I know many stories like these. When I ask companies "Do you generate revenue via social media? Facebook, Twitter, G+ or anything?" the answer is always no. I would love to know about counterexamples if there are any.
Does anyone know the story behind those new TV Ads and the new jingle? I recently saw the Ad where the "protagonist" is always being showered on and soapy fresh throughout the day, and thought, "wow, what happened to these guys that turned a pretty boring product/campaign to one of the most memorable ones over the last 3-4 years?"
EDIT: Further thought would suggest, Facebook, G+, Twitter, etc. That seems to hint that maybe the main business of social media is: spreading social media. Ruh oh.
I'm sure there are some small, local companies who can't afford to/don't have the expertise to manage a website, that can leverage social media for promotions, sales, and general brand awareness. But those are also the people who tend not to measure ROI, so who knows? This was a really interesting article on the subject, if a bit biased: http://www.fastcompany.com/1760849/does-social-media-have-re...
It seems to be a self-perpetuating cycle from social media "gurus". Audi's manager of social media says "Today the equation to measure that doesn't exist" when asked about measurable results. So he (and much of the industry) claim that they just don't know, but it's probably doing something, and it can't hurt, right? So their clients/supervisors are scared of missing out and they continue to approve these gimmicks that, in my opinion, aren't very effective.
Yes. I work for a national professional body - a membership organisation - and we generate business (i.e. new members) through social media. We also retain more members because we can subtly remind them of the benefits they get, and respond quickly to their customer service needs, through social media.
Twitter is perfect for raising brand awareness, dropping hints about the benefits of membership to non-members, and quickly resolving issues members are having.
We also use social media to position ourselves as being at the forefront of our industry by being the first to break news, RT things people wouldn't have spotted, provide practical advice and create debate via our blog, etc.
Local business - yes, if their customers make regular purchases
Fashion brands - yes, if it's a brand name that people are excited about sharing, and again regular purchases helps - people want to keep checking back for what's new
It's tough; I work with a lot of different retailers, everyone wants to believe that social media is going to be good for them, but it depends on both their business and their customers.
I see agencies pitch the miracles of social media and it often just doesn't pan out.
It's about who your customers are and how they would want to be associated with your brand.
For example, consider a washing machine repair service, it's somebody you are going to use infrequently (hopefully!) and even though you might give a recommendation to your friends, it's not something that you'd associate with and steer your friends towards. In fact it's not really that helpful as it's highly unlikely that they would need those service right now.
Now think of a clothing boutique. It's a brand that's "cool", you want to let people know you go there. You go frequently, you want to tell you friends that you saw X and thought it was neat, or you bought Y. You share these events and other updates with your group, you are providing useful information and showing your tastes to your friends.
I'm not sure if there's a distinct work/not-work axis, but there's definitely categories of businesses and customers that work better than others.
That's a great point. But Facebook is starting to stonewall business owners with promoted posts, and the value of the channel seems to be dipping lower and lower. So business owners work to build up these audiences, and then they're charged a premium to get any eyeballs. At this point, a simple website and a good SEO expert might be a better long-term investment.
I've literally stopped my SEO efforts.. most are just price checking anyways, looking for 'the lowest price' (web design services)... I tend to find building a relationship and educating my potential clients better than trying to get a sale from SEO window shoppers, I can do that best with social media... I've started driving people from my website to my social media profiles, and I'm doing the same with my clients
Really? I find few things more annoying than going to a business's or organization's website and finding it has no details about them, their products, their services, or anything else useful -- all because some genius has decided that facebook/twitter/google+/etc is a better platform for that information than their website.
It may be better to stick to targeted advertising (e.g. Adwords) where you can aim at consumers further along the sales funnel by controlling specificity and have an easier way to track conversions.
Also any money invested in SEO, as in building good content vs. SEO "tricks", usually has a bigger payoff than paid advertising.
Web Design - mainly building B2B sites as well... Behind every 'B' is a 'C'... I connect personally with business owners around my city and post useful info about how they could build their business with a better website. Get about 3 leads a week from people asking for more information - get about 1 sale a week.
I've literally stopped my SEO efforts.. most are just price checking anyways, looking for 'the lowest price'... I tend to find building a relationship and educating my potential clients better than trying to get a sale from SEO window shoppers
Depends on your definition of generating revenue. For example:
1. If Coca-cola starts a social media campaign (and gets 1million likes) and Pepsi doesn't (0 likes), Coca-cola has a stronger brand position. Is this easy to calculate in real terms? No. But then again, Coca-cola nor Pepsi actually bottle their own products so they are measured on brand awareness anyways.
2. A friend of mine just started making custom bicycle wheels. He's gotten 3 new customers literally from our triathlon facebook group alone. Also, I would guess at least 5 people (probably way more) have had massages from a sports massage therapist in our club, simply because they posted on our group "I'm in need of a sports massage who knows a good one?"
"Social media" isn't necessarily a new way of driving business, but rather it's a new platform for capturing something that has been happening for decades - word of mouth - and then trying to position yourself (at scale) to exploit that word of mouth.
If there were any compelling counterexamples, they would already be touting them already. Glad someone is calling out the emperor for wearing no clothes. Hope this idea gets traction.
Direct response ads have turned out to be very successful for brands on Facebook. Once they have reached a healthy fan base size they sell actual products to their fans in their newsfeed. Example: Domino's offering a special only available to their Facebook fans. With Facebook's pixel tracking you can back out the exact ROI for every dollar spent promoting that offer to fan's & friends of fan's.
Burberry is great example of using social media to completely revitalize the business. The stock as grown over 300% since 2007. One can attribute their success to a variety of factors but an important prong was social media. I think the difference with Burberry's strategy and say Pepsi's is using social media to enhance the key values/identify of the business.
A lot of small online businesses in my area are killing it through Facebook.
Though they use the Facebook pages, not ads, and the ones I know of that are doing great post stuff for women mostly :) (clothes, bags, nail accessories, beauty stuff, home decor).
Many generate 100% of their sales through Facebook.
