The Benefit
Catching Up with Time
Marketing has evolved from what it used to be. The past was all about magazines, billboards, and TV commercials. Today, there is
- Snapchat
- and many more
Times are changing and consumer’s interest are too. Consumers are not reading magazines as much or looking up at billboards during the regular traffic hours or even watching shows on cable. People are getting their news and gossips from social media, they are watching shows through streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu. The closest form of advertisements that consumers see now a days is through social media. Businesses are accommodating these changes by following their consumer’s footsteps: using social media.
The Common Denominator
Utilizing so many different platforms can be difficult, but the outcome can be major. With each platform, there are different ways to use and work the media source, but every single media platform has one thing in common: a way to communicate. For example,
- Instagram — direct messaging
- Facebook — messenger
- Snapchat — sending snaps
Numbers Don’t Lie
For Sprout Social, a social media management platform for businesses, they compiled a list of statistics on their presence in social media. The company is a true believer that “engaging with … current and prospective customers is one of the best things you can do on social media” (Sprout Social, 2016). In other words, in order to succeed in making a presence for the company, the company must be able to communicate effectively to consumers. Through their investigation, statistics were able to prove this fact. For example, their study found that
- Incoming messages sent to companies has increased
- Response time has decreased
- Companies can’t keep up with inbound messages
Incoming Messages: In Q3 of 2013, Sprout Social recorded an average of 1,790 messages. In Q4 of 2015, they recorded an average of 2,742 messages.
Response Time: The average time you had to wait until you received a response from a company was 13 hours in Q4 of 2013. Now the average response time has decreased to 11 hours.
Inbound Messages: With the increase in messages, the rate at which companies are able to respond has decreased. This is due to the fact that the increased messages require a response as compared to just sending a robot response,which requires more time to answer.
Key to Advertising
Though society is changing, the key to advertising is still constant. The whole point of advertising is to communicate to consumers, whether through pages on a magazine or a post on Instagram. Marketing hasn’t changed,it has just evolve onto a whole new platform. Today, marketing consist of posts, videos, and pictures on social media. Social media allows brands to expand their target market. It enables companies to be able to communicate not only on the local and state level, but also the national level.
Work Cited
Sprout Social. (2016, February 22). 29 social media statistics every marketer should know [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://medium.com/sprout-social/29-social-media-statistics-every-marketer-should-know-8cb0595dbd72
