Does social media marketing influence a purchase?

So you’ve put all your energy in keeping your blog blogging, tweets tweeting and your FaceBook page attracting – but to what level of business conversion? This is the million dollar question on every social media marketer’s mind at the moment.

A survey has just been released by Knowledge Networks with some incredibly interesting finds. The long and short of it is ‘internet users turn to social media to seek one another, not brands or products’!

FACT: Social media will only influence the purchase decisions of 5 percent of social media users if your business falls into one of the following categories, travel, banks and financial services, clothes and shoes, restaurants, cell/mobile services, personal care products, cars and trucks, food, and prescriptions.

In addition only 16 percent of social media users claimed they’re more likely to buy from companies that advertise on social sites.

But before you go cursing the existence of social media… remember why you are embracing social media for one moment:

• It enables your decision to be influenced by others
• Manage your online reputation
• Brand awareness & loyalty building
• Brand humanisation
• Stickiness to site
• It’s probably far more than your competitors are doing
• Better search ranking
• More traffic to your site
• It’s expected of you!

Where you can get a little more traction when it comes to your blog (and this wasn’t covered in the report), is by featuring related products/services/thoughts in posts and making subtle references to your own products with simple links to buy. We’ve seen this work very well!