This post is mostly aimed at those “pure” social media experts, who claim that anything short of investing totally in social media is a backward and doomed approach. There’s been a bit of backlash against social media experts, and this is close to that spirit, but also hopefully constructive. My primary point is that social media is useless – unless integrated into a larger context and a larger media mix. Considering all the current hype about these new online tools, here are some stats you may find interesting:
- Only 2 to 3% of the world’s population is on Facebook
- 80% of the U.S. population is not on Facebook
- 70% of the U.S. population is reachable via Direct Mail
- 10% of the U.S. population is reachable via an ad on the most popular television show (American Idol, currently). A greater percentage is available if advertising across a demographic block of tv shows.
- 73% of U.S. consumers ages 12+ heard one or more network radio commercials in the course of a week. Also, interestingly, if you advertised on all major stations in just the top 10 radio markets (metro areas), you’d reach 25.7% of all Americans.
I detail these points to give some perspective to the massive hype surrounding Twitter and Facebook. Yes, they are emerging tools for engaging with an audience, customers and contacts – but they do not yet have truly widespread reach. This may change in the coming years, but for now, the only marketing campaign that can come close to reaching 100% of your desired market or audience is an integrated campaign. It’s too bad that the main news media fails to put new social media platforms in a greater light.
This being said, you should think about cautiously adding social media to your current marketing mix, but just as it balances out against investments in print, radio, television, direct mail, and online ads. I would love to hear the term “integrated marketing” used more in common dialogue, which would mean more people are reading about integrated marketing and thinking about their strategy from the get-go. Maybe that will take time, or maybe we just have to make sure that conversation happens – at every event. If you’re unfamiliar with IMC, check out these two books: Kellogg on Integrated Marketing and IMC: Putting it all together.
How the stats were calculated:
2 to 3% of the world’s population was pulled from xyberlog
80% of US Citizens are not on Facebook: Facebook reports 175 million active users. Of those, more than 70% are outside the U.S., implying that less than 30% are inside the U.S. If we take 30% of 175 million, we have 52.5 million active U.S. Facebook users. Wikipedia has a figure of 306 million U.S. residents. Excluding the very young and very old, I estimate we can exclude about 15% of that total, leaving us with 260 million people. 52.5 million divided by 260 million people is about 20%. Only 20% of the U.S. Population uses Facebook (admittedly rough estimate).
70% of the U.S. population is reachable via Direct Mail- Taking a major consumer list provider’s public stats, about 210 million consumer mailing addresses are available. See the above wikipedia figure to determine percentage.
70% of the U.S. population is reachable via the most popular television shows. Nielsen reports 23.7 million viewers for American Idol.
73% of U.S. consumers ages 12+ heard one or more network radio commercials in the course of a week. Arbitron press release. Also, interestingly, if you advertised on all major stations in just the top 10 radio markets (metro areas), you’d reach 25.7% of all Americans.