As agents of social media marketing, we often meet many well established businesses who are either unsure of ROMI in SMM or just don't find it worth their time. The time bit, we can take care of, we can do it for you, but what needs to be clearly understood and appreciated is why SMM is worth your marketing investment and in fact is essential for your survival in the market.
So here goes...13 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing is essential for any business
1. BRAND VISIBILITY
Social media is one of the most cost-efficient digital marketing methods used to syndicate content and increase your business’ visibility. Simply having people interact with your content will increase brand awareness and begin building your reputation as a business. Each post that is shared will be introduced to a new network of individuals, which can lead them to becoming potential customers, and the more people who know about your business, the better. By investing only a few hours per week, over 91% of marketers claimed that their social marketing efforts greatly increased their exposure. There is no doubt that by simply having a social media page your brand will benefit, and with regular use it can generate a wide audience for your business. Now Imagine a well thought of, well funded social media campaign and see the kind of visibility and statement it can create for your brand.
See what we mean?
2. ITS COST EFFECTIVE
Social media marketing is possibly the most cost-efficient part of an advertising strategy. Signing up and creating a profile is free for almost all social networking platforms, and any paid promotions you decide to invest in are a relatively low cost compared to other marketing tactics. Being cost-effective is such an advantage because you can see a greater return on investment and retain a bigger budget for other marketing and business expenses. Just by spending a small amount of time and money you can significantly increase your conversion rates and eventually get return on investment on the money you initially invested.
3. ITS TARGETED
Social media platforms offer highly targeted ads, which can be customized around your customers’ needs. Facebook ads, for example, can target customers by factors like age, location, education level, industry and even user behavior — e.g. the pages a user has liked. No other form of marketing today can offer you this detailed level of targeting. Think for yourself - Newspaper ads? Radio Ads? TV Ads? Outdoor Ads? In fact your ad films have a higher chance of reaching your target audience if played on Youtube rather than on TV.
4. IT BOOSTS SEO
Search engine crawlers know which pages are consistently earning traffic and which are just floating out there, forgotten and ignored. Although your killer content strategy is the most important factor in your search rankings, driving traffic to your optimized pages will cause them to climb much faster. Social Media Examiner states that more than 58% of marketers who have been using social media for one year or longer still see improved search engine rankings. Being able to rank in the top positions for your keywords will revolutionize your traffic and continue to generate positive results for your business. Let’s face it, everyone uses Google to find information, and they likely won’t navigate past page 1 because their answer normally is on the first page of results. Once you begin posting quality content, you’ll begin to build a social media community where followers will "like" and "share" your content. Most importantly, it gives you more opportunities to get in front of industry influencers who will write about your business and provide links back – which will help to directly increase search engine rankings.
5. ITS INTERACTIVE
There is no better form of customer service than Social Media. Your brand is known for your interactions with clients and the point is, is it the most direct, easy and hassle free mode of communication for any customer. Even if we move beyond customer care. SMM is the most interactive form of marketing available to businesses. You can start a campaign and give out freebees to your followers to talk about you, post about you and become your advocates to call more people to talk about you. I fact have fun while you are at it. The more fun your campaign, the more everyone wants to interact with it. It all can be done hassle free and lets not forget how much the millennial generation enjoys interacting with fun campaigns and #ashtags. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge raised more than $100 million worldwide!
6. ITS ACCESSIBLE
The numbers speak for themselves. And these are not scattered billions, all their data is segregated and you can harness it to your advantage!
7. IT MAKES YOUR BRAND MORE HUMAN
Through Social media, your interaction, thought leadership and responses make your brand not just an organisation but more relatable and more human. It makes you users attached and fond of your brand. It makes them appreciate you and master more than loyalty. As said before, it makes them your advocates.
8. IT BOOSTS SALES
Did you know that 70% of business-to-consumer marketers have acquired customers through Facebook? Or that 84% of CEOs and VPs say they use social media to help make purchasing decisions? Not surprisingly, when you stay in front of your customer base, they’re more likely to buy from you when they need the products you sell, but social media marketing does far more than increase brand presence. You can influence customer buying decisions at multiple points along the sales funnel, from amplifying the reach of white papers and blogs targeting top of funnel, to answering customer questions and addressing pain points, to incentivizing buyers with coupon codes.
9. HIT IT WHEN IT IS HOT
It’s hard to tell when fate will throw a great opportunity at your brand. Sometimes your brand gets mentioned on TV show, or tweeted about by an influencer. Other times, there’s a news story, meme, or pop-culture phenomenon that fits perfectly with your branding. If your brand can jump in and engage with the story while everyone is paying attention, it can lead to viral posts, traffic boosts, press coverage and greater visibility for your brand. This strategy, known as newsjacking, works best if you get your voice out there while it’s still breaking new. If you join in too late, and you’ll just look like another company trying to ride the trend. To be one of the first voices out there, you need an active social media team. Not only will that enable you to track and react quickly to current events, it will also ensure your message gets out, so that reporters, influencers and followers see your take while the story is still hot.
10. BUILDS LOYALTY
One of the main goals of almost all businesses is developing a loyal customer base. Considering that customer satisfaction and brand loyalty typically go hand in hand, it is important to regularly engage with consumers and begin developing a bond with them. Social media is not just limited to introducing your brand’s products and promotional campaigns. Customers see these platforms as a service channel where they can communicate directly with the business. The millennial generation is known for being the most brand loyal customers of all. Born between the early 1980’s and the early 2000’s, millennials are the largest generation in US history -– and will soon completely consume the market. Studies show that this segment of customers is 62% more loyal to brands that directly engage with them on social media. Since these technology natives require communication with their brands, businesses must implement social media marketing to get the attention of their most influential consumers.
11. BRAND AUTHORITY
Customer satisfaction and brand loyalty both play a part in making your business more authoritative, but it all comes down to communication. When consumers see your company posting on social media, especially replying to customers and posting original content, it makes you appear more credible. Regularly interacting with customers demonstrates that your business cares about customer satisfaction, and is available to answer any questions that they might have. Satisfied customers are eager to spread the word about a great product or service and they usually turn to social media to express their opinion. Having customers mention your business on social media will advertise your business, and show new visitors your value and brand authority. Once you obtain a few satisfied customers who are vocal about their positive purchase experience, you can let the advertising be done for you by actual customers who enjoyed your product or service.
12. INSIGHTS
One of the most valuable advantages of social media is marketplace insight. What better way to know the thoughts and needs of your consumers than by directly talking to them? By monitoring the activity on your profiles, you can see customer’ interests and opinions that you might not otherwise be aware of if your business didn’t have a social media presence.
Using social media as a complementary research tool can help gain information that will aid you in understanding your industry. Once you gain a large following, you can use additional tools to analyze the demographics of your consumers. Another insightful aspect of social media marketing is the ability to segment your content syndication lists based on topic, and identify which types of content generate the most impressions. These tools give you the ability to measure conversions based on posts on various social media platforms to find the perfect combination for generating revenue.
13. ROMI
By boosting the right social media posts, you can bring in a lot of traffic at a fraction of the cost of targeted targeted Google ads. As of 2018, the average Google AdWords cost per click varied from $1.20 for travel and tourism, to $5.27 for education and employment. Depending on the keyword targeted, you can end up paying $50 or more for a single click. Cost per acquisition — the amount of money businesses spend on ads to acquire a single customer — varies even more, from less than $20, to over $200 for the legal industry. With boosted posts, you have a lot more control over when your message gets amplified, which means you can spend your advertising budget more strategically on the posts that matter most to your audience. Through targeted boosted posts, we’ve been able to send traffic via Facebook and Pinterest for as little as $0.12 per click. At the low end, that’s ten times more traffic per dollar of spend than you get from AdWords.
So you see, it is worth your investment. I get it. everyone has it, everyone can use it so one can tend to underestimate it, but I am asking you here to understand its potential for those very same reasons! Everyone has it! Everyone uses it! So why not harness it!
Author
Prerna Siddharth
MtM Agency