Survey Says: Rethink Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Most small business owners I speak to feel their social media marketing efforts don't produce tangible results. It turns out their feelings are on target: According to a recent survey by ForeSee Results of 10,000 online shoppers, social media interactions are the primary influence for only 5% of the people who visit retail websites.

Here's a breakdown of what influences those visits:

• Familiarity with brand: 38%
• Promotional emails: 19%
• Search engine results: 8%
• TV, newspaper, radio, magazine ads: 8%
• Word of mouth: 8%
• Internet advertising: 7%
• Interaction on social network: 5%
• Blogs or discussion forums: 3%
• Shopping comparison website: 2%
• Product review website: 2%

Surprisingly (at least to me) promotional emails are a very powerful marketing tool that result in an extremely high likelihood to purchase, both offline and online. And customers seem glad to get those emails: 64% of respondents say they prefer to hear about sales and promotions by email, while only 8% want to be notified through Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. (The actual percentage varies somewhat, depending on the company.)

Keep in mind ForeSee's research includes findings from the top 40 online retailers' websites by sales volume (as measured by Internet Retailer); your results may vary. But probably not by a lot -- don't assume your retail business is different, because in all likelihood it isn't.

Other interesting findings:

• 40% of respondents chose Facebook as their preferred social media means of receiving company communications; only 4% chose Twitter.
• More shoppers prefer to hear about sales and promotions from company websites than from TV, social media, radio, or text alerts.
• People aren't particularly satisfied with Facebook itself, but they rate their satisfaction with the Top 40 retailers' presence on Facebook higher than with the retailers' own websites. (Possibly meaning that if customers already like your business they'll like Facebook as a touch point.)

Social media has yet to blow me away as a driver of website traffic, store traffic or sales. That doesn't mean we should ignore it; that means we should keep it in perspective as one of many tools at our disposal. Yes, the data shows that some of the people who are most likely to buy come to our sites because of social media. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it was participation in social media that made this group more likely to buy. It is likely that social media-influenced visitors are already some of the best, most loyal customers to begin with.

Then rethink whether a full-on social media marketing effort makes sense, especially if resources are limited and you must choose how to allocate marketing resources. Don't ignore social media marketing, but for now you possibly should dabble rather than dive in.

Hype aside, traditional marketing channels are still likely to drive better bottom line results.

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