Teens Use Facebook, Twitter to Spot Back-to-School Deals, Trends
RSSBy Lauren Barack
While next Sunday's paper may offer a blitz of back-to-school specials, teens and even Web-fluent parents will likely be online--using Facebook, email, Twitter, and other new media to spot trends and grab deals from shrewd brands. "Our research shows that teens tend to be more influenced in their purchase decisions by social media than other demographics," says Nick Ingelbrecht, a research director at Gartner, who recently reported how social networks can help guide consumers in their purchases. "In the U.S., economic pressures have led women to become much more careful with their spending on back-to-school items, especially clothing. Young mothers are also increasingly accustomed to using social media as a tool to network with other mothers, find the best deals and put their kids' buying requests into perspective." Tech savvy brands know this well. For smaller more nimble companies, which often can't afford to buy big picture advertising on television or even in magazines, social media offers a new way to reach trend setters-and present deals to the few who can influence the many. For back-to-school, when family pocketbooks almost open by default-this can be a crucial time. And by late summer, those messages on Twitter, Facebook, and email dot the Web like lightening bugs. "Those kind of ad programs start in late July," says Scott Levine, senior vice president of business development for social media site myYearbook, which ran a study this summer discovering how influential online users could be in the offline world. "The brands want to reach teens directly, particularly the teen influencers, those who are most active online and have the most influence on their peers." Many brands have their own Facebook page - such as American Eagle, offering those who become a fan, special deals and coupons. Plus companies work consumers on Twitter, Foursquare, and even YouTube, where JCPenney recently invited haulers, teens know for their shopping influence, to create videos of back-to-school buys at the store. And Forever 21 launched a contest for teens who want to put up shopping finds from the trend-setting store on their own. Having teens hawk to other teens is the key, says myYearbook's Levine. And that's no surprise to parents and educators who daily see how much influence teens wield over each other. "One of the key take aways from our survey was that teens certainly trust other teens more than they trust other adults," says Levine. "When coming from another teens, there's a level of trust." Both Levin and Ingelbrecht agree that brands will only gravitate more to social media-especially during these recessionary days when every dollar counts both for companies' ad budget and consumers bottom line. "TV is potentially a more immersive experience, whereas social media has the capability for greater personalization, hence more emotional engagement with the customer," says Ingelbrecht. "For the future, companies are going to be much better at mining individual user preferences and tailoring their target marketing through social media more effectively."
Photo: Creatas Images
