Be it an eCommerce website or a brand, catching up with the competition is becoming exceedingly difficult. As per studies, the attention span of the online shoppers has decreased to 8 seconds. Thus, grabbing the attention of the target audience base in this short span is definitely not a cake-walk. While the attention span of the internet users is decreasing on the shopping site, their surfing duration is increasing on the social networking site. This is the reason why social media marketing is becoming an important aspect of digital marketing. Companies and brands are trying to find out more ways to connect with their prospective customers across the various social media platforms.
Over 91% marketers claimed that by spending only a few hours per week, social marketing greatly impacted their brand visibility. So, how do you decide the platform when it comes to social media marketing? Well, you see the number of users of the social media platform and then you choose the one that has the maximum users.
Is that enough?
Not really!
The process isn’t as simple as it seems!
Making wild guesses about the preference of the customers might end you up in a pitfall, resulting in missed opportunities. Thus, instead of going by the conventions, go for smart research. Now, the question arises, how to do that.
How can you find out the social media platforms that are popular among your prospective customers?
Here are some of the ways to get an insight of the customer’s behavior.
Ask them
The best way to find out where your target audience hangs out is to ask them. Create a questionnaire and ask your customers base to fill out the form. Asking them to fill up the form via email is the simplest way to connect with them. Try and reach out to the active members of your community. Ask them about their preference when it comes to connecting with the family and friends online. Additionally, you can even setup a survey and gather the relevant data. The survey should be based on the answer you are looking for. Do not annoy the users with unnecessary questions. Keep it to-the-point and as precise as possible.
Email tracking
If you are doing email marketing for your site, then, adding links of the social outposts in your emails is recommended. Offering an option to the email recipients for sharing the content on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere will even boost your engagement on these platforms. Moreover, you can easily track the user behavior and see if your target audience shared the content on Facebook, Twitter or any other given option.
Social media stalking
Twitter, Facebook and other such social media sites offer you an option to see whether the Gmail ID has been used to create the social media accounts or not. You can use this integration for your business.
Follow the steps mentioned below:
Export the list of your customers’ email addresses
Create a new account on gmail.com.
Upload the .csv file containing your customers’ details to your Gmail account.
Now, create a Twitter and Facebook account with this Gmail ID. Go to “Find Your Friends” of the Twitter sign-up process, select Gmail.
Twitter automatically reads all of the email addresses of your customers stored in Gmail. This allows you to track them on Twitter.
Similarly, for Facebook go to “Find Friends” of the Facebook sign-up process and specify that you have a Gmail account.
That’s it! Your customers will be presented to you and you can start following your target audience.
Analyze your competitors
Another method to find your audience base is to do a little competitor analysis. You are more likely to find your customer base on the platforms where your sites similar to yours are. List out 5 to 10 sites that are serving the same demographics that you are trying to reach. Do a quick online search and check their referral sites.
Doing the market survey and analysing the result efficiently, takes already miles ahead of other companies in your field. However, there are dozens of social media platforms where you can promote your brand/company. In order to help you prioritize the various platforms, we’ve broken down the statistical figures of some of the most popular social media platforms where you are more likely to find your target audiences. Read on to know.
The social networking sites have been coming in and going out, ever since the prominence of internet connectivity has increased. However, Facebook is one platform that has shown exponential growth over the years despite the ups and downs. As of the second quarter of 2018, Facebook had 2.23 billion monthly active users. 50% of 18-24 year-olds go on Facebook when they wake up. Hence, Facebook should and more likely will make up a marginal part of your marketing strategies, regardless of your business model, goals, website traffic and the demographics that you are targeting. In addition to this, the connectivity statistics of Facebook is absolutely enticing for the budding social media marketers.
1. Facebook users consider, on average, 28% of their Facebook friends to be genuine or close friends, which is definitely not a bad number when it comes to spreading the word-of-mouth.
2. 83% of parents with a teen between the ages of 13 and 17 are friends with their child on Facebook.
3. 39% of users say they are connected to people on FB they have never met in person.
For targeting men and women within an age bracket of 25-54, Facebook is inevitable. Facebook is perfect for the companies that target a slightly older market since 44% of users check Facebook several times per day.
YouTube
Till date, YouTube is the only social media platform that gives FB a run for it’s market reach. The broad demographics that it caters is definitely a topping over the cake. 62% of YouTube users are Males. 35+ and 55+ age groups are the fastest growing YouTube demographics. Despite, these exceptionally attractive statistical figures, only 9% of small businesses are on YouTube. Thus, there is for sure room and opportunities for more. Millennials prefer YouTube two to one over traditional television and 37% of the coveted 18 – 34 demographic are binge-watching. So, right from the teenagers and millennials to the adults, if you are searching for your customer base, then, this is one-stop-destination for you.
Twitter, to this date, remains the best platform for most B2B businesses model. Despite the character limit, the social networking site can help you reach out to comparatively larger demographics if you are industries like News and Information, eCommerce, Health and Wellness, Travel and Hospitality, Telecom, Finance, Sports and others. Here are some of the stats that will lay some light on the potential that this platform has.
- 36% of Twitter users are aged under 18 – 29.
- 23% of them are aged 30 – 49 years.
- In addition to this, 21% of people aged 50 – 64 year-olds use Twitter.
It is quite evident that if you are trying to reach out to the customer base that comes under a bigger age bracket, then, this is your destination. Moreover, the ratio of men and women using Twitter is approximately the same.
SnapChat
71% of Snapchat users are under 34 years old and 45% of them are aged between 18-24 years. Approximately, 70% of Snapchat users are female. Even in the US, 30% of Millennial use Snapchat regularly. So, if you are targeting millennial, then, this is an ideal platform for you.
Thus, if you are aiming to target the young adults, then, this is one of the ideal platforms for you.
With over 500 million users and 59% of the users checking the app every single day, Instagram has great reach. It is particularly an ideal for the companies dealing in Fashion and Lifestyle. Instagram’s most popular demographics include the following:
- Women users make up to 38% of total Insta users.
- 59% of the users are under the age bracket of 18-29 years.
- The urban-located users are 39%.
Social sharing sites like Pinetest are popular among women. In a survey, a substantial 42% of women said that they use Pinterest. On the contrary, the social networking site is popular among only 16% of men. The companies that find their customer base amongst the moms will be interested to know that Pinterest attracts more mature audience than the other social media platforms. Moreover, 60% of the users have children aged 5 years and under.
Over to you
In layman’s word, marketing means presenting the right thing to the right person at the right place and at the right time. Thus, no matter what’s your marketing strategy and how much effort and capital you put in, spotting your customer base and delving into the right place is important. Knowband offers a lot many easy options to boost your social media presence. eCommerce solutions like Prestashop and Magento 2 share and win extension, Prestashop Social Shop addon, order sharing extension for Magento and Prestashop, and many other plugins can help you take your social media presence to the next level.
Thanks Joe for the information!
It really helped me a lot and cleared my doubts. Social media is truly a great platform to grab attention of audience. Looking forward to implement these practices for my new eCommerce website.