A new study from Universal McCann shows that the volume of active Internet users aged 16-54 utilizing the social networks has surged in the past year, underscoring the growing importance of social media strategy for marketers.
The study finds that 71% of active Internet users aged 16-54 visited a friend’s profile page and 62.5% have profiles of their own. This means people are actively sharing ideas, pictures and items to buy online, and they likely place a significant importance on using the network for general communication.
For online retail, there are a few take-aways we have distilled:
- Marketing efforts need to include social networks in a growing way.
- Features and functions found on the networks will be expected throughout other web properties.
- Your demographic is on social networks. We talk to a surprising number of people who maintain that THEIR demographic isn’t using these social tools, but all you need to do is look at the numbers to see that the vast majority of people online are also is using social networks in some way.
So, this study supports your presence on Facebook and your staff’s twitter updates. But it also means that, as long as you engage in the right way, you can have a very large audience for marketing efforts like Twitter promotions and Facebook coupons. To deepen your customer experience and drive more site traffic, make sure your shoppers can easily share items they like or want feedback on through their network connections. DecisionStep enables this functionality as part of our ShopTogether Friends application. That way, even though they may not be a “fan” of your brand on Facebook, they can still easily act as a brand ambassador and disseminate product information to their friend networks. If they are a fan and visit your Facebook fan page, consider our new ShopTogether Crowd application. ShopTogether Crowd dynamically presents the most popular items (from your ecommerce site) out to your Facebook page and drives people back directly to the product page that they are most interested in.
With the mainstream adption of social networks, the features and functions associated with them will become prevalent throughout the rest of the Internet. The need for real-time communication beyond Facebook and Twitter is becoming obvious. With the assurance that the real-time Internet is not just a fad, you can be assured that users will demand the benefits of it everywhere they visit online. Shoppers standing in a retail store with their credit card in hand make phone calls, SMS images to their friends or ask the person standing next to them if they need the last push before swiping the card. E-commerce sites should allow them to do that online too. Allow them to message or share with friends, a sales clerk or an expert easily before they purchase. If you don’t have the sharing functionality up already, then add it. The next step is to include ShopTogether so your customers can connect in real-time with the people who matter most in the purchase-making decision.
And lastly, note that growth from the Universal McCann study cited above is in the user base ages 16-54. Over the past year, 16% more people have a social network profile, and clearly boomers want this functionality as well.
Tags: real-time, ShopTogether, social shopping