A recent study by Vocus in cooperation with Duct Tape Marketing reveals some interesting statistics regarding small and medium businesses’ use of social media in their marketing.
“One of the most fascinating findings of the study was the divergent views of online influence. For example, 40% of SMBs prefer a smaller but highly engaged audience, while 27% would prefer a huge following with little engagement. What’s important to note is the 27% that prefer a large following are also more likely to report social media has been very helpful to their efforts. “
The picture painted by this data is one that includes success, optimism, frustration and rookie mistakes. It’s clear that one of the things they learned is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Success
87% of small businesses surveyed said that social media has been somewhat (58%) helpful or helped a great deal (29%). The three platforms with the highest levels of use (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter) also ranked highest in their reported helpfulness. Interestingly, the platform with the highest reported helpfulness was Google+.
Optimism
With that sort of success rate, it’s not surprising that 84% of them report that they will be increasing their spending on social media marketing in the future. This is an important signal. 39% said that they would increase their use of social media marketing “a lot.” Only 1% said they would use it less. The top platforms businesses planned for expansion were Google+, Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, Foursquare and Flickr.
Frustration
The top four barriers reported really broke down into two categories; resources and (lack of) control. It seems that many of these businesses underestimated the costs of social media marketing, as 43% of them reported the misperception that “People think social media is free, but it really costs a great deal.” Many also reported frustration with customers publicly voicing complaints or not being able to reach the right audience.
Rookie Mistakes
The report demonstrates that many of these businesses are making the mistake of implementing “tactics without strategy.” The metrics businesses were using to measure success were disappointing for me to see. The number one choice was increased traffic to the website. As I frequently tell businesses, unless you’re selling advertising impressions, traffic doesn’t pay the bills. Customers do. This is why it’s critical to link everything to marketing outcomes that support your business goals. Unfortunately, the metric that was dead last was conversions.
Path to Influence
Here’s the entire presentation from Vocus – Path to Influence: An Industry Study of SMBs and Social Media.
