Social Media Platforms Study (part 2):
Is Social Media Marketing worth it?

In the previous part of our study, we were able to understand the popularity of social media platforms among different generations, and how this can help businesses decide which social media platforms they need to consider when they plan their social media marketing campaigns.

To see the first part results, read our article here:

Social Media Platforms Study (part 1)

Now the question is: is it worth it? Running Ads on social media platforms? To know whether the efforts spent on social media marketing are helpful or not, we asked the participants of our study if they have ever made a buying decision based on an Ad seen on social media? Almost 70% of the participants answered yes. Keeping in mind that among the 30% who answered no, there might be people who got their buying decisions affected by SM Ads but didn’t realize that.

We also know that when we talk about social media marketing, it’s not only about paid Ads. There are other ways to reach your potential customers on social media including organic reach of your business accounts and influencers marketing.

When we asked the participants which of these efforts would be more trustworthy for them, organic reach came first with 42.3% followed by influencers marketing with 37.4%. Paid Ads came last with only 20.3%. The result is quite expected when we keep in mind that people do not like to be sold, so the more organic and less pushy your marketing goes, the more successful it will be.

Is it enough to just be on social media? And does the way you present yourself there affect the way your customers perceive you? To understand if people usually pre-judge products/services from the way they are presented on Ads, we asked our study participants to which extent they judge an Advertised product/service from the quality of the Ad.

Only 7.3% said they wouldn’t judge an Ad from its quality! The rest 92.7% would judge it ranging from minimally to strongly. The details are in the next chart.

After digesting all the above results, it is not surprising to know that around 85% of the participants have searched for a business on social media. But what reasons make them follow a business page/account? To figure this out, we gave our participants five reasons to choose from.

From the results, we concluded that people usually follow businesses for practical reasons such as to stay updated about their products/services and promotions and not for emotional reasons such as their loyalty to the brand or because they are interested in the brand values.