A new study has found that while more than 91% of retail brands are now active on two or more social channels, Instagram still presents a significant opportunity for many. The research comes from email marketing company Yesmail - researchers studied the social media activity of the top 50 retail brands in five categories - beauty, apparel, electronics, big box (e.g. Target, Macy's, JC Penney) and home goods - then compared those results to a 2014 Pew study of US social media use. Among those retailers included in the report were The Body Shop, Converse, Gap, Best Buy and Lowe's. Here's what they found:
More than 91% of retail brands are using two or more social networks
Research from Pew shows that the number of consumers utilizing two or more social media platforms rose significantly from 2013 to 2014. Yesmail's research has shown that retailers are adapting to this trend, with the majority in all five categories now maintaining an active presence on multiple social channels.
From the report:
"Apparel brands were the most socially connected with 86% present on four channels or more and 60% present on all five tracked channels. On the other side of the spectrum, only 40% of electronics brands had a presence on four channels or more."
The research shows that retail brands are looking to move in-line with consumer expectation and meet their prospective customers where they're at. It's not overly surprising to see apparel brands leading the way in this regard, clothing regularly ranks high among the most commonly purchased items online, and the opportunities for showcasing such items via social media make it the a perfect complement to retail marketing plans.
Facebook is the most popular channel across all categories
No surprises there - Facebook's size and reach has it positioned as the leader in most social media adoption and usage reports, and this one is no different. Facebook is being utilized by 100% of the brands studies in the apparel, big box and home goods categories, while it's at 96% and 94% adoption in the remaining two, underlining Facebook's overall social media market dominance.
Twitter comes in second, with YouTube up behind them. Interestingly, Yesmail also compared the consumer adoption rates of Instagram in terms of retail take-up - Pew's data showed that Instagram usage had seen a significant increase (16%) in the 18-29 category between 2013 and 2014. Yesmail found that retailers hadn't adopted Instagram at the same rate, with Instagram being the least adopted social channel among the five industries. The apparel sector was again the leader here, with 82% utilizing the image-based platform, while the others were all well down on Instagram adoption rates.
The data shows that marketers could be missing out on significant opportunity by not utilizing Instagram, particularly among younger consumers. This is even more relevant when you consider those younger demographics will be moving into more lucrative spending brackets - more focused on sectors like home goods and big box - in coming years. Not having a presence could mean businesses are at risk of losing touch with this segment in the longer term.
The stats also show that social media usage is diversifying beyond the major platforms. While Instagram is tagged as a growth platform in this research, it's possible that other platforms, too, have seen and will see increased growth moving forward - only focussing on the majors could mean you're missing out on potential audience shifts and trends.
Instagram saw the highest follower growth overall
Yesmail's data further underlined the potential of Instagram by highlighting that follower growth rates for all sectors were the highest on Instagram.
Beauty, apparel and home goods saw huge spikes in Instagram follower numbers, while even big box and electronics saw strong growth, despite the relatively low activity on the platform within those two sectors.
The data, again, underlines Instagram's growing relevance as a marketing channel - if your brand is not on or active on Instagram, you could be missing out on significant opportunities. Even if your brand is not visually stimulating, necessarily, the growing Instagram audience suggests that more consumers are active there, and more are looking to connect with brands on that channel. It's worth considering Instagram within your wider marketing mix, and researching whether the platform is of relevance to your, specific, audience.
The Yesmail report includes a range of further insights, along with key takeaways and examples to help contextualize the data. It's great information to take in, really interesting to see the correlations and differences between the Pew social media trends and brand adoption. The numbers show that there are still gaps, there are disconnects between consumer trends and marketing efforts, though largely brands are listening and working to keep in-step.
The full Yesmail report is available here.