Let’s start with defining it —
Social media marketing is the process of creating content with regards to the context of individual social media platforms to generate more user engagement and traffic.
Originally, businesses started with only publishing content(articles, blogs, photos and videos) on their social media channels, to generate traffic to their website, and hopefully acquire sales. But in recent times, rather than a place for brand awareness, social media is being used in different ways, such as — a business that wants to understand how it’s performing on social media would analyze its reach, engagement, and sales on social media with analytic tools (social media analytics). Small businesses & big businesses that want to learn customer’s opinions would monitor social media conversations and mentions, maintaining an ORM strategy (social media listening and engagement). A business that wants to reach a specific audience would run highly targeted social media ads (social media advertising).
Let’s start with one simple fact: brand presence on social media is important for business. It doesn’t matter if you run a small neighborhood store or a huge national firm. Social media is a fundamental part of your company’s branding strategies.
Read below to know 5 reasons every brand should acknowledge the importance of social media marketing strategy —
Leverage Social Advertising
It’s said that 54% of social media users use social media to search for products (GlobalWebIndex, 2018). Social media ads, when compared to traditional advertising methods such as TV, print media, etc. are not only more dependable but also cheaper. Adding on, you’re allowed to engage on a wide range of social media channels for free before venturing into paid ads. Social media ads help you reach out to the desired audience, increase your conversions and ultimately get a higher return on investment. Social media ads allow you to constantly analyze how well or bad your ads are doing and change your ads on the go and monitor results accordingly.Raising brand awareness
There are 3.5 billion active social media users which equates to 45% of the human population. You’re missing out on enormous potential customers if people don’t know about your business. Social media boosts your visibility among potential customers, letting you reach a broader audience by utilizing a considerable amount of time and effort. You have nothing to lose since creating a social media profile is free of cost.Not only you reach out to a specific crowd, but diversify your marketing efforts by connecting a versatile customer base. For instance, pressing professionals may discover your website via LinkedIn while the younger masse or the millennials may find you on Instagram. Each composition of social media content that you produce is a new door for new customers to invade. It’s a distinctive opportunity for you to connect.Ultimately, it boils down to creating sufficient high-quality content that you can post on your social media platforms, and in the process draw high-converting inbound traffic.
Enhance Brand Loyalty and Customer Satisfaction
A lot of businesses are cemented on their follower count, which is nothing but a vanity figure. It is counterproductive if your followers aren’t loyal to your brand. The difference between a random follower and loyal one is that the latter adds real value.71% of customers who’ve had a positive customer experience with your brand are likely to share their experience with their friends and family. You can improve brand loyalty on social media by: Having a solid social media management. sharing value-oriented content. Having a consistent brand voice and approach. Responding to queries. Show the human side of your business by personally interacting with people, because people need people and not auto-bots.Losing a consumer is hard, and gaining a new one is harder. But retaining an existing client is 10 times easier that is why customer satisfaction should be your highest priority.Social media helps to connect with your customers and allows you to monitor what they want, the problems they’re facing and how you could serve them.Regardless of what social media platform you’re using to help your customers, it’s important to speak their language, give them personalized service and respond to them without much delay.42% of all the consumers complaining on social platforms expect a 60 min response time.Increased Website Traffic
Social media boosts inbound marketing, which increases targeted traffic to your website. Sharing content on social media gives users a reason to click-through to your website.The more quality content you post on social platforms, the more inbound traffic you generate while making conversion opportunities.For example, creating a topical blog helps you reach your audience, but sharing it on Twitter and Facebook at the right time increases its chances to be seen by 10x the audience. Thus increases the possibility of people liking and sharing your content, following your brand and sequentially becoming a customer.Similarly, people that are now actively searching for keywords associated with your product or service are a scantier percentage than those who aren’t. Social media helps you connect to this enormous, untapped segment of the market.Enhanced SEO rankings
Social presence is becoming an indispensable factor in calculating rankings. Due to constant advances in the SEO requirements of successfully ranking higher, only updating your websites and blogs is not sufficient.According to Matt Cutts “social shares have no impact on your website’s ranking”, but we can’t ignore the fact that social media platforms do command the front of the SERPs for strong branding. Concluding that social profiles have the power to rank in the top 10 results on search engines.Businesses understanding the importance of social media and sharing their content on social platforms are sending out a brand signal to SERP’s that speaks about your brand’s efficacy, integrity, and constancy.The social media platforms are emerging and so is the SEO sphere, leaving a possibility of social media beacons to start affecting your SERP ranking in the future. Hence, it’s better to be prepared by strengthening your social media appearance with marketable content?
Coiling Up
The importance of social media is only understood once you start practicing. Take the first step, create a profile, and start engaging with your customers.
If executed right, social media marketing can prove to be very cost-effective. Because as of today, Facebook Ads are cheaper than search engine ads, which in return gives you a higher ROI.
We can’t deny the importance of social media for startups and established brands. It’s time for you to win your customers and defeat your competitors, as they’re only growing day by day.
The importance of social media in business is now more indisputable than ever.