Nowadays, social media has gone from a mere tool for connecting friends and family to a global platform with boundless marketing potential. Apart from helping you generate leads and make sales online; you also enjoy communicating with your customers irrespective of their location.
Social media marketing provides a level ground for all kinds of businesses. Whether you are a small brand struggling to find your feet or a multibillion empire ready for repositioning and increased sales, this medium has a lot to offer. Its cost-effective nature makes it a better option than other alternatives and guarantees you will make a mark in your line of business.
Are you just setting out as a small business owner and wondering about your best marketing options? Are you sceptical about using social media as a marketing tool for your brand? Keep reading to figure out key reasons why social media marketing is important and why you need to start today.
Social Media Marketing: A Gamechanger for your Business
In its simplest definition, social media marketing (SSM) refers to positioning yourself to connect with customers and sell on various social media platforms. Some of the popular social media sites for marketing include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
Social media marketing also incorporates paid social media advertising, where you pay to have your business appear to specifically targeted users.
To sell effectively on social media, you should;
- Understand each platform and the behavior of users. Some services will sell better on LinkedIn than on Facebook.
- Create worthy contents that will attract your target customers to your business.
- Practice consistency in your social media marketing journey. It is hard work to show up every day but strives to always be in your customer’s faces.
- Create multiple contents that cater to various categories of users. Social media marketing is different from face-to-face marketing and should be taken seriously.
- Connect while you sell. Don’t approach SMM as a physical store where you simply buy and sell. Think of it as a platform to connect with potential customers and turn them to brand loyalists.
Social Media Marketing is essential for your business.
Here is why you should plunge into the world of social media marketing for your business.
- It promotes Brand recognition and awareness: One of the amazing benefits of selling through various social media platforms is the opportunity to foster knowledge about your brand. When people get to see your brand every day online, it positions your business appropriately and creates awareness for your product or services.
- It’s an excellent avenue for lead generation: In the realm of social media marketing, lead generation is the method of recognizing, captivating, and converting online users into buyers for a business. What this means is that every person who visits your social media page is regarded as a potential buyer and is treated as such. You can generate leads for your business using coupons, live events, or online content.
- It encourages feedback from customers on your brand: Social Media Marketing encourages feedback from your customers. This feedback will help you in re-strategizing, product development, and audience research. This is also a great chance at brand engagement; many customers who wouldn’t have reached out privately to the brand can do so on social media.
- It helps build a community for your business: When you run a physical business, you do not usually have a formal community of your product/service users but that’s not the case with social media marketing. You can easily build a community for your business using colors, brand names, social conversations, or hashtags.
- It is cost-effective: Compared to other forms of business advertising, SMM is cheaper. This advantage is very helpful for small businesses seeking to find a spot in the already saturated market. They do not have to create an extensive budget; with enough time, curated content, and little fund, their business is sure to grow.
- It helps direct traffic to your website: when visitors come to your social media page, they can easily be redirected to your website. This helps boost your daily site traffic and ensures you can get adequate insights on who is looking you up online.
- It is helpful for understanding trends and consumer behavior: social media is a great place to study current trends among your audience. You can also investigate popular consumer behavior within your industry. Such information will be useful in planning your marketing strategies and campaign.
- It’s a great way to measure marketing effort: Several social media platforms come with insight to help you understand the gender, demographic, preference, and desire of your followers. A platform like Instagram shows you the most performing content on your page. With these analytics, you can plan your marketing strategies and measure your marketing efforts over time.
- It helps give a human face to your business: People buy from humans; not a page. Social media marketing provides a human face to any business. Your customers can see you, sneak peeks of your personal life and behind-the-scenes videos that make your business relatable. Such interest in your brand will lead to brand authenticity and ultimately cause them to buy from you.
- It increases customer loyalty to your brand: The more people see you show up on your social media pages every day, the more you build a network of supporters who are loyal to your brand. You can give out discounts on your products or services, give cash gifts or get customers to shop at a special price. All of these will help promote brand loyalty.
- You can run ads: Running ads that is highly targeted is easier on social media. Word of mouth and organic posts has it reach limit but a sponsored ad on your favorite social media platform can get more potential consumers.
- You can collaborate with other business owners: Social media marketing made brand collaboration easier. It is simple to link up with other small business owners and change ideas on what’s happening within your niche. You can also partner with other businesses to create content and ads that will convert.
- It helps you study your competitors: There are millions of businesses on social media offering the same services as you. Social Media Marketing will provide an opportunity for you to study their strategies and find a loophole that is favourable to your business. If your competition is running discount sales, it could be an indication that you should lower your prices.
Wrapping up
The place of social media marketing in any business cannot be overemphasised. Selling through social media channels helps to put your brand in the spotlight and gives you a chance to build a loyal customer base. It is also helpful for product development as it is easier to know what’s trending and what ranks topmost in the customer’s want list.
