Social media has rapidly become part of people’s lives, both personally and professionally. As of November 2019, the average user spent 36 days-per-year scrolling through their feeds.
As a result, businesses have had to adapt their marketing strategies to be able to engage with their audiences on social channels and become more approachable in the process. This has led to businesses creating social media roles within their marketing team or reaching out to agencies to grow their social media and build their online presence. With 77% of small businesses now using at least one social media platform to promote their brand, it’s clear to see that social media marketing offers a range of benefits.
Improve Brand Loyalty
Social media enables brands to have a closer and more engaged relationship with their audience. It provides a platform to engage in communities and have conversations surrounding content without having a direct sales approach. This can help to nurture relationships, build trust and ultimately, increase brand loyalty between the customer and brand.
Social media audiences don’t just use these platforms to research products and new brands but have increasingly used social to get in direct contact with the company.
When your business is active on social media and responsive to customers, it can speed up the response process, which benefits the customer, and enhances your customer service reputation.
When a user feels like a company is trustworthy, they are more likely to purchase products or services – meaning more growth for your business.
Increase Brand Awareness
Social media marketing is one of the most cost-efficient marketing strategies used to increase businesses’ brand awareness and online presence. Brands that use social media have the opportunity to engage with a broader audience, grow the overall awareness of the business, and showcase a different side of the business.
An effective starting point is to get staff members to engage, follow and share the posts that your business is putting out there. This increases the opportunity to reach new and larger audiences as well as demonstrate that your employees are behind your business and brand.
It’s also worth posting content regularly as well as commenting and sharing other people’s or businesses posts. Being active on social media help to build relationships and be part of the social community which increases brand recognition and could lead to potential customers.
More Inbound Traffic
Most businesses would prefer an influx of inbound traffic to making outbound sales calls to gain new clients. Social media provides an additional platform to help drive inbound visitors to your site.
Without integrating social media into your marketing strategy, you may be missing out on an opportunity to build new relationships and grow your business.
Social media can be a great way to have different and more engaging conversations with your both your existing and potential clients. It’s not a direct sales approach, but it can lead to some juice leads in the future, if you get your strategy right.
It’s also worth sharing pictures of employees, case studies of projects and events you may be attending so your audience can follow along with what you’re up to. It helps to build the rapport you have and increase the likelihood of them coming to you when they’re ready to purchase.
Reach different demographics
Having an online presence on different social media platforms enables brands to reach different demographics. Facebook and Instagram are great for a consumer led business, but for B2B you might take a different angle and use LinkedIn. Additionally, some people prefer to read posts and content, whereas others prefer videos and images. Therefore, it’s best to come up with a strategy of varied content so that you’re reaching all potential customers.
It’s also worth investing some time in researching your current followers to see which channels they are more active on and which posts they are engaging with more often.
Having multiple social media platforms with a variety of content enables brands to access a wider and more varied audience. Some you may not have reached by using other marketing channels.
Cost-Effective
Compared to traditional marketing, social media can be a relatively cost-effective way of marketing any business. Creating an initial profile is free on most platforms and any paid advertising is relatively low in cost when compared to search engines.
Whilst the cost of social media isn’t a huge strain on budget, it is important to invest time into your social channels and content. Posting regularly helps to build up better relationships and remaining active and responsive increases trust and builds on brand loyalty.
There’s no point posting if you’re not going to create an impact and build relationships. Therefore, it’s worth spending some time on your social media strategy before posting so that you can target the right audiences with content that they will engage with.
Social media can take up time and resource, so you may want to invest in an agency who can help you with strategy and provide you with regular content to keep your audience on board.
Need help with your marketing?
If social media marketing is something you struggle with, then chat to our team about how we can help create a strategy that works for you. Get in touch or give us a call today on 01794 725 454. You can also keep in touch and follow our social media on Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and blog posts with plenty of tips and advice.
