Your marketing is responsible for the majority of the success your business has or will have. For newer businesses, it is necessary in order to get themselves out there and build a dedicated consumer base. For already established businesses, a good marketing strategy is what helps them not get buried under the ever-expanding sea of competition. In recent years a new concept has created quite a bit of buzz in the world of marketing, and that is social media marketing.
We’ve all seen our fair share of social media campaigns, meaning that a big number of businesses have realized how important social media marketing is and have decided to reap all the benefits they can from it. Many other businesses, big and small, also know that they should follow suit but might hesitate to do so because they aren’t really sure how their business can benefit from something as unpredictable and informal as social media. If you are among them, then you have made the right decision by clicking on this article.
This article will present to you the reasons social media is so important in your marketing strategy and will probably leave you regretting you didn’t know about them earlier.
Puts your brand out there
The greatest thing about social media is how easy it is for word about a certain brand or product/service to spread. Regardless if you already have a significant number of people who know about you or you are just starting to build your online presence, social media will put you in front of so many new people that might have otherwise never come across your business.
Gets you instant feedback
Through social media, it’s straightforward to get feedback from your customers. It can be on their own initiative by leaving comments and reviews on your social media pages, or you can directly ask them for feedback and opinions by setting up polls, questionnaires, etc..
One reason why people love leaving feedback on social media is that they can be as public or as private with it as they like, meaning they are free to leave a public comment or send you a direct message if that is what they prefer. Once you set up your social media accounts, you’ll notice that you are getting much more and much genuine feedback from your customers because this for them feels way more convenient and comfortable than the traditional “leave a review/complaint/suggestion” section on your site.
Is an easy way to clear things up
Most brands, but especially the larger and more known ones, will have one or more situations in which a rumor or false accusation about them has been made public by a dissatisfied or misunderstood customer. Since most people are in the role of a customer themselves, they are fast to take their side instead of the business’s, leaving the business in a sticky situation. The rumors or accusations are 99% of the time going to spread through social media, so that should also be the place where you clear them up or apologize if it was truly a mistake on your part.
Using social media, you can easily release a statement or even directly reply to the post regarding your business.
Both of these approaches will be seen by a large audience and will help you avoid getting your reputation tarnished or seeming unapologetic about any mistakes your business might have made.
Humanizes your brand
Where a lot of businesses go wrong in their marketing strategy is making their business strictly look like a business, as if there isn’t a human side powering it all. To be fair, doing the contrary, using the traditional means of marketing is pretty hard since they are all very fabricated. Social media posts, on the other hand, can allow you to let your customers in on behind the scenes of your business, who your employees are, what is the day to day like in your company, and what drives you to do what you do besides profit.
Realness and authenticity are what people will love the most about your business; that is what will make them better understand it and feel closer to it. So give the people what they like and use your social media accounts to let exactly that shine through.
Modernizes your customer service
Let’s be honest, all of us would rather send an instant message than make a phone call or send an email. This applies to our personal interactions and the ones we have with businesses. Your customers will want to have the option of contacting you through social media since it’s less formal, quicker, and more convenient.
Many customers are also stating that if a business resolves their issue through social media promptly, they would happily engage with that same business again, which means that providing customer service through social media will likely pay off more and be appreciated more by your customers than any other investment in your customer service efforts.
Increases your rates of traffic
Along with increasing awareness about your brand, using social media in your marketing will increase your traffic rates as well.
Sponsored posts and stories on social media are maybe the most effective types of advertisements.
They are smoothly integrated into feeds, and they bring in not just any type of traffic but targeted traffic. This is due to the fact that social media ads are strategically placed in front of people who have previously expressed interest in your business or other businesses in the same niche, making people more inclined to react to the ad. Not to mention that social media ads can also adapt to the customer’s geographical location, language, and even gender making the ads seem as if they were tailor-made for each customer and explaining why they are so effective.
It will save you money
Social media marketing, besides being highly effective, is also very budget-friendly. Firstly, the cost of the sponsored posts on social media is way less than the cost of traditional ads you can buy from Google, for instance. Secondly, creating accounts for your business on any social media platform is completely free. The accounts can also be easily managed by anyone who is a bit social media and customer service savvy, so there is no need and no cost for hiring a trained professional to do that job.
You can use trends for marketing purposes
Social media is where trends are born and widely talked about. If done right, a business can use those same trends and get free promotion and exposure. By using popular hashtags, post formats, even memes, your posts can find themselves in the feeds of millions of people without requiring too much effort to do so. Just think of an interesting post, place a popular hashtag in it cleverly, and let the trend do its magic.
Gives you insight on your competitors
Just like people will be leaving their opinion on your business, they will be doing the same for your competitors, right there in the open on social media. This way without having to dig for inside information you can easily see what reputation your competitors have, how are they handling the complaints they receive, what are they doing right in managing their social media presence that you can learn from, and of course what they are doing wrong that you can use to your advantage.
Conclusion
Hopefully, after reading this article, you won’t have to think twice about using social media in your marketing strategy. Social media is something familiar to all of you from your private lives, so incorporating it in your professional ones won’t present any type of challenge. Doing so will mean doing the truly best for the success of your business, which is your goal at the end of the day.
Published on March 9, 2020 under brand, business, marketing, social media.
