5 Benefits of Social Media Marketing You Need To Know About

Any marketer worth their salt will tell you that your most powerful marketing tool is word of mouth. Even in the age of technology, word of mouth goes a long way to building trust in your brand, spreading awareness, and increasing your reach. However, the online equivalent of word of mouth is social media, a term which encompasses a variety of online platforms used by billions of people worldwide. One of the greatest benefits of social media for businesses in particular is that it allows people to share information with a broader audience almost instantly. Another is the relatively low cost it takes to reach so many people.

Imagine spending a few hours a week on building business recognition, increasing traffic and driving sales — probably requires a fair bit of outlay, right? Nearly 90% of marketers understand the benefits of social media marketing to generate enormous publicity for their business, and social media ads should be an integral part of any marketing strategy. However, even companies that are using social media aren’t always sure if they’re using it correctly.

Social media is an excellent way to increase your business opportunities and attract new customers, but it takes work. You should dedicate some time each week to engaging with your target audience and get to know them by responding to their posts and show your business’s unique personality. The more you engage, the more engagement you’ll receive.

If you’re posting about things that your customers find interesting or connect with, followers will be more likely to share your content. Be thoughtful with what you share, and your followers will reciprocate, helping to expand your customer base.

When it comes to paid advertising, take your time, and test the kinds of posts you make first. This will help you narrow down the type of audience you want to attract, so spend time developing your content for maximum engagement. This will increase your lead generation and provide you with high conversion rates. Take the guesswork out of your social media marketing campaign and test, test, test.

But if you’re still not convinced, read on for the five benefits of social media marketing that Frantic thinks will take your business’s online strategy to the next level.

As with any marketing and advertising, there’s no point undertaking a social media marketing campaign without monitoring and analysing its effectiveness. Each social media platform provides businesses with detailed analytics tools to measure the success of a campaign, helping you ensure that you’re having the reach, engagement and the impressions that you’re aiming to achieve.

As well as letting you know what you’re doing right with a social media campaign, they also help you understand what’s not working. This allows you to understand your audience, and provides you with the opportunity to create the most appropriate content for improving engagement.

Once you’ve identified who is engaging with your content, you’ll then need to adjust your messaging to best meet the needs of that target audience. You’ll be able to notice patterns in the type of people who respond to your campaign, and make use of this location and demographics data to improve your next round of posts.

You can also adapt your messaging to attract the demographics you want to reach, but currently aren’t, letting you organically improve your lead generation and conversion. When it comes to targeted messaging, always remember: Why try to sell sand on a beach when you can sell water in the desert? That is to say, make your content and services seem like a precious commodity that will be highly valued, rather than preaching to the converted.

Social media is one of the most effective and efficient marketing tools, which can spread your content and increase the visibility of your business. A clear, well-defined social media strategy will skyrocket your brand recognition by bringing your services to a broader audience. Your social media pages should aim to create a community based around the content you post. The right type of content will get you more shares, thus increasing the number of people who are reading and engaging with your material.

If one of your posts is shared by ten people within your community, and each of those ten people has 500 people in their network, that gives you a potential audience of 5000 people, 4900 of whom may never have even heard of you until you made that post! This domino effect can then carry on rolling outward, constantly making new audiences aware of your business.

Over 91% of marketers have claimed that the time and effort they put into developing a social media strategy has dramatically increased their business’s exposure.

The most straightforward way to increase trust in your brand and get more potential customers to buy into your business is by using your brand’s profiles in the same way as you would any others on social media. Have conversations, share information and put the “social” back into your marketing campaigns.

If a customer has an issue, and they reach out to you via social media, they’ve come directly to you to help them fix the problem. If a customer wants to say something nice about your business, they’ll most likely tag you to let you know it. Both of these examples, and all kinds of posts in between, will go a long way towards using your social profile as a means to generate more happy customers.

Social media is a direct link to your audience. Use it to gather insight and learn more about your customers’ interests, needs, wants, pain points etc. This information is unique to you, so harness it properly to get ahead within your industry, analyse your consumer demographics and keep one step ahead of your competitors.

Social media marketing is possibly the easiest and most cost-effective advertising strategy you have at your disposal, making it a godsend for businesses of any size. You can create your profile for free on pretty much every platform, and you can invest in some of the lowest advertising rates available. This provides you with a brilliant return on investment and gives you a great opportunity to get your brand in front of the widest possible audience.

Getting a better return on your investment and being cost-efficient also gives you the added bonus of having a larger budget for other marketing strategies and business expenses. By putting in a small amount of time and money, you can fine-tune your social media marketing campaign to make sure that you’re significantly increasing your conversion rates.