Social media marketing for businesses is a growing trend. It has been proven to increase brand awareness, attract new customers and build trust. Social media tools allow brands to reach out to their target audience in a more personal way.
The term “social media marketing” has been around for a few years now and should be considered one of the most important assets of a brand to bring more business. This is why you need to know that social media marketing can improve your profits drastically.
Social media marketing has grown to be more than just a place for brands to connect with their customers. The amount of time and effort companies put into social media these days is shocking. Many businesses are losing thousands of dollars a month or even losing sales because they aren’t utilising the power of social media marketing for businesses properly.
Apart from that, social media is the most effective and inexpensive way to market your business. You can use social media for businesses to find new ways of reaching out to people who you want to talk to, engage with and build relationships with. The best part is the money spent on traditional marketing approaches can be used to promote social media campaigns.
Gone are those days, when business owners spent a lot of money on advertisements and promotions of their products. One of the drawbacks of traditional marketing was that it can’t be tracked and monitored. The advancement of digital marketing enables businesses to keep an eye and control on their expenses spent on marketing activities.
According to a report, around 93% of the businesses in the world use social media platforms to promote their businesses and more than 50% of the users come from social media ads.
There is no doubt that social media is now the largest online advertising platform. If you want to connect with new customers across the globe, then social media marketing is one of the best options you have. Although it plays a vital role in the growth of a business, still several companies ignore it. And even some companies get poor results from social media marketing.
If you are running a business, then you must read this blog till the end. In this blog we will discuss the:-
- Benefits of social media marketing.
- Social media marketing strategy.
- Social media marketing plan.
- Best social media marketing platforms.
Benefits of social media marketing.
#1: Brand Awareness:
Social media is one of the powerful digital marketing methods to increase your brand’s visibility. It allows you to create your visual identity across a broad audience and increase your brand awareness.
For any business brand awareness and brand recognition is one of the most important marketing goals as most customers prefer to buy a product that they recognize.
According to a report, 90% of the users know about the brand from social media.
Apart from that, it brings brand loyalty to the customers. In traditional marketing, although businesses promote their brands on a large scale, they fail to reach the maximum number of customers. Thankfully, social media enables businesses to reach their consumers more quickly and easily. Furthermore, it allows audiences to know more about the brand or product.
#2: Drive Traffic:
Social media is one the best ways to drive traffic to your website. If you are marketing your product Social media platforms can be a great medium to send customers to your website directly. If you’re writing blogs about the products for your brand, then Social media channels can give you the best result. Apart from increasing traffic to your website, it can help you to convert them into potential customers.
#3: Cost-Effective:
Social media marketing is cost-effective as compared to traditional marketing. The advertising strategy in social media is relatively low and the return on investment is more. Furthermore, If you are running an ad campaign on any social media platform it allows you to promote your product among targeted audiences based on their interests, age, gender, demography, etc. which enables you to control your budget based on the response of the audiences.
#4: Build relationships:
What could be the best way to connect with customers for free. Social media allows you to connect and interact with your followers and can gather feedback about your product. Usually, customers love to follow and interact with the brands they enjoy.
A report says. 90% of people purchase from brands they follow on social media.
Apart, You can offer promo codes, and discounts to keep your audience engaged and happy. Thus it enables the business to build long-lasting relationships between business and customers.
#5: Higher Conversion Rate:
For sure, the brand with more visibility will get more conversion. A strong social media marketing strategy does the same. It amplifies your conversion rate for your brand and products.
When brands engage with audiences by sharing statuses, posting content, and responding to their comments makes them feel they are communicating to a person rather than a brand.
Social Media enables you to personify your brand. As per a report, 51% of marketers have witnessed growth in their sales by engaging with their audience on social media.
Social media marketing strategy:
Although several businesses are on social media, 90% of them fail to achieve their goal. Most brands invest a lot in social media campaigns but are unable to get positive results. This is because of a lack of proper strategy.
It becomes quite important for every business to follow a proper strategy for successful social media marketing. Here are certain strategies, which are common for all types of businesses.
#1: Know your audience:
This is one of the reasons why social media marketing for businesses fails. Most of the newly evolved brands are unable to understand their customers. They are unable to point out, What they like, what they want to hear, whom they follow, their interests and most probably the platform they use.
So it’s recommended for businesses to know their audience before investing in social media. With the proper survey, you can figure out all those metrics that will make your marketing successful.
#2: Check Analytics:
A regular check on your social media analytics can save you from spending money unnecessarily. It enables you to collect and analyse the audience data, from which you can improve your business strategy. Top of that, you can analyse your competitors, how they are doing and their strong and weak zones. It empowers you to stay ahead of them.
#3: Content strategy:
Sometimes anonymous content on social media makes the followers of the brand confused and later on they lose interest in the brand and its products.
The best way to tackle this situation is to make a proper content strategy plan. You need to structure a proper content strategy so that you can post quality content regularly with a consistent voice.
#4: Regular activity:
Platforms on social media are real-time. Your followers’ news feed may display plenty of posts a day. If you are not regularly posting any updates, then more chances are there, they may unfollow you.
If you are using social media marketing for business growth, you need to post regularly and engage with your audience.
#5: Inbound approach:
This is where most businesses make mistakes. They use it to pitch their business instead of adding value to their brand. You need to add value to your business by posting useful and interesting content on it, like feedback from your happy customers. This will organically promote your brand and will attract others to your business.
Social media marketing plan.
Till now, we have discussed the benefits and strategy of social media marketing. Keep in mind your strategy will work out only when you implement it with a proper plan.
You can say it as a road map to carry out your strategy successfully. Your business may experience no result from social media if your strategy is poor. let’s check out those plans.
#1: Select your platform:
There are plenty of social media platforms available in the market to promote your business and products. But it doesn’t mean you will focus and spend on every platform equally.
Let’s say it’s your business to travel. Rather than posting on LinkedIn, you can spend more on platforms like Instagram and Facebook reels. That can bring more business for you.
If you are much more confused about the selection of suitable platforms for your business, then you can check out the platforms used by your top competitors. You should be on the same platform.
#2: Set your goals and objectives:
Without any proper objective and goal, your roadmap for carrying out your strategy will never end. It’s an important part of the marketing plan to set out goals. You must know what you want from society and what objectives you have to fulfil. For example, your goal for the first quarter of the year is to increase your followers by x times and accordingly you need to plan for the objectives to fulfil your goals.
#3: Check your Analytics report:
It’s a good practice to check the analytics report of the platform used by you. It gives you a better understanding of the response of your audience to your post. You can identify which post performed better. Accordingly, you can focus on similar content.
Best social media marketing platforms.
There are several social media marketing platforms available for business. Some popular platforms for brand development and marketing are Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube, Snapchat and Pinterest. Some different approaches and strategies need to be followed for the different platforms.
#1: Facebook
Although many believe Facebook to be outdated. That is not the truth. It’s still the largest social media platform in the world and one of the biggest directories for local businesses. Recently the company has changed its name to Meta. It’s expected that the company will bring more features for the businesses in the coming days.
Talking about the organic reach on Facebook, it’s limited. Anyhow, you can use Facebook ads as per your requirements.No doubt, Facebook is one of the best platforms to engage with your current customers, hold discussions, announce an event and can share your stories.
#2: Instagram:
It is one of the popular platforms in recent days. Though this platform came to the space after Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, it surpassed those platforms. It got famous for its multiple content formats, including reels, IGTV, stories and feed posts. Apart from communication, people use Instagram to follow influencers and brands they love to buy from. As compared to Facebook the organic reach on Instagram is higher but the cost of ads is a bit high.
#2: Linkedin:
It is a platform to build a professional network. Apart from finding prospects, you can use this platform to share industry insights, and company work culture and can build your business brand. There are many LinkedIn features that you should take advantage of, like, attracting top talent from your industry, connecting with partners and customers, and post industry news and insights.
#4:Twitter:
If you think Twitter is only used by people to get news, then you might be wrong. Several users of this platform follow brands and get the latest updates. Some customers love to tweet about the brand they love or if they get dissatisfied with its service. A brand must be on Twitter and get feedback from the customers. There may be something good or bad about your product but don’t forget to retweet.
#5: Pinterest:
It’s quite a different platform from their social media platforms. Pinterest is an image-sharing and social media network that enables thousands of businesses and photographers to pin their photographs and videos. Pinterest helps businesses in brand exposure and generate a wider customer base. You can link your websites to your pins, as a result, it will drive more traffic and sales.
Conclusion:
Social media nowadays is an important marketing strategy to connect organically with your audience, increase brand awareness, build trust and loyalty, and earn new business. It is certainly a powerful tool at the disposal of any company or brand that wants to stand out from the crowd. With the above tips, I guess you would have got to know how social media can help any business to grow and get ahead of their competitors.
Well, the hype about social media marketing for Businesses is no longer hype. It’s a viable concept for companies to utilise and for them to get accurate, measurable results. The only question that remains is whether or not your business has the staff to handle it. If this isn’t for you, consider outsourcing the process to someone who can do it for you. When it comes to digital marketing agencies, Gloify should be your top priority. We are even handling the social media marketing of our clients. If you are looking for any digital marketing services, kindly contact us.