There is no doubt that consumers are increasingly using their time on social networks. Among other things time is devoted to express their brand preferences, to share their purchase intentions, to talk about their favorite products, all of which are publicly shared by their networks. It is very tempting for companies to take a look at what their target audience is willing to buy and thereby they are able to direct their offer to what their customers want. Therefore, more and more companies are jumping on the bandwagon of social networks to engage with consumers and more marketers than ever believe that social networks are an increasingly successful tools for doing so. As a result (cf. image below), worldwide social network ad revenues will surpass $8 billion in 2012 and approach $10 billion by 2013.
From a strategic point of view the solution is to involve the social media into the electronic stores and the online stores marketing strategy. But why? We will begin drilling down the reason of doing so by pointing out the advantages of using the biggest social network.
- Advantages of using social network Facebook for ads:
1. Proximity to clients Facebook encourages direct dialogue between company and client, which results in authenticity and reliability.
2. Word of mouth Facebook users engage in promotional campaigns of businesses and in this way contribute to spread it among others.
3. Real Time. The Facebook fan pages allow real-time feedback to the user.
4. Targeting Facebook allows advertisers to target a specific audience based on their interests.
5. Powerful range Mark Zuckerberg´s social network now has over 800 million users worldwide
Facebook applications
Customers can install a small application on their Facebook profiles and propose ideas on how to improve service according to their view. These comments are reflected immediately on the company web site, where the community votes on which seems to be the most appropriate. When someone installs one of these tools in their profile, allows its creators to know those personal details that are relevant to their operation. For example, applications often take emails from the user’s contacts and send them a promotional message.
There is a whole industry developing applications for Facebook that offers users a wide range of options to customize their profiles with games, photo albums or music players and video, among other tools. The companies are aware to identify trends in popularity of these applications, to launch their own versions and permanently increase the number of users in their groups or communities.
“ Like” button
Facebook’s “Like” button caught the online retailers attention, for instance, Levi’s implemented the “Like” buttons across its online store through their viral strategy when the social network just launched this new tool. Aprox. 55% of retailers are planning to apply more social features in 2010. According to a June 2010 survey made by the website SeeWhy on the use of Facebook for social commerce, 35% of online marketers have already implemented Facebook’s “like” plug-in, and another third is planning to do so.
The “Like” button not only encourages online shoppers to share content they are interested in with their friends, but also through Facebook’s login brings customers to live the ecommerce experience on the merchant’s site with no need for registration, which can be a barrier to conversion. They suggest customers are also on board with tools such as the “Like” plug-in. That is a good reason for the merchants to leverage social shopping by using Facebook so they can drive traffic back to their own site rather than building ecommerce applications on the social network.
The connection between their own social platforms and electronic stores should be increasing and it will continue to contribute their own social networks. Having an established relationship on Facebook involves a significant increase in the probability that two people share the same tastes in subjects such as music, movies or books. Social affinity expressed through the bonds of friendship on Facebook would suggest that this social network would have the potential to develop more effective segmentation indicators than those available to any competitor.
Affinity and indicators:
- The recommendations (63%) and friends (31%) are the mostconfident. Yet 81% of U.S. consumers now go online to do further research, with 55% looking for reviews of users, and 10% seek advice from their social networks. However, among people aged 25-34, this figure rises to 23%. (Source: Cone Inc., June 2010).
- 90% of people rely on recommendations from their Facebook friends (Source:ExactTarget, August 2010).
- 31% of daily users of Twitter followers ask their opinion about products andservices. (Source: Arbitron Edison Research & Internet, April 2010).
Numbers
- Facebook will receive $7 of every $10 spent on social network advertising.
- In 2012, Facebook will tally $5.78 billion in ad revenues (72% of all social network advertising revenues) .
- In 2013, 12% of US online ad spending will go to social networks in 2013. Advertisers are shifting budgets from search, TV and print to fund social campaigns. Several executives interviewed by eMarketer said a goal for 2012 is to better integrate social networks into their overall advertising mix and understand the inter-relationships between offline media and social media.
“I like”-related statements
Amir Kassaei, creative director of DDB Germany predicted, in the Congress “Online Handel 2011”, that in the next few years, Facebook will no longer be a social network to become essentially a “network of transactions.” Here are some of his statements:
“The master plan of Facebook is to mutate in a commercial network”
“The buttons I like that we see today everywhere in the future be converted into buttons I buy”
“In the doorway of Mark Zuckerberg, products and services are purchased with Facebook’s own currency.”
“Marketing will experience profound changes in the coming years”
www.emarketer.com “Online Merchants Love Facebook’s ‘Like’” “Worldwide Social Network Ad Revenues”