Newswise — With the holiday season fast approaching, Natalie Wood, Ph.D., assistant director of Saint Joseph’s University’s Center for Consumer Research, offers the following strategies for how marketers can be better prepared and leverage the power of social media to strengthen their existing marketing campaign. With the right social media strategy, Wood says marketers can maximize brand exposure at very little cost.
FacebookBetween 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., consumers use Facebook more than television, according to Wood. Thirty percent of teen millennials (ages 15 to 17) surveyed spent time on the social network, vs. 24 percent who spent time with television. Among adult millennials (ages 18-34), 44 percent said they went on Facebook (presumably while at work or school) during this time period, while 28 percent watched television.
TwitterThe nature of advertising on Twitter (and Twitter applications) means that the ads often look very similar to the content on the social network and are therefore, at least in theory, more engaging for users. Wood cites a recent study which revealed that high-level Twitter users, who logged in more than 100 times a month, saw more than 1,000 ads during that time, and 20.40 percent of those users interacted with at least one ad a month. This statistic is compared to low-level users, those who logged in between 10 and 24 times a month, and interacted with ads only 4.41 percent of the time.
M-Commerce (shopping from mobile phone or tablet)Due to increasing numbers of smartphone users — eMarketer forecasts a 50 percent increase in penetration of mobile shopping for 2011 — this could be the year that mobile makes a dent in holiday sales. Wood says that while mobile coupons are still a niche activity among mobile users, usage is growing at a fast pace. eMarketer estimates 9.5 percent of U.S. adult mobile users, or 19.8 million people, will use mobile coupons by the end of this year. One caveat, cautions Wood, is customer concern for privacy. Her recommendation for marketers is to use location-based delivery of coupons carefully.
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