Social Media Platforms

Businesses today can no longer rely on word of mouth or simple print ads in a newspaper to gain the attention of new customers. Social media has become almost a necessity for all businesses to retain their place in the market. In 2014 almost 50% of consumers looked to at least one social media page before making a purchase (Go Gulf, 2016).  This means the businesses need to use their presence on social media in order to be involved in their consumers buying process.

            It is very easy for a company to look at the demographics of one social media site and see that their target market is present there and decide to only use that site. This philosophy will lead the company to have a minimal presence on social media and could lead to missed opportunities. There are a number of solid reasons on why companies should use multiple sites and they begin with the fact that by using multiple sites you can reach a larger portion of your audience. For example, a company may see that a large portion of their target market uses Facebook so they focus solely on that. A portion of their target market may also be present on Instagram and this may make up a group of the market that is more willing and financially capable of buying your product or service. So by focusing on Facebook the company is loosing potential sales.

            Customer Service is a part of any business that may not affect a customer buying your product the first time but without a doubt will effect whether or not they purchase your product or service again. Having a presence on multiple social media sites allows a company to control the conversation. If a company is only present on Pinterest they might be missing negative comments customers are making on Twitter. By allowing customers to post their negative comments on Twitter without a response from the company, the customer is controlling the conversation and the viewer’s perspective of the incident. A company that is present and activate on the site would be able to respond and potentially lessen the impact of the comment. A company’s presence on multiple sites can improve customers’ opinion of the brand and thus increase the brand image.

            In todays world many companies live by the theory that if your competition does it then you must too. While this is definitely not always the best or smart option, but when it comes to social media sometimes it is the best option. If your competition is more active on sites that your company is not present on then they may be able to reach a part of the market that you cannot. This allows them to gain control of a sector that you are willingly giving them by not making your presence known on that network. In ultra competitive markets and industries, companies cannot afford to give away any portion of the market share in order to stay in business.

            The biggest reason that all companies should be using multiple social media sites is because every site has different strengths and weaknesses. All of these can affect conversation rates, brand image, and overall reach of a company. Facebook while having lower click-through rates on their advertisements, are the elite when it comes too remarketing and tracking (Reed College of Media, 2016). Facebook has mastered the process of making sure that page likes and clicks are recorded and follow the customers in forms of ads and post placement. This is great for companies who need to increase brand awareness and reach more customers. While many people do not recognize YouTube as a social media site, it currently has accounts for roughly 50% of all Internet users (Reed College of Media, 2016). YouTube is great for leading traffic to other sites or pages and provides a great analytics resource for its users to monitor its traffic and so much more. While companies might not see the need for YouTube, posting something as simple as a commercial, infomercial, or basic industry information can create a connection that the company did not previously have access too.

            Instagram provides companies an even bigger advantage now that it was recently bought by Facebook (Shontell, 2013). This acquisition allows companies to link their ads on both sites to help drive traffic. Linking the ads helps for marketing campaigns and allows companies to keep a consistent message across the sites, increasing the chances for brand recognition. One of the newest social media sites is also the fastest growing and that is Snapchat (Morrison, 2015). Snapchat is idea for companies to drive traffic as well as help build a brand image. Connecting to your consumers directly and providing an insiders look into the company is great for building brand loyalty. Companies can now use the story section of Snapchat to reach users that do not even follow them. This allows companies to contact the almost 60 million daily users of Snapchat (Kokalitcheva, 2016).

            Companies must take into account all of these factors when deciding whether they will use one, multiple, or all of the social media networks. Another statistic that will have to be considered in this decision making process is the frequency in which users visit these networks. Facebook and Instagram have more then 50% of their users who visit their site on a daily basis (Duggan, 2015). In comparison Pinterest and Linkedin have almost 50% of their users visiting their site less frequently then on a weekly basis. So it is not worth a company to post daily on sites such as Pinterest and Linkedin but they must on sites such as Facebook and Instagram.

            Using all of this information I believe that it is clear what a company must do in order to compete in today’s competitive market that is technology driven. Companies must be present on at least multiple social media networks in order to most effectively reach their target market. Reaching the target market, building brand awareness, brand loyalty, and increasing the overall brand image of a company can only be effectively and completely done by proper use of these networks.

References

Businesses on Social Media- Statistics and Trends [Infographic]. (n.d.). Retrieved

October 29, 2016, from http://www.go-gulf.ae/blog/businesses-social-media/

Duggan, M. (2015, August 17). The Demographics of Social Media Users. Retrieved

October 26, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/19/the-demographics-of-social-media-users/

Kokalitcheva, K. (2016, September 25). Snapchat’s Daily Active User Count Has

Surpassed a New Milestone. Retrieved October 29, 2016, from http://fortune.com/2016/09/26/snapchat-users-us-canada/

Morrison, K. (2015, July 28). Snapchat Is the Fastest Growing Social Network

(Infographic). Retrieved October 29, 2016, from http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/snapchat-is-the-fastest-growing-social-network-infographic/624116

Reed College of Media (2016). Week 3 lesson: Social Media Analytics & Advertising

Channels. West Virginia University. Retrieved from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_69901_1&content_id=_3398293_1&framesetWrapped=true

Shontell, A. (2013, May 09). How Instagram Co-Founder Kevin Systrom Spent His

Year After The $1 Billion Facebook Acquisition. Retrieved October 29, 2016, from

http://www.businessinsider.com/its-been-1-year-since-facebook-bought-instagram-for-1-billion-heres-how-co-founder-kevin-systrom-spent-it-2013-5

Bounce Rate

Companies marketing team spend a lot of time and resources on driving traffic to their sites, but once this is complete the process is far from over. Its important for companies to monitor the bounce rate, once the potential customer has landed on their page. “Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions” (Google, 2016). This means that bounce rate counts how many times someone lands on the page and leaves without going beyond that landing page.

Monitoring bounce rate begins by setting up proper analytics tools so the company can monitor their visitor’s activity on the site. Once a company has formulated their bounce rate they must identify the significance of the metric. Companies must base this decision on industry standards as well as the goal of the marketing team. 

“Most websites will see bounce rates fall somewhere between 26% and 70%” (Peyton, 2014). This is a large basis for a company, which clarifies the importance of formulating a basis rate that becomes the companies beginning goal. This will simply be the beginning goal because as the team has more historical data they may be able to identify new information that may result in adjustments to this goal. 

If the marketing team begins to see a trend that the bounce rate is higher then their desired goal there are a couple different changes that can be made. Changes that can be made are delivering on customer expectations, improve brand storytelling, increasing social presences, and improving web page design (Hartwig, 2013). All of these improvements focus on capturing and maintaining the customers attention. Making pages easier to access, easier to navigate, and interesting will be crucial in lowering the bounce rate. 

Bounce rate can be important in the decision making process but is more important for the marketing team in identifying if their web page or marketing campaign needs improvement. A high bounce rate can point to a couple different issues. The first area for the marketing team to analyze would be the web page. They will have to identify if it has too much or too little information, if it is difficult to navigate, or if it has an unappealing look to it. The second area that the marketing team can peer into is if the web page does not match the message being sent by the marketing campaign. The marketing team could potentially have created a marketing campaign that is attention grabbing and enticing for the target market. But if this campaign does not match the message that is being seen by viewers on the web site it can contradict the message that drew the attention of the target market. 

Overall, bounce rate is an important metric for companies to monitor. This will not be company’s number one metric in terms of importance but will help with the evolution of both marketing campaigns and web pages. Identifying industry standards in this metric will help build a foundation for initial goals that companies can build on until they formulate an idea for what their bounce rate should be for them. Bounce rate is not a perfect science so what is a high rate for some companies may be the ideal goal for other companies.

References 

Bounce Rate. (n.d.). Retrieved October 18, 2016, from

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009409?hl=en

Hartwig, E. (2013, November 22). How to Lower Your Site's Bounce Rate. Retrieved

October 18, 2016, from http://mashable.com/2013/11/22/bounce-rate-metric/#AGIKBEsmqkqJ

Peyton, J. (2014, February 25). What's the Average Bounce Rate for a Website?

Retrieved October 18, 2016, from http://www.gorocketfuel.com/the-rocket-   blog/whats-the-average-bounce-rate-in-google-analytics/

 

Unique Visitors

With Today’s technology it is easy for a company to count how many times their site is visited. What a company really needs is the metric that helps them identify how many different people visited the site versus that one person who visits the site thirty times deciding if they want the sale item. This metric is commonly known as unique visitors. “Unique visitor is a term used in Web analytics to refer to a person who visits a site at least once within the reporting period” (Techopedia, 2016). 

           

Unique visitors can provide crucial data for companies that allow them to identify the success of their marketing campaigns and their ability to drive traffic to the site. Successfully driving traffic from marketing campaigns is imperative in today’s technology, digital media world (Brehme, 2014).

           

A great example of a company that actively tracks their unique visitors is Indeed. Indeed is a job posting site where companies post available job positions and potential employees can apply to these openings. Indeed actively promotes the over 140 million unique visitors it has every month (Indeed, 2014). This is a marketing tool that tells companies how many people they are reaching by posting on their site, and lets employees know that this is the place to go to find the best job postings. Keeping track of the unique users helps drive more users and traffic to the site.

           

Unique Visitors is also great for businesses that experience seasonal changes. Companies are able to keep track of traffic changes during certain seasons, which can lead to great marketing advice. The ability to identify peak seasons and times allows marketing departments to determine when seasonal campaigns should begin and when they should start to whine down. Identifying this timing is just as important as creating a great campaign. Malcolm Gladwell most famously discussed the importance of timing with his example using Bill Gates:

            “Why is Bill Gates a billionaire? He's smart, of course, and he has tremendous ambition. But he probably wouldn't have started Microsoft (MSFT) if he hadn't been born in 1955. That made Gates old enough to take advantage of the opportunities that opened up with the introduction, in 1975, of the Altair 8800, the first do-it-yourself computer kit. But he wasn't so old as to be too settled in his life to take a leap of faith” (Bloomberg, 2008).

This excerpt from Gladwell perfectly explains that timing can create a crucial advantage in a person’s life and this can be carried over to marketing campaigns as well. If a marketing campaign is released a day or two after or even before a major event, can be the difference between a effective campaign and a complete flop.

           

            Using unique visitors as a web analytic on a company’s website can provide invaluable information for management in their decision making process. Unique visitors, in my opinion, are a metric that all companies should use. This statistic may seem unimportant or unimpressive but a random spike or decline during any period can be a clue into the thought process of a target market. 

References

Brehme, A. (2014, June 17). How Unique Visitors – and Mobile Users – Tie to Your

Bottom Line. Retrieved October 17, 2016, from https://www.hostway.com/blog/how-unique-visitors-and-mobile-users-tie-to-your-bottom-line/ 

Gladwell's Outliers: Timing is Almost Everything. (2008, November 20). Retrieved

October 17, 2016, from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-11-19/gladwells-outliers-timing-is-almost-everything

How 140 Million Unique Visitors Use Indeed to Find Jobs - Indeed Blog. (2014,

March 27). Retrieved October 17, 2016, from http://blog.indeed.com/2014/03/27/how-140-million-unique-visitors-use-indeed-to-find-jobs/

 

What is a Unique Visitor? - Definition from Techopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved October 17,

2016, from https://www.techopedia.com/definition/1611/unique-visitor