Social Media Working Better for Retention Than Acquisition

Social media marketing has been around for years and as marketers tackle the best ways on how to push their brands onto social media, it is emerging that marketers' top goals are brand awareness and creating customer loyalty. Customer acquisition is sought to be as less important, as viewed by the chart below

Data gained through July 2010 shows that customer acquisition is taking a backseat for marketing on social media, at 19%. In Roberts chapter 4, direct marketing strategies are discussed on how customers are acquired. It all begins with the acquisition stage, as the customer makes a single purchase, engaged in a demonstration or sample, but is not yet committed to the brand. I can understand why Marketers have their objective as brand awareness or customer growth, as it could be more of a difficult task to create customer acquisition through marketing online. When a consumer views an advertisement on their social media website that they are not familiar with, the first notion they make is if the product is relevant to their needs. If the product is not relevant to their need, then the consumer shuns the ad. If the product is relevant to their need, they will compare it to what they currently use, but if they see no real relative advantage to purchasing the new product, then the consumer has the choice to also ignore the ad, unless they wish to see out more information.

As I use my common sense, I agree with marketers intentions of establishing loyalty of the product. As a consumer purchases a product, they must be reassured that they made the correct purchase. It makes the consumer feel better about their purchase seeing advertisements of their product. Lets take the iPhone 4. If the consumer purchase the product, and views iPhone 4 advertisements on why the iPhone is better than the competitors phones, they are reassured they made the correct purchase, which creates loyalty, and even a repurchase in years to come.

Brand awareness is another great goal to have. As you put your product online, the more times a consumer views it, the more it gets memorized into their head. When a person becomes in need of the product, they will first remember the product that they've seen the most by advertisement. This could be your product.


The eMarketer article continues to explain how budgets of customer acquisition have doubled twice between 2008 and 2010, the spending in customer acquisition is lower than the spending in customer growth and loyalty, and brand awareness.

In conclusion, the spending for customer acquisition is an inexpensive marketing channel for small businesses, and is utmost the primary goal as they try to establish themselves. However, the spending of large companies overshadows customer acquisition attempts with attempts to create customer growth and loyalty.


Social Media Working Better for Retention than Acquisition