Industry News

Avoiding knee-jerk reactions

Consumers both praise and criticize retailers on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs. It is the negative comments, though, that test retailers’ ability to manage customer relationships in a dynamic, always-on and fragmented environment.

“Social media amplifies the voice of disgruntled customers and makes it easy for others to jump on the bandwagon if they can relate to the pain,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “How Retailers Handle Negative Buzz on Social Media Sites.” “The potential for negative to buzz to escalate into mass criticism puts pressure on retailers to react quickly.

“To avoid a knee-jerk response, retailers need to take a strategic view of customer relationship management on the social Web,” he said.

Read more: Dealing with Negative Online Word-of-Mouth, MAY 5, 2010

Fan pages most popular among Hispanics

Not only are social fans more likely to buy and recommend brands, but their friends are also listening.

More than two-thirds of US Facebook users said a Facebook friend referral would increase their chances of purchasing a product or visiting a retailer, according to research and consulting firm Morpace.
 
Fan pages, used by 41% of respondents to show their friends what products they support, are one way to spur such positive referrals. In line with other researchers, Morpace found that coupons and discounts were also key reasons to join a fan page, cited by 37% of Facebook users. On average, users were fans of nine pages.

The racial and ethnic background of users influenced their fan page activity. White Facebook users were generally least likely to become a fan of brands and retailers.
 
Hispanics had the greatest propensity to become fans in all the categories studied by Morpace. One-half of Hispanic respondents said Facebook was a good tool for researching new products, compared with 46% of Asians, 44% of African-Americans and only 31% of whites.

While data from AOL Advertising also showed that Hispanics are ahead of the general market in using the Internet to research purchases and share information socially, Orcí found marketers were not taking advantage of social opportunities to reach Hispanic users.

Read the full article at www.emarketer.com

According to the “Marketing Trends Report 2010” from Anderson Analytics and the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) “marketing ROI” had jumped to become the most important trend to marketing executives. Social media cracked the top 10 this year, when 72% of respondents were planning a social strategy. The two concepts were also key when combined: Social media ROI was an important buzzword for 36% of executives.

A separate survey of US marketing execs by Ad-ology indicated social tactics were the most likely to increase in 2010.

In this report Michael Stelzner found out that a significant 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week and 39% for 10 or more hours weekly.

Other major finding are:
•    Top three questions marketers want answered: (1) What are the best tactics to use, (2) how to do I measure the effectiveness of social media and (3) where do I start?
•    Marketers are mostly new to social media: A significant 88% of marketers surveyed are using social media to market their businesses, BUT 72% have only been doing so for a few months or less.
•    The top benefit of social media marketing: The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, indicated 81% of all marketers, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.
•    The top social media tools: Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook were the top four social media tools used by marketers, in that order.
•    Social media tools marketers most want to learn about: Social bookmarking sites were ranked of highest interest, followed closely by Twitter.