Important Social Media Statistics That Influence Business Decisions (infographic)

One of the main reasons why social media marketing is important for business is because of the huge number of users. Around 70% of the U.S population has at least one frequently used profile, and more than half of them use numerous social networks. On a global scale, the number of people who actively uses social networks is around 2.307 billion and that number is expected to rise up to 3 billion by 2019.

Of course, when we talk about social networks, the first thing that comes to mind is selfies and pictures of meals, however, there is so much more than that. Even B2B purchases are affected by social media sales and they can play a vital role in any purchasing decision. Consumers even claim that their buying process is largely influenced by positive feedback in the comment section.

The only real problem with social media is that its ROI is hard to measure; however, it is more than clear that they are a vital part of a good advertising campaign. And, as the population on social networks grows, so will the amount of resources invested in social media marketing. Here are some of the statistics that every business owner should be aware of.

Social media demographics

We already mentioned that 70% of U.S citizens are active users of Facebook and that over 2.1 billion people all over the world are social network users. However, for a business owner, the majority of consumers are adults and around 52% of adult users have more than one social network profile. Also, an average social media user commonly maintains around five accounts.

The most active users are mothers with children under the age of five, so those who advertise to stay-at-home moms need to pay special attention to social media advertising. Lastly the most popular social networks for teens are Instagram (32% of users are teens), Twitter (24%), Facebook (14%), and Snapchat (13%), while Tumbler is not as popular, since only around 4% of teens use this platform.

Out of all mentioned social networks, only Snapchat is not advertising-friendly, so to speak. If you are marketing to young adults, Twitter and Instagram are a must. Lastly, out of 2.1 billion users, 1.7 billion use smartphones to browse the web; in other words, you need to make sure that your online store is mobile-friendly and optimized for small screens.

Metrics and measurement

Here’s where the results tend to be a bit conflicting. Namely, consumers claim how social media has a huge rule in their purchasing decision. On the other hand, almost 60% of businesses were negative or neutral when stating the impact of social media on their sales. Around 40% of CMOs believe social media marketing is effective to some extent and 45% say they were unable to see a social media impact at all, and only 13% were able to provide solid results for their social media campaign. In fact, 46% of B2B sellers are not sure if their campaign has generated any revenue for their business.

However, another important metric can be measured, and that is engagement. Social media allows you to share your content, and if you can drive more traffic to your site, then it will be more exposed and customers will find it more easily. This is an important aspect of any line of work so, in this field, social media can be really helpful and should definitely not be overlooked.

Advertising stats and facts

Even though we lack tangible evidence to prove the impact of social networks, business owners still invest in social media marketing. After all, the amount of users there is too big to be ignored. Over the next five years, it is expected that a part of the digital marketing budget spent on social media advertising will be doubled, from 11% to 24%.

A different survey predicts that the digital marketing budget for social media will spike from 9,9% to 22,5%. Approximately 33% of millennials see social media as their preferred channel for communicating with businesses, and there was even the Domino Pizza campaign that was basically “tweet for pizza”, meaning that you could order food by tweeting.

As far as developing a social media campaigns goes, small business have more trouble than big companies. However, it’s easier to be popular when you already have a strong brand name, and it’s even easier when you can afford more professionals to come up with a strategy, so we can’t say that this is a surprising fact. If you need an effective strategy, think like Dominos; see if your campaign can improve the user experience on social networks and see if you can get some sort of online buzz out of it.

Enterprise and Executive Social Media Use

As far as business to community goes, the most used social network for advertising is YouTube. Among the top 100 global brands, all of them have at least one YouTube channel. The second most used network is Twitter and it’s closely followed by Facebook. The next two most frequently used networks are Instagram and Google + and the other one is Pinterest. Of course, for a more professional approach and for both business to business and business to community purposes, you can use LinkedIn. It’s both a social network and a blogging platform, plus you can find relevant connections with ease, since it possess advanced search filters.

Among these global brands, only 42 CMOs have Twitter accounts and 31 of those accounts are actually active, but only six brands: Apple, HP, Coca Cola, SAP, GE and IBM CMOs have more than 10,000 followers. Of course, these are personal accounts, not company name accounts. So, there’s no reason to have a high number of followers there, unless their goal is to become an outstanding brand ambassador, which is redundant in this case.

So, even though these numbers are not as high as you’d expect, it’s more important for small businesses to focus on social media, since they need to boost relevance.

Hopefully, the information provided here will be useful, and you’ll be able to see how much should be invested in social media advertising. As you can see, even if it doesn’t seem to have as big of an impact as you’d expect, business owners still rely on social media to boost their sales and relevance.

2016 Social Media Marketing Stats for SMBs [Infographic]

Courtesy of: SEOreseller

Author bio:

Robin is a Technical Support Executive with a combined experience of 6 years. He currently works with Knowledgebase – a knowledge management software by ProProfs. In his free time, Robin enjoys reading and traveling.