We?ll get to the details that back this claim up in a few moments, in this Podcast, Myself, Dave and our guest this week John Hayes discuss this topic and as John?s background is also email marketing perfectly suited to make the comparison between Social Marketing and Email Marketing.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Because this is may be new to you, above is a green play button.?Press play and you?re listening!
If you?d like to download the Podcast for listening to on your iPhone, Drioid or iPad you can do or you can press the ?Play in new window? button to be able to listen to the Podcast while browsing. ?If you use iTunes, you can?subscribe here?for free.
The Evidence
Lets run through a few of the findings in the report:
- Barely 1% of 77,000 transactions could be traced back to social links
- Email has usually been a influencing factor in the transaction
- 33% of new customers and 48% of repeat customers coming from multiple touch points
- By far the biggest driver for for purchases online are email marketing and search
- 30% of transactions started with a click from an email marketing campaign
- Email marketing is by far the most important channel for repeat customers
- New buyers looking for a specific product or brand are more receptive to paid search than your loyal customers
- Paid & organic search led to to 39% of transactions from new customers
- Still a significant proportion of buyer visits are driven by buyers typing in the websites URL
- Directly typing the companies URL?was found to influence a surprising 30% of transactions
Basically the study found that the impact on Social Marketing on actual sales was almost?negligible.
Before Jumping on the Evidence
I chose John to join us on this Podcast for his?experience?with Email Marketing and yes this Podcast is going to be biased towards email marketing and iContact who John mentions in the?discussion. This is?because I wanted to give you an option that you can leverage immediately and for me that is Email Marketing.
I?m sure some of you?reading?this are going to be horrified by the study findings, as we?re all being told relentlessly that ?we should be doing social marketing?, ?we should be on Twitter and we should be creating Facebook pages and so on?? and there are a lot of companies that are purely focused in Social Marketing that want your money and want to give you a design and a service.
To be clear here, such offerings are?beneficial?to businesses in the right situations, John points this out too, there are other reasons to consider Social Marketing key to your business and even for me personally (as you?re likely to have found this article on Twitter) these are vitally important and we?ll cover those shortly,?but as this report is showing for transactional volume, Social Media capability in the study for delivering transaction results, is tiny when compared to other methods of marketing.
When Should You Consider Social Marketing?
And instead for you to consider this as a one part of your approach to marketing your business and if I use the simple?metaphor?of a cake mix, that it?s likely that your balance through the marketing we?re all?receiving?is weighting to heavily towards the chocolate icing, imagine a cake made?entirely?of icing, ewww.?So instead lets change the mix and compare it to a simple cake mix:
How to Make a Cake / How to Have a Good Marketing Mix
- 4oz / 120g butter
This is your eBay sales - 4oz / 120g white sugar
This is your Amazon sales - 4oz / 120g white self raising flour
This is your website sales & other sales such as affiliates, PPC, CSE?s and so on? - 2 eggs
This is your email marketing, that binds everything together - 1 table spoon of milk
This is what you?re up to on Social Marketing
Now I?m not a cook but milk is added to create a denser cake through it?s fat content. Now lets think of this fat as being the reach that social has which is huge.
We?re adding it all in the right proportions and that is our point, as we discuss, gaining new customers is very costly and?retaining?them is generally of the highest priority and while Social Marketing can help this, Social is currently getting too much weighting when from shown in the study, the transactional volume is still coming from the traditional channels.
While I have a special note to the future of eCommerce and Social in the summary, right now Social should come at the end of the mix, when binding?everything?together as the high fat dose to give it the depth and exposure for the businesses.
Not to discredit social?completely, there numerous are reasons why a company would want to use Social Marketing as part of?their?businesses and we?re not?saying?that you shouldn?t using social marketing at all, just not in the weightings that some would consider you should be.
So what are some of the reasons why you should consider social marketing?
- Brand exposure
- Instant one on one contact with customers &?Customer Service
- The potential reach of the internet world
- To be see as ?human?
- To give evidence / proof to buyers that you are here and real
- To build influence
- With Google Plus specifically there is a search weighting applied to it
Note: I did also read a few days ago ?because your?competition are using social media?, for me that is a lame reason and I?m not including it.
I asked one of the businesses I work with what they thought of Social Media, the response back was interesting:
?We find it so different being able to give instant responses, sometimes lacking in emails?.
I?didn?t?see what he meant to begin with, as surely email support is the same thing, instant? However what he had inadvertently picked up upon is that social media for him was the most pleasing for both him and his team was when he was able to publicly demonstrate the excellent customer support that his team offers in a public environment.
I asked John & Dave the?question
?Maybe why eBay and Amazon may need to think about?publicly?showing the response times to buyer/seller questions beyond just the detailed seller ratings and make a more comprehensive picture and clearer picture for both sellers and buyers alike??
What John came back was with excellent as it?s a nice cross over between owning the content of the interactions and being completely?transparent?with customers, you can see for yourself and their latest stats from customer services here?http://www.icontact.com/resources/customer-satisfaction.
Let?s make no-bones-about it, I?m?absolutely?saying that Social Marketing for product based?businesses?is not worth the hype that its being given and that out first point of call for expanding your business should not be social at all.
But what can you use instead? We can?t just say that and give you no option, that?would?be?cruel?so our suggested first point of call be as a viable alternative to social is Email marketing, for which we?ll take a closer look at now.
Why Email Marketing as an Alternative
We?re not just advocating using just iContact, John works for Vocus and I felt he by far the best person to speak to on this topic, proven by his?experience?and his input in this Podcast, there are many options for Email Marketing tools and I?ve included as many options that came to mind at the bottom of this section.
Having John as part of the Podcast was a huge help for us as John pointed us in the direction of this?info-graphic?from iContact that I?ve included below. It?s rather large and you can see the full version here?(opens in a new window).
What this info-graphic?points out to us is that Email Marketing is not dead and infact it?s live and kicking and according the Forrester?s study, it?s kicking serious butt with ?30% of transactions started with a click from an email marketing campaign?.
While the?info-graphic give us a founding in the reach of Email Marketing, what I want to focus on here is the effectiveness and I?ve cut out several?pieces?to show you.
?
Dave while researching for this Podcast also found an interesting article and infographic from June this year that shows that for the first time that mobile devices combined are now on par with desktop email openings, that is just amazing!
The full?info-graphic?is here?http://litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-stats-infographic-june-2012?and we?ve included a cut out of the cross over point we discuss in the Podcast below:
?
Email marketing is all of these and a lot more too:
- Fully scalable
- Highly personal
- Extremely clear on what is working and what is not
- Almost 100% reportable
- Easy to split test and improve
- Very easy to do
- Its cheap
- Widely recognised as the most profitable form of online marketing today
And ultimately it works!
Email Marketing Companies
I hope this gives you an insight into why Email Marketing could be?lethal?for your business, but to cover Email Marketing to the level that it deserves would need a couple of articles in a series to cover it back to back and we can?t do it the justice it deserves here.
I?m not going to cover the ins-and-outs of each of them here, but here are several options for you to choose from and you can find several of these covered in detail in the email marketing part of the solutions directory on this very site.
I also want to point out, none of these are affiliate links. That is I gain no?commissions?for?referring?you, to show that I am not biased here on this topic, it is?genuinely?what I feel you should be doing as a product based business owner to be doing right now instead of worrying about the hype behind Social Marketing.
About John Hayes
You can put a face to the voice from the Podcast and John is over to the left.
Not only is John our guest in this Podcast, but also he?s the?author?of an Amazing book that both myself and Dave have read called ?Becoming THE Expert? which shows you how to use ?Thought Leadership Management? to excel in your chosen field.
You can buy John?s book on Amazon or in the iBookStore and direct links can be found on the publishers website here:?http://www.brightwordpublishing.com/products/view/865794/Becoming-THE-Expert/John-W.-Hayes/
In Summary
Personally I have been looking for this evidence for a long time, I feel that for small businesses that sell products online, that social marketing is?currently?a complete distraction and given the choice between Social Marketing of any-form and other methods such as PPC and as we?ve covered heavily in Podcast and supporting article, Email that there are many other options that can delivery tangible results more easily, for less money and are almost 100%?traceable?to the final result, the transaction.
Now before some new-age nut job writes us off as ?traditionals?, I?d like to point out is the eCommerce arena that we play in is changing and while right now Social may not be worthy of all the hype it?s been?receiving, as more and more people start to leverage it and discover how to use these still very new channels to market with, we are going to see the potential power of social influence on transactions?increase.
So right now Social may-be-not for product based businesses, but wind us forwards 5 years, I think we?ll be seeing unique uses and?unique?ways of leveraging?social?marketing as stand alone businesses to drive transactions.
Now that we?ve covered our point of views, what do you think?
(Let us know in the comments?section below)?
Sources/Credits: Image?| Study | Views?| Image
Like what you read?If so, join over 25,000 people each month that receive updates & support and receive your free copy of the most comprehensive, 5,500 word guide to the pre-Christmas updates for eBay UK 2012.
Just enter your name and email address below:
florida primary results black history groundhogs day paula abdul cinnamon challenge lou dobbs rock salt
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.