Why Social Media Marketing is Effective

Last month Brand Central Station posted a great article on why social media and word-of-mouth marketing are more effective than traditional medias, and while I highly recommend you read the original post, I want to share a few key nuggets with you:

via The Buzz on Word-of-Mouth Marketing | Brand Central Station

“Social science researches have provided some interesting insights into how we remember information that may give us some insights. Alan See, writing this post in the Customer Think blog explains it this way…”

Research shows that we tend to remember:

• 10% of what we read

• 20% of what we hear

• 30% of what we see

• 50% of what we hear and see

• 70% of what we say

• 90% of what we both say and do

So what does this have to do with social media and word-of-mouth marketing?

“Traditional medias like newspaper, outdoor and radio - medias that primarily depend on just one sensory experience, impart 10-30% of the content of the message on the recipient.

A personal referral not only creates an impact on the recipient consumer, it reinforces the decision in the person making the endorsement.

Buzz marketing - the process of getting people to talk about your brand and to act on those endorsements - is highly effective because it requires and reinforces a deeper knowledge and understanding of a brand’s attributes and values. According to this research, we tend to remember 90% of what we say and do. In other words, face-to-face interaction between consumer and brand leaves an impression (and knowledge)nine times as rich as a newspaper ad or magazine article.

If you think about it for a minute, you already know this. When a customer has a bad experience, they are much more likely to tell people (and in the age of social media, that could be a lot of people) than those who have a good experience.”