If you’re hesitating to increase your business’s budget for social marketing, we understand your concerns. Social media can feel overwhelming, time-consuming, and downright confusing. As a business owner, you don’t have time to learn the latest TikTok trends – how does that impact your bottom line? If your ideal customer is an older audience, social media can feel even less relevant to your mission.
However, not everything on social media is about TikTok dances or Tiger King. Consumers use social media to make buying decisions, and the majority of your customers will make a decision about your brand before they’ve even visited your website.
Here are the stats: 71% of consumers are more likely to buy if they have been referred from social media, and another study found that 74% of consumers rely on social media to research their purchasing options (ODM Group).
Maybe now more than ever, there are fantastic benefits to marketing your product or service through social media channels. We’ve divided the top social media benefits for business by:
- Benefits to your ROI
- Advantages of social media monitoring and listening
- Benefits for brand awareness and growth
- Advantages of online review management
Benefits to your ROI
Quantify your ROI more than any other marketing effort
Qualifying the impact of traditional media is nearly impossible: you cast a wide net through tv commercials or a radio spot, and have to hope that customers see/hear it and respond. Get the most professional assistance from purply automated affiliate agency.
By contrast, with an effective social media campaign, you can track what actions that piece of content led someone to take (reshare, follow you, visit your website, make a purchase, etc.).
Social media management companies like ICUC provide clients with in-depth social media reporting at no additional cost. Easily connect your social channels to your website, third-party review platforms, and any other online presence to get a full-picture view of your online reputation.
Retarget customers who’ve visited your site but never purchased anything
Retargeting campaigns are a golden opportunity for social media marketing. Your business can sell up to 50% more by leveraging retargeting methods.
Retailers track visits to their channels via “cookies” in the browser, and big social networks like Facebook, Google, Instagram and Twitter will show ads to the (often large) percentage of your visitors who browse but don’t buy. Social media retargeting gives you a second, even third or fourth, chance to capture potential customers that were interested in your product.
Easily understand why your top-performing content did so well
Top performing content on social media is easy to quantify. Not only do you have vanity metrics such as likes that can show you what people are enjoying, you also get immediate feedback through comments, shares, and follows.
Lower advertising costs than traditional media
Every other type of advertising medium requires higher front-end investment. Reserving a TV commercial slot or producing a radio ad will cost you thousands of dollars upfront, not to mention the additional costs of casting, production, and post-production (editing).
Social platforms are (mostly) free
Social media platforms are mostly free to use (unless you create a paid ad campaign), but even these costs are substantially lower than other advertising. Content production costs are significantly more economical: with just an iPhone and a laptop, you can create high-quality content that your following will love and share.
Better for search engine optimization (SEO) and rank higher in Google
You might not think your Facebook posts have anything to do with search engine optimization (SEO), but social metrics are indirectly connected to your Google ranking position.
While Google has stated that social media is not a ranking factor, studies have found that the “correlation between social signals and ranking position is extremely high” (Searchmetrics).
These two are connected because a large amount of social shares is an indication of the quality of your brand content. People are liking and sharing what you’re producing, which means they are more likely to link to your website, where the real “SEO juice” comes from: link building.
Cost-effective lead generation tool
Social media is a highly cost-effective way to generate leads. Social media drives content to your website and brings customers into your sales funnel.
The niche audience that you build in your social media following will be more receptive to your brand than any other marketing funnel you could hope to create.
Increase your product sales
All of your hard work in social media marketing will produce sales. Telling your company’s story on social media, and connecting with other people who resonate with your product/service, builds a like-minded community that becomes ambassadors for your brand’s mission.
Social media becomes an invaluable resource of WOM connection, trusted reviews, and loyal customers invested in your success.
Advantages of social media monitoring and listening
Differentiate yourself from your competitors
By harnessing social listening power, a social media team can track conversations about your marketplace and gain valuable insights into opportunities to differentiate yourself from your competition.
Collaborate with an influencer in your niche
Like it or not, influencer marketing has great power, and it’s here to stay. Nearly half of all shopping consumers rely on an influencer’s recommendation before making a purchase. Social media allows you to collaborate with relevant influencers impacting your niche audience.
Monitor social conversations relevant to your brand
Social listening informs your business on strategic decisions for your digital presence and brand reputation.
It certainly made a difference for one of our clients, the FIFA World Cup. For the last FIFA World Cup, ICUC analyzed all incoming conversations and then provided daily reports on key matches, players and incidents to support communications planning. The result? The big data reassured FIFA that any new marketing strategies would resonate with their audience.
Have a positive impact on current world issues
A study on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in 2017 found that 63% of American shoppers want businesses to take a stance on social and environmental issues.
If you are passionate about a particular issue that aligns with your brand values, audiences want to hear about it – and will buy more because of it. Not only that, but you will be helping bring awareness to positive change in the world.
Benefits for brand awareness and growth
Target niche audiences that couldn’t otherwise be captured
Niche marketing produces more loyal followers, happier customers and better sales. Social media platforms like Facebook have Audience Insights that allow you to deep dive into understanding your audience and their interests, preferences, even dislikes. Paid advertisers can target these audience segments with highly specialized content.