Compared to the traditional means of advertising the use of Internet for advertising has been in practice to attract customers. There has been a growth of online advertising market in UK too. Most of the companies in UK were found to use social media as a part of Internet advertising. Social media sites not only help in increasing the loyalty of existing customers, but also act as a successful tool for acquiring new customers.
A study conducted by Regus found that around 41 percent of the UK firms use social media sites for attracting new customers. This was estimated to be eight percent increase from 2010. The study also revealed that social media sites were used by 48% of the UK companies for engaging and connecting with the existing customers. At least one-third of the UK businesses would invest 20% of their marketing budgets into social network ad campaigns.
Social media was considered as an important medium for raising brand awareness. This is because, one out of three social media users is a friend or a follower of a company page or profile. With an improvement in interactive mode, social media sites are considered as the important channel for marketing.