Users of social media use different ways to discover, research and stay in touch with their favorite brands, but all of them rely on common social networks all through the customer life cycle, so says a 2013 study by Wildfire. These findings are things you should keep in mind as you are developing your wine company’s social media strategy for customer engagement.
The study notes that investments in social media advertising are starting to pay off for firms that want to greatly increase awareness of their product, brand or service. This report, which was assembled by Forrester Consulting, determined that social media paid advertisements are the top way that brands and products are discovered by social network users. The survey found that 41% of them stated that one way they learn about new products on the market is through social media advertising.
The report noted that 34% of those surveyed said that Bing and Google is used during the discovery phase of finding new products. But they also said that opinions from friends on social media are nearly as useful. And 33% of the people surveyed stated that they find new brands and products just by reading messages on social media threads.
When it comes to research, 40% of those who use social media stated that a search engine is how they find out about new brands, services or products they are thinking about buying. Social media is still heavily used at this stage of the customer life cycle, with about 37% of consumers saying that they use social networks to do research before they buy.
The report also stated that once these users became loyal customers of a certain brand, you might think that these consumers would rather use this channel to stay in touch with the new brand. But this was not supported by the data — 55% of social media users said that they actually stay in touch with the brand by going to the brand’s website. About 52% said that they use social media to stay in touch with a favorite brand.
Forester Research says that 75% of the population of the world is connected to one another through mobile devices, and there are a staggering 5.3 billion social connections around the world. This means that any user of social media plays an important role in how a new brand is received and learned about. So, it is a very good idea to get a better grip on how social media can be used by wine companies and other firms to better engage long term with customers. Which brings us to Wildfire….
About Wildfire
Wildfire is a new part of the Google brand, whose top priority is to enable a company’s social and digital marketing success. Wildfire will help its customers to master its social media platform, create new connections with customers, and tie social media efforts to business objectives.
Wildfire was bought by Google because the company gives Google a new way to get Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest activity signals into their algorithm. Facebook activity does not show up in Google very often, and this is a way to make that happen.
Also, Google may be trying to kill off the entire social media management software business, so Oracle and Salesforce do not get a good foothold into social CRM. Google might end up making Wildfire free, as well.
