Social media marketing should be an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. As social media platforms continue to gain traction as one of the quickest and personalized ways to engage your audience, not having any elements in your day-to-day interactions could have a negative impact on your conversions and revenue streams. There are a number of benefits of social media for business. Understanding the advantages of social media marketing, and taking the time to learn social media marketing will not only be advantageous for your organisation, but keeps your team connected to your audience.
SEE ALSO: Social Media Marketing Companies
According to Statista, investments in social advertising went from 16 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 to nearly 31 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. Additionally, 97% of global businesses use social media marketing, with $17 the biggest benefit is increased exposure. Currently, 32% of global companies use social media marketing to strengthen their customer loyalty, with 58.7% of those organisations indicating that clickthroughs are one of the most important metrics to measure success.
What are some additional benefits of social media marketing?
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Increased Brand Recognition
Companies use social media marketing as an accessible channel to increase their visibility and gain additional audiences. This makes the brand recognizable and familiar among the masses. The more you engage and interact via social media, the wider your audience becomes. Your visibility, whether through likes, shares, or someone stumbling onto your information through someone else’s social media can give you followers that translate into conversions.
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Brand Loyalty
A study done by Convince & Convert indicates that 53% of Americans who follow brands in social media platforms are more loyal to those brands. Companies who take advantage of social media and its reach can easily convert new audiences into loyal followers.
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Conversion Opportunities
With increased visibility and brand recognition, organisations have the opportunity to convert more customers. As your following grows, the exposure from old customers, recent customers and brand new customers grow as well. Social media allows you to interact with all of these audiences with different tactics that interest them, such as a video, blog posting, image or something else. Every reaction can lead to further interest from these audiences, which can lead to a conversion. Keep in mind – with every conversion, the opportunity came first.
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Increased Conversions
Effective social media marketing usually results in higher conversion rates in a number of ways. Audiences love to see companies that humanize their brand. Interactions with audiences in a social forum show a different side of the company, helping brands gain trust and loyalty. Also, studies conducted have indicated that social media has a 100% lead-to-close rate over outbound marketing.
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Brand Authority
When customers view the brand as being accessible, it demonstrates good faith and helps acquire additional customers. Loyal followers will talk positively about the brand on social media, which gives you credibility and helps gain the followers from those individuals as well. The more people speak about your brand, the more authority you gain. Interacting with social media influencers, or getting brand ambassadors can also help push your visibility to the next level.
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Increased Inbound Traffic
With wider exposure, your inbound traffic will grow. The more you interact on social media, the wider your audience becomes. Every piece of content or social media profile will also become a point of visibility, helping attract more followers over time. The more followers and inbound traffic you generate, the higher your conversion rates will be.
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Better Rankings
SEO is an important part of any organisation’s digital marketing strategy. One of the best things about social media marketing is that your SEO will stay optimized due to your social media presence. The stronger your brand is on social media, the higher your rankings will become in the search engines. Being active on social media helps to build credibility and keeps your brand as a legitimate and trustworthy source on the web.
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Lower Marketing Costs
Hubspot says 84% of marketers found that six hours of effort per week was enough to generate additional traffic. Lending one hour a day to develop content and appear on social media can help you save marketing costs while lending additional money to advertising. Utilizing social media advertising can also be cheaper and more effective than large scale efforts.
If you didn’t think social media marketing was effective, look at the following statistics:
- 95% of adults aged 18-34 are most likely to follow a brand through social media platforms.
- 71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others.
- There are 1.65 billion active social media accounts across the globe, with 1 million new active mobile users added every day.
- Over 4.4 million videos were uploaded directly to Facebook in Feb. 2016.
- 78% of people who complain to a brand through Twitter expect a response within an hour.
- Top brands on Instagram are seeing a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21%, which is 58 times higher than on Facebook, and 120 times higher than on Twitter.
- 56% of posts tagged with another user or location have significantly higher engagement rates.
- More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices and the average mobile viewing session lasts more than 40 minutes.
It is no secret that brands must pay attention to what’s happening on social media, or customers will not pay attention to you. Marketers must use these best practices to engage and stay within the social media realm:
- Be Present
Your organisation must have a presence on social media, utilizing the major channels as they relate to your brand. The most popular platforms are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Vimeo, and Instagram.
- Reach Out
Social media is more than just having a presence – your team must create engaging content and share it to grow your audience and extend your reach.
- Engage
While there must be engagement, it should not be self-motivated. Audiences want to see the human side of the organization, and having real conversations without continuously plugging the brand will have a huge impact on how the company is viewed.
- Scale
It is important to align all your marcoms and social activity together for one cohesive approach. This increases social participation across the organisation.
- Influence
When done correctly, your marketing team will help develop influence among followers and other audiences that will continue to provide positive visibility and grow the brand.
Having a well-planned social media strategy can work wonders for your brand and image. When implemented correctly, it can work to your advantage in creating worldwide visibility. Through effective social media marketing, you can target potential markets, engage in diverse conversations, increase sales, and have a strong brand identity. Social media marketing helps to gain the trust of audiences that may not have been aware of your brand. This tool works two-fold: you learn about different audiences and they also learn about you.
These are just some of the benefits of social media marketing. Some of the most important advantages from an operational standpoint include the ability to gain valuable feedback from your customers, continuously improve your processes, stand out from the competition, remain a top-of-mind influencer, and most of all, attract top talent to your organisation.
An affordable way to market to the masses, social media levels the playing field for organisations of every size.
