Social media networking rises but face-to-face remains best for gaining new customers
Business social media networks is important for corporate marketing strategy and will be the second most effective tool for and acquiring new customers over the next two years, research by Regus has found, although face-to-face will remain best for acquiring new customers.
Public speaking at key events was found to be an important way of finding new customers, while the research of 2,500 companies found that direct marketing and telemarketing are in decline.
Steve Purdy, UK managing director at Regus, said: “The growing role of social media networks in business means that today they are an essential tool to find new customers and it will be exciting to see what the next two years bring as businesses learn to exploit this channel even further. But our research shows the perils of pursuing a digital strategy to the exclusion of face-to-face interaction.
“The remarkable thing about today’s society is that for all our vastly enhanced ability to connect, whether via Twitter, Facebook, video-conferencing etc, it’s easy to end up feeling quite lonely. You can get to a stage where you choose who you speak to, screen out the rest, and operate to a great extent by virtual means – networking becomes so selective that it ceases to work as it should. This is exactly the same in the business world but fortunately it seems that firms are acknowledging this and giving ‘real world’ networking the true attention it deserves.”
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