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Retail

Report: Fewer Than 1% Of Sales Can Be Tracked Back To Social Media

A new Forrester report titled “The Purchase Path of Online Buyers In 2012” analyzes conversion paths on 77,000 orders to determine what sources returned the most revenue. While the report found a handful of high revenue sources (paid search, organic search, email) one clear cut source fell behind the rest: social media. The data showed that […]

Greg Finn on September 26, 2012 at 9:46 am
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social-media-network-peopleA new Forrester report titled “The Purchase Path of Online Buyers In 2012” analyzes conversion paths on 77,000 orders to determine what sources returned the most revenue. While the report found a handful of high revenue sources (paid search, organic search, email) one clear cut source fell behind the rest: social media. The data showed that fewer than 1% of transactions could be traced back to social links.

Forrester suggests that the low numbers could be due to measurement periods required (a 30-day attribution model was used in this report) and company sizes.

It should be noted that the research was performed in conjunction with GSI Commerce, a company who handles large scale e-commerce solutions. Social media has been known to have more dramatic results on SMB sales and this report lacks data from a small to midsize e-commerce site.

The top performing sources from the report were direct visits, organic search, paid search and email campaigns. From a new customer standpoint direct visits, organic search and paid search helped with each making up 20%, 16% and 11% of transactions respectively. For existing customers (an area where many think social would shine) direct, email and organic search comprised of 20%, 13% and 6% of all transactions respectively.

Overall customers viewed social media favorably, but use the medium as more of a discovery method.

Based on a survey from 2011, 48% of respondents think social media is a great way to discover products & brands, while only 17% have bought something based on a friend’s post.

Additionally, 40% of respondents think that social media is a great way to discover sales and promotions.

For the full report, see Forrester Research.



About The Author

Greg Finn
Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.

Related Topics

Channel: RetailE-CommerceSocial Media MarketingStatistics: Social Media

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