Changes In Social Media and Marketing Trends
Originally, Facebook was thought of as a site where teenagers could go to talk about their social issues without the interference of parents. In many cases, pre-teens, and teens were signing up without parental involvement. As an example, a distant 11 year old relative established a Facebook account, indicating that she was 10 years older than she really was. Her major motivation was so that she could communicate with her clique of similar aged friends and meet older teenage boys, all under the radar of her parents.
Since it’s inception, Facebook has since gained billions of users, and now has targeted advertising to almost every demographic under the sun. The types of users signing-up has matured to the point that parents, grandparents, and extended family members being involved in such a way, that Facebook has ended-up as sort of like a substitution for the family dinner table, or the annual family picnic.
As more and more people join up, there is an increasing number of users that have grown tired of the bombardment of Farmville, and other gaming requests, an blind marketing techniques (dating ads, investment tips, etc.), and an ever changing privacy (or lack of) environment.
Over time, some of the younger crowd believed that in order to be seen as cool or impress their friends, the more outrageous their behavior and posts, the better. For the most part, they don’t consider that in this might come back to haunt them in as they start applying for big money jobs, there will be an Internet history that will be considered by prospective employees. However, those embarrassing moments will follow them forever. For those who did realize this early on, they now want to be off the grid, many of these people have deleted their Facebook accounts and are moving on to other social media platforms.
This means that many pre-teens, teenagers, and twenty-something’s have been largely abandoning Facebook in droves for other social media avenues. As an example, Tumblr has now become huge in the under 25 market. But Facebook’s decline is already slowly happening in many college campuses now. This age demographic no longer sees Facebook as the cool thing it used to be back in 2008, so many are now moving on to Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and WhatsApp. These groups don’t want their parents or relatives "friending" them and then stalking their news feeds. So if these groups are in your sales, demographic, using Facebook may be a poor choice for advertising.
One of the major marketing questions to ask yourself is: Am I targeting my advertising campaign to the right demographic, or using the right tools for the job?
One such product is designed to do this that also integrates with our NCR Counterpoint Point of Sale software is called "NCR Customer Connect", it can actually target market to your existing customers, and prospects based on the areas of pre-established interest along with and sales history without having to rely on third party marketing tools that may be only marginally effective or completely ineffective.
If you would like more information on NCR Customer Connect, please contact the CCS Retail Systems Sales Department.
– John