will find some members who are more engaged and helpful than others.
If you've been using social media promotion for even a short timeframe, you've likely understood that customers are great at blocking out brand-related content on Facebook and Twitter.
You know that social media could not recommend itself to your brand to followers or others. So, you need to develop a connection with your audience to influence consumer purchasing decisions.