Marketers Find Success on Social Through Customer Engagement
- Dec
2, 2013
Marketers choose
quality over quantity when adding social followers
Quality beats quantity when it comes to measuring
social media effectiveness, according to an August 2013 study by ExactTarget.
The survey found that 38% of US Facebook and 43% of Twitter marketers were more
concerned with the quality of audience members added via social efforts than
with the number of followers gained.
When setting social media objectives, an
overwhelming majority of respondents—77% of Facebook and 70% of Twitter
marketers—cited brand awareness as their top goal. Gaining customer
insights/improving retention was also popular.
Results from more recent polling conducted in
November 2013 by Ascend2 also determined brand awareness and customer
engagement—which leads to customer insights and improves retention rates—were
the top social marketing objectives among marketing professionals worldwide for
the upcoming year, indicating that these global trends aren’t going away
anytime soon.
Though throwing a Facebook or Twitter button on a
website may be easy, cheap and common, respondents to ExactTarget’s survey
didn’t find this nearly as effective as tactics requiring a little more effort
and interaction—suggesting that quality content leads to quality results.
While providing service and support was not a top
social objective, cited by just 22% of marketers from each group, tactics in
this category proved very effective. Only 27% of marketers on Twitter and 34%
on Facebook said they publicly answered customer service questions on the
social platforms, yet 60% and 69% of respondents, respectively, reported this
as effective. Offering FAQs and how-tos also had low usage rates among
marketers, but at least half of respondents from each group found this
effective.
