Businesses, especially those that have been established for decades, see social media marketing as just another tactic.
What business owners do not know is that there are 3.80 billion active social media users in the world. And what are the odds that the majority of your target customers are here?
Hence, making social media marketing as an afterthought is like neglecting your potential customers. This could be detrimental to your business.
That said, we have listed down ten reasons your business needs social media marketing:
1. To Build Relationship With Your Audience
Social media was initially created in order to help people connect with their friends and loved ones who live far away. Nowadays, smart business owners use this technology to help create a meaningful relationship with their audience and potential customers.
You can start by creating and sharing content that is relevant to your followers. So, if you own a restaurant that sells organic food, you can use social media to let your audience know about the benefits of having an organic diet.
Do you always receive commonly asked questions from your social media followers? Talk about it on your social network!
A great way to do that is to host a Facebook Live or start a YouTube channel wherein you answer your audience’s frequently asked questions.
If you want to prove your business’s salt, as well as build your credibility, remember that social media marketing is one way to achieve that.
2. To Improve Brand Loyalty
In line with building a meaningful relationship with your audience, social media marketing also helps improve brand loyalty.
In fact, a study published by Convince&Convert revealed that 53% of Americans are loyal to the brands they follow on social media.
Here’s the thing: Loyal social media followers engage with your business by reacting, commenting, and sharing your content. Not to mention that they will purchase and recommend your products or services.
So, how can you build brand loyalty using social media?
- Create a community of like-minded people around your brand.
- Make them the first to receive quality content from you.
- Reward your loyal social media followers.
- Use social media to provide stellar customer service.
- Be consistent in implementing your strategy.
Just keep in mind that building brand loyalty is more than just having thousands of social media followers and fans. It is about having two-way communication with your audience, as well as engaging them to keep on doing business with you.
3. To Drive Traffic to Your Website
Aside from building meaningful relationships and brand loyalty, you can also use social media to drive traffic to your website.
Otherwise, your website traffic will only be limited to a specific source, which increases your business’s exposure to risks.
For instance, your primary and only source of web traffic is search engines. It is possible that traffic will drop following a major algorithm update. Hence, you will need another source of the traffic (in this case, your social media business accounts) to mitigate the risk.
One of the simplest ways to drive website traffic using social media is to create and publish content on your website and then sharing it on your social networks. Another way would be to run social media ad campaigns, so you can generate leads for your business.
4. To Make Cost-Effective Advertising
As mentioned earlier, you can run social media ads in order to generate leads for your business. In fact, a 2016 study by eMarketer revealed that digital ad spending would reach $113.18 billion in 2020.
For one, digital advertising (including social media) creates new ad opportunities for business on a local and national level. Unlike traditional advertising, you can focus your ad budget on targeting people living in a particular state or those who have particular interests.
Second, you only get to pay when someone clicks on your ad. Meaning; you can choose whether to boost your budget or allocate it somewhere else depending on how your ad is performing.
Third, social media advertising provides you with the opportunity to know more about your target customers, thanks to a plethora of digital marketing technology available nowadays. These allow you to make better ad copies, which could have a positive impact on your business’s bottom line.
5. To Easily Acquire New Customers
Speaking of generating leads, social media marketing allows you to easily acquire new customers for your business.
You can do this organically by talking about how your product or services can help your potential customers on social media.
Say, you own a local gym. Instead of showcasing your equipment, you can talk about how your cardio program was able to help one of your patrons feel confident about himself.
Meanwhile, you can run a social media ad to promote your gym. And the best way to attract new clients using this tactic is to offer discounts for new members.
If you sell products like gym gear or supplements, on the other hand, you can take advantage of Facebook’s shop tab. This feature allows you to add some sort of e-commerce functionality to your business page. You can even pair it with a chatbot so that you can automate some parts of the online purchasing process.
This could also come in handy when you are running a remarketing campaign or would like to ask for reviews and recommendations on social media.
6. To Increase Conversion
When done right, you can bring in tons of qualified leads to your business, which you can turn into paying customers. As a result, you can get to increase your conversion and sales.
And in order to do your social media marketing right, you need to keep in mind that social media is where businesses become and act like people.
Meaning, do not just create and share content on social media. Interact with people who would leave a comment on your posts. Even better, post something that will prompt them to leave a comment.
Do not just rely on your chatbot to answer customer queries. Take the time to check social media inquiries and answer them personally. More so, if it is so unique that your chatbot cannot decipher it.
7. To Increase Sales
Of course, with the increase in conversion, comes the increase in sales. Mind you, 74% of buyers said that social media had influenced their purchasing decision.
Here are other social media marketing statistics that you need to keep in mind:
- 71% of consumers are more likely to buy a product based on social media referrals. (HubSpot)
- 31% of consumers browse new products to buy on social media. (Aimia)
- A brand’s social media post can impact 78% of consumers’ buying decisions. (Forbes)
So, what does it mean for you? You need to build a solid media marketing strategy in order for this platform to help you boost your business revenue.
8. To Get Ahead of Your Competitors
If you own a startup or a small business, it is less likely that you can compete against a large corporation or an enterprise. That’s because they have the money to run a country-wide marketing and advertising campaign.
Social media helps you have an even playing field against such big brands.
Sure, your coffee shop is relatively small compared to Starbucks, but you can zero in on your community of loyal patrons. Not to mention that you can focus your efforts on promoting your business to a specific demographic.
Lastly, you might have a different story to tell regarding your coffee shop compared to Starbucks.
9. To Allow Targeting and Retargeting
The beauty of social media marketing, more particularly Facebook marketing, is that you can run a retargeting campaign using ad pixels.
A pixel is a piece of code that you can embed on your website to help you optimize your advertising campaigns by understanding your site visitors’ online behavior.
Say, you own an online store and that a lot of your site visitors tend to add items to their online cart without proceeding to checkout. Running a retargeting ad campaign allows you to target these site visitors with an ad that will entice them to complete the purchase.
Thus, you get to salvage what could have been missed opportunities.
10. To Get Valuable Customer Insight
Other than connecting with your audience, turning them into customers, and improving your revenue, social media marketing also allows you to learn more about them.
You can use social media listening tools that let you know what people say about you and your business online. Doing so enables you to jump into opportunities wherein you can showcase your skills within your niche.
Say, you are a fitness coach, and you stumble upon someone’s status post about what to eat if he wants to lose weight. You can join the conversation, give that person some examples, and you can build a meaningful relationship from there.
Simply put, social listening can help grow your business.
Do you use social media to help promote your business and increase sales? How has it benefited you? Let us hear your story in the comments section below!
* This post was originally written by Kevin Urrutia at Voy Media Advertising Agency NYC.
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