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The Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing

The premise of the infographic is good and bad, but I don’t know that it quite hit the nail on the head. The pros (good) are all very valid statistics supporting social media marketing efforts, but the cons speaks to gaps in understanding, strategy and analysis more than marketing with the medium. Let’s take them one at a time.

  1. 50% of C-Suite aren’t convinced of social media’s value. This could be a number of issues. The staff may not be accurately measuring the impact and providing the appropriate reports to their C-Suite. They also may not be recognizing the long-term impact of communicating effectively with your social audience and the benefits that are more difficult to measure.
  2. Social media only accounts for 1.14% of all e-commerce traffic. I’m calling bogus on this for a number of reasons. First and foremost, most people are utilizing applications to interact with social media. This isn’t a small number… up to 90% of your social media referrals may not be measured within analytics because they’re coming to a direct link from an app. Not to mention the influence and discovery that social media offers. The conversion may not happen from a direct interaction – but everyone knows that Word of Mouth has an enormous impact on the products and services we purchase – and social is WOM.
  3. 85% of companies do not connect social activity to business outcomes. As with #1, this isn’t something bad about social media marketing, this is an internal corporate issue. The ability to communicate effectively, engage, nurture, upsell, collect feedback and provide a personal touch with your customers is so efficient with social media. If companies aren’t leveraging it, that’s their fault… not the fault of social.
  4. Email still outperforms social media in terms of conversions 40 to 1. No doubt… but if you have someone’s email address, that means that you already have a relationship with them! Social provides the opportunity to build a relationship enough to gather the email address! We share these posts on Martech on social where they are shared… then people come to our site and sign up for email! You can’t compare apples and oranges like this.
  5. Social media programs are CMOs’ 6th-ranking concerns (58 percent). Their first is improving processes and going mobile. I’m not going to criticize this stat… social media being a top 6 issue shows you the weight it has above other strategies. One note on this, though… Social is Mobile… why do you think you’re getting your site mobile optimized? Search? Yes… but social is critical as well.

This new OutMarket infographic explores the notion that social media is a must-have for brands today, but the reality about why CMOs question it and what its true strengths and weaknesses are. What’s the good and the bad of social media marketing? Take a look at the good and pat yourself on the back for making it relevant within your organization. Then, take a look at the bad and follow our three tips to make sure you’re demonstrating social’s value and tying it to results.

Good-and-Bad-of-Social-Media-by-OutMarket

Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is CMO of OpenINSIGHTS and the founder of the Martech Zone. Douglas has helped dozens of successful MarTech startups, has assisted in the due diligence of over $5 bil in Martech acquisitions and investments, and continues to assist companies in implementing and automating their sales and marketing strategies. Douglas is an internationally recognized digital transformation and MarTech expert and speaker. Douglas is also a published author of a Dummie's guide and a business leadership book.

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