Social media has several purposes:

1. Creating Conversations
2. Building Brand Awareness
3. Build a Community
4. Educate
5. Reach New Audiences
6. Understand Your Current Audience
7. Create a More Personal Brand
8. Interact Directly with Customers
9. Display Credibility
10. Promote Your Company

The list could go on and on, on why social media is beneficial to your brand. With any marketing attempt, there must be a goal (such as selling more of a products). Online marketing efforts are very successful at creating online “followers” into offline customers, including:

• social media
• online ads
• geographic based platforms

How Online Marketing Drives Offline Success Infographic

The infographic below from KISSmetrics breaks down how influential online marketing is for increasing sales and reaching conversion rate goals. Here are a few of the facts that stood out:

• 53% of people on Twitter suggest companies and or products in their tweets with 48% delivering on their intention to buy
• 75% of small businesses have a company page on a social networking site
• 20% of searches on Google are location specific (are you using the right keywords for your SEO? Check out my blog on choosing the right keywords to increase your Google rankings here)
• On average, 1155 people purchase a group deal on Groupon DAILY
• The best banner ad size and location are 300×250 and the top right corner

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-online-marketing-drives-offline-success/