There are, as always, opportunity costs. Since 2008, according to a McKinsey study, companies have devoted more time and money to social networks and 20 % less to e-mail communications. Yet, the same study found that humble e-mail remains a more effective way to acquire customers— nearly 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined. Why? Because 90 % of U. S. consumers use email daily and the average order value is 17 % higher than purchases attributable to those social media.
Technology changes fast remember MySpace and Friendster?— but consumer behavior changes more slowly. As a result, people tend to overhype new technologies and misallocate resources, especially marketers.
When banner ads first appeared their CTR was 10 %, but that soon fell due to heavy usage by firms, and clutter. Research has long demonstrated that ad elasticities are generally very low, that firms often persist with ineffective ad media( because they have the wrong measures or no measures), and that companies routinely over-spend on ads( due to ad agency incentives, the fact that ad expenses are tax-deductible, and companies’ use-it-orlose-it budgeting processes). Other research indicates that traditional offline consumer opinion surveys( when they use representative samples) are better at predicting sales than clicks, number of website visits or page views, positive or negative social media conversations, and search( although online behavior is good at tracking the reasons behind week-to-week changes in sales.)
With new media, therefore, great expectations are common and missing the goal is understandable: it takes practice and learning. But changing or dismantling the goal posts is a different story.
Intelligent Social Media Marketing www. kacharagadla. in