A survey conducted by the marketing and media company Sprout Social, with offices in Dublin, Seattle, and Chicago, shows how social media has a major influence on consumer purchasing decisions.
According to Sprout's research, 9 out of 10 consumers have made purchases from brands they follow on social media. In addition to making purchases, they also spend more with these brands.
The proportion of people who said they had increased their spending with a brand they follow rose from 12% to 75%, with the data comparing the 2019-20 and 2020-21 periods.
The study also shows the favorite social media platforms by age group. Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2010) prefers platforms for sharing videos and photos, such as YouTube and Instagram.
Check out other habits of Gen Z youth:
- 73% said they plan to use Instagram more often.
- 65% said they intend to increase the number of hours they spend on YouTube.
Sprout conducted a separate survey with marketing professionals at different levels and in different industries to understand the main objectives of businesses' social media efforts. Here are the results:
- 69% said that increasing brand awareness was the main objective.
Followed by:
- Increasing web traffic (52%) and growing their audience (46%).
For brands looking to engage consumers through social media, it is important to emphasize several key characteristics.
61% of consumers said that audience engagement is the most important characteristic, followed by transparency (45%) and good customer service (44%).
Consumers expect brands to provide quick responses through social media, making these platforms much more important to customer relationship management (CRM) efforts.
41% of consumers said they expect brands to respond within the first hour after connecting through social media, while 79% expect a response within the first 24 hours.
The study measured response rates by industry. The highest rate was in the real estate and legal sectors (29%), followed by staffing and HR (28%), financial services and banking (28%), and healthcare providers (27%).
While increasing brand awareness was cited as the main objective by marketing professionals, the survey highlighted an ongoing challenge: measuring the ROI (return on investment) of social media campaigns.
More than half (56%) of marketing professionals use data to better understand their target audience. In contrast, only 23% use social data to measure ROI, and 16% use the information to generate more competitive insights.
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