When it comes to reaching the final decision to purchase an item, what role do search and social media marketing play? This is not an easy question to answer but in an article for Search Engine Watch, Nathan Linnell offers some perspective on how a synergy of the two can influence a customer’s decision to buy. According to his article, a recent study by GroupM Search and comScore revealed the “impact and synergy of each channel.” Based on the statistics generated by the study, what is clear is that social media marketing is certainly an “important driving force in the purchase decision process.”
Linnell explains that a customer is likely to use social media as a tool to gather the opinion of other customers to help them narrow their options or validate their choices. What does this mean for e-commerce merchants? It means effort should be put on maintaining a positive image for your brand, on ensuring customer satisfaction and on being able to quickly respond to customer complaints. This, in effect, will lead to lesser negative reviews, which in this age of social media, means a lesser chance for your brand to be dropped from the customer’s consideration sets.
Another surprising result generated from the study is that “less than one percent of customers engage with a brand through Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube during their decision making process.” This implies that hard sell advertising of your brand is not as effective as cultivating a positive brand image. When making a decision to buy or to not buy, customers turn to their peers for opinion. However, the study also revealed that 16% “engage with company blogs” which could mean that a relevant and expert content distributed by the company can heighten brand value. Linnell breaks down the top social media channel types that affect a purchase decision:
• Reviews – 30%
• Facebook – 17%
• Video Sharing – 14%
• Twitter – 9%
With social media channels, there is a huge opportunity to foster strong customer loyalty and to encourage after purchase engagement with the brand.
The math is simple. Linnell explains that a growing base of happy and loyal customers will translate into more positive mentions in social channels such as Facebook and Twitter. More positive mentions is likely to bring in more new customers who, in time and with proper customer service, will also become part of your loyal market base. This, of course, can lead to significant sales growth. The key is to ensure that each customer has the same positive experience so that the cycle will go on.
In conclusion, Linnell notes that “search still plays the largest role in a consumer’s purchase decision” but “social media is increasingly playing a larger and more intertwined role.” He also reminds entrepreneurs to integrate search and social media efforts to be able to “capitalize and easily adapt to the future shifts in synergy between each channel.”
