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I often get a laugh out of how marketers interpret information. A few days ago the BNET crew wrote a brief article about “Myspace and YouTube: Bad Marketing?”

I always put on my thinking cap and ask hard questions when marketers draw faulty links or the point they are trying to make is conflicting in the same paragraph:

“Is YouTube and the future of marketing? Maybe, but right now both of these sites don’t carry the clout to get shoppers to dig in their wallets and spend cash.”

From the above statement you would be led to think that YouTube and Myspace doesn’t convert to sales. The following statement however completely invalidates the concern when you apply a “big picture” set of metrics.

“New research out from iProspect and JupiterResearch found that both MySpace and YouTube only got two percent of online users to buy something in the past year. Amazon was the only website that swayed a high percentage of consumers. It got 28 percent of online users to buy stuff.”

So… 2% of 60 million users doesn’t equal shopping power?

Myspace: 60 million x 2% = 1.2 million buyers
Amazon: 50 million x 28% = 14 million buyers

Now 14 million buyers vs 1.2 million buyers is a far spread apart, but when you realize Amazon is a retail marketplace it would be like comparing a shopping mall to a concert hall.

But what if you had Bono and U2 at the concert hall (a social event) where 250,000 people were screaming his name and 2% of them would buy a MP3 player or a U2 leather hat? Would you turn away 5,000 MP3 buyers? What if you thought about it and actually sold MP3 players pre-loaded with every U2 album? Could you push the 2% margin up?

That is the power of social media. In the online world, there are hundreds of social sites with very specific demographics and niche communities. If you can adapt a marketing and public relations campaign to the niche audience, it becomes both viral and effective.

Unlike a retail channel (aka Amazon), online social media allows visitors to assemble based upon personal and professional interests rather than buying choices. For an effective marketing and public relations professional, social media creates a channel to collect specific demographics.

Rather than sell to a market, social media creates entirely new marketplaces.

 

2 Responses to “Social Media Equals Buyers”

1. Leslie Leite Says:
   May 17th, 2007 at 4:02 pm

   Thanks for the comments on our BNET blog post. Just to clarify, Joseph De Avila (blog author) isn’t a marketer. The perspective here isn’t that social media doesn’t equal buyers, but rather that, in its emerging form, it doesn’t yet have the power of, say, a search engine like Yahoo or Google for sheer advertising bang for the buck.

   Leslie Leite
   BNET

2. Barry Hurd Says:
   May 24th, 2007 at 7:31 am

   Thanks for the reply… but doesn’t Bang for Buck = Buyers.

   I just listened to a group of 250+ individuals on a Web 2.0 panel, with Facebook, Razorfish, Zaaz and Technorati… and they all said social media is producing higher returns and more exact targeting.

   I can only assume Razorfish has good metrics and results in this arena, realizing they were just bought by Microsoft for $6.1 billion.

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