Social Media Helps You Sell More

A new survey from iCrossing called “How America Searches: Online Retail” shows that younger shoppers are turning to blogs and social media sites to help make their purchasing decisions. The survey validates a lot of our thinking how that adding web 2.0 features to your site like customer reviews will help you make more sales.

One of the key points in the survey that I found interesting was:

Social media increasingly relevant to online retailing. 42% of all consumers view information about brands and products on sites like Wikipedia to be extremely or very influential to their online purchase decisions. Blog posts, online videos and brand profiles on social networking sites carry significant weight with 18 to 44 year old shoppers.

At first glance this is not surprisingly as shoppers in the 18 to 44 year old category are technological savvy. What I find interesting is the reference to Wikipedia and brand profiles on social networking sites. Having a web site is no longer enough for a brand. Now you need to have a profile in Wikipedia as well as a presence on the social networking sites. That means if you online strategy is purely SEO and PPC that you are missing out on a lot of opportunities to interact with consumers. Social media marketing has to be part of any Internet marketing campaign that you have.

iCrossing has similar thoughts in their Implications section of the report. There they comment:

With the rise in importance of social media and consumer-generated content in general and customer reviews in particular, brands and retailers face new challenges in not only managing their reputations, but also maintaining the attention of their customers. For example, online retailers that add a customer review module may help to drive engagement and site stickiness.

At the same time, emerging media offer growing opportunities to brands that are looking to connect with customers, especially the younger shoppers who find brand and product presence on social networking sites and video sharing sites. Similarly, with more shoppers turning to emerging online research tools like shopping comparison sites, online image search and blogs, the importance of optimizing sites for a range of content – from product feeds to news, images, videos, local search and blogs – is now paramount to achieving online visibility and grabbing wallet-share.

Similar to what I said, just said a lot more eloquently!