To many business owners, social media marketing is the “next big thing,” and must be taken advantage of while it’s in the spotlight. To others, it is just that the “next big thing” and they don’t want anything to do with it.
Because social media marketing appeared so quickly, it has developed a reputation by many as a passing fad, and therefore, an marketing tool they do not want to waste money on. Statistics, however, show a totally different picture.This demonstrates a huge potential for social media marketing to increase your sales.
Here’s a look at just some of the ways social media marketing can improve your business:
Increased Brand Recognition.
Every chance you have to share your content and increase your visibility is valuable. Your social media networks are just new channels for your brand’s voice and content. This is important because it makes you more accessible for new customers, and makes you more familiar with current and past customers.
Improved brand loyalty.
According to a report published by Texas Tech University, brands who engage on social media channels enjoy higher loyalty from their customers. The report states “Companies should take advantage of the tools social media gives them when it comes to connecting with their audience. A strategic and open social media plan could prove influential in morphing consumers into being brand loyal.”
More Opportunities to Convert.
Every post you make on a social media platform is an opportunity for customers to convert. When you build a following, you’ll simultaneously have access to new customers, recent customers, and old customers, and you’ll be able to interact with all of them. Every blog post, image, video, or comment you share is a chance for someone to react, and every reaction could lead to a site visit, and eventually a conversion.
Higher conversion rates.
Social media marketing results in higher conversion rates. Perhaps the most significant is its humanization element; the fact that brands become more humanized by interacting in social media channels. Social media is a place where brands can act like people do, and this is important because people like doing business with other people; not with companies.
Higher Brand Authority.
When people go to compliment or brag about a product or service, they turn to social media. And when they post your brand name, new audience members will want to follow you for updates. The more people that are talking about you on social media, the more valuable and authoritative your brand will seem to new users.
Increased Inbound Traffic.
The more quality content you share across social media, the more inbound traffic you’ll generate, and more traffic means more leads and more conversions. Every social media profile you add is another avenue leading back to your site, and every piece of content you share on those profiles is another opportunity for a new visitor.
Decreased Marketing Costs.
According to Hubspot, 84% of marketers found as little as six hours of effort per week was enough to generate increased traffic. Even paid advertising through Facebook and Twitter is relatively cheap (depending on your goals, of course). Start small and you’ll never have to worry about going over budget—once you get a better feel for what to expect, you can increase your budget and increase your conversions correspondingly.
Better Search Engine Rankings.
SEO is the best way to capture relevant traffic from search engines, but the requirements for success are always changing. It’s no longer enough to regularly update your blog, ensure optimized title tags and meta descriptions, and distribute links pointing back to your site. Google and other search engines may be calculating their rankings using social media presence as a significant factor, because of the fact that strong brands almost always use social media. As such, being active on social media could act as a “brand signal” to search engines that your brand is legitimate, credible, and trustworthy. That means, if you want to rank for a given set of keywords, having a strong social media marketing campaign could be almost mandatory.
Richer Customer Experiences.
Social media marketing, at its core, is a communication channel like email or phone calls. Every customer interaction you have on social media is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate your customer service level and enrich your relationship with your customers.
Improved Customer Insights.
Social media also gives you an opportunity to gain valuable information about what your customers are interested in and how they behave, via social listening. For example, you can monitor user comments to see what people think of your business directly. You can segment your content syndication lists based on topic and see which types of content generate the most interest—and then produce more of that type of content. You can measure conversions based on different promotions posted on various social media channels and eventually find a perfect combination to generate revenue.
These are the benefits of sustaining a long-term social media campaign, but if you’re still apprehensive about getting started, consider these points:
Your Competition Is Already Involved.
Your competitors are already involved in social media marketing, which means your potential social media traffic and conversions are being poached. Don’t let your competitors reap all the benefits while you stand idly by. If, somehow, your competition is not involved on social media, there’s even more of a reason to get started—the field is open.
The Sooner You Start, the Sooner You Reap the Benefits.
Social media is all about relationship building, and it tends to grow exponentially as your followers tell their friends, and their friends tell their friends, and so on. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll be able to start growing that audience.
Potential Losses Are Insignificant.
Realistically, you don’t have anything to lose by getting involved in social media. The amount of time and money it takes to create your profiles and start posting is usually minimal, compared to other marketing channels. Just six hours a week or a few hundred dollars a month is all it takes to establish your presence.
Here are some statistics you should know about social media marketing:
- Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely follow a brand via social networking (95%). (Source: MarketingSherpa) Think about your audience and see where they are most likely to follow your brand.
- 71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others. (Source: Ambassador) Use social media as an effective customer service tool to increase brand engagement and win new customers.
- There are 1.65 billion active mobile social accounts globally with 1 million new active mobile social users added every day. (Source: We Are Social) Make sure to optimize your mobile social media campaigns and since mobile ads are relatively cheap and easy to produce, test multiple versions to see what works the best.
- Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. (Source: HubSpot) Flying Point Digital has a great post on how to create an innovative content strategy on social media.
- In 2015 Facebook influenced 52 per cent of consumers’ online and offline purchases, up from 36 per cent in 2014. (Source: The Drum) This shows the importance for retailers to manage their social media channels which will have a direct impact on purchase behaviour.
- There were over 4.4 million videos uploaded directly to Facebook in February 2016, generating over 199 billion views. (Source: ReelSEO) Video marketing is a powerful tool that personalizes your brand and increases conversions.
- Latest study by Locowise found that adding hashtags had no effect on engagement rates. In fact, tweets without hashtags outperformed tweets with hashtags. (Source: Adweek) Therefore, it is better to focus on the quality of your original content instead of overly relying on hashtags for increasing engagement.
- 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 (Source: Hootsuite) Instagram has become a powerful platform for marketers and its potential cannot be overlooked any longer.
- 90% of Instagram users are younger than 35 (Source: ScienceDaily) Instagram has become the social media network for targeting millennials.
- Posts tagged with another user (56%) or location (79%) have significantly higher engagement rates (Source: Simply Measured) So don’t forget to add ‘with whom’ and ‘where’ to your Instagram posts.
The longer you wait, the more you have to lose.
Social media marketing, when done right, can lead to more customers, more traffic, and more conversions, and it’s here to stay. If you’re interested in getting started but aren’t sure where to begin, contact Gettingraphic at 720.689.5782.
