Benefits Of Social Media Marketing
Higher Brand Awareness
Social media is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing platform used to promote content and increase the visibility of your product or service. Executing a social media strategy will profoundly increase the firm’s brand acknowledgement, since the firm will be engaging with a wider audience of customers.
The first step towards social media marketing is to create a social media profile for your company or firm and then start interacting with your key internal stakeholders like employees, business partners and sponsors. Once the internal stakeholders have liked and shared the firm’s page, the page will start gaining visibility in the public domain and become naturally accessible to the potential customers. People will start interacting with your content and this will increase the firm’s brand awareness and reputation as a business offering a particular product or service. Each content that is shared will be exposed to a larger network of people and increases the chance of them becoming the firm’s customer, this will also increase the number of target potential customers who are aware of your products and services. This process does not take too much time if done effectively. By investing a few selected hours a week with a proper strategy will increase the exposure of the firm, it’s product and services. Your firm will benefit by just having a social media page and by regular updation with content and interaction with people, it can increase the potential number of customers greatly.
Higher Inbound Traffic
Without reaching out about your business to people on social media, your inbound visitor traffic will limited to your firm’s regular consumers. The people acquainted with your brand are most likely searching for the same old keywords you are presently ranked for in various platforms. Without employing social media as part of the firm’s marketing strategy, you will experience more difficulty reaching people outside of your loyal consumer group. Every social media profile you add to your marketing mix is a free doorway to your firm’s website, and each bit of content you post is another chance to acquire a new consumer. Social media is a potpouri of different types of people with different backgrounds and attitudes. With different people come different opinions, needs and different behaviours. Listing your content on as many platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc allows individuals to naturally reach out to your business. For instance, let us consider a older group of consumers, that we would normally refer to as a demographic in marketing terminology. The group of consumers in that particular segment will search for the company’s website using certain specific keywords on Facebook, but a younger demographic could begin their search using a completely different social media platform that would probably be unaware to the older demographic population, because each of them search for products totally differently. By social media marketing a company can effectively open their business to a larger volume and variety of customers across the globe.
Improved Search Engine Rankings
Even though posting on social media platforms might get your firm some website traffic, more initiatives than just posting is required to see significant and sustainable success. SEO is very crucial for attaining better page rankings and obtaining traffic to your firm’s website. While social media in itself doesn’t directly increase rankings in search engine, however it has a subliminal impact on website traffic. Globally it is considered that more than 50% of marketers who have been using various social media platforms for a period of one year or longer are still seeing better rankings in search engines. Getting ranked in top positions in various search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and AOL for your keywords will spearhead your traffic and continue to create positive results for your firm. Though each country has a slightly different market share for search engines, Google is widely looked upon as a leading platform and hence the number of people using Google is also very high, however people are becoming more and more lazier day by day and when they search for a keyword, there are very few chances that they might have to go to the second page, as the information that they search for would already be present in the first search page itself. IF you find out that your firm’s website is not present in the first page for a keyword relevant to your product or service, you should start adjusting your search engine optimization process and strategy. For increasing your search engine ranking, you would need to create high quality content that is unique, simple and incorporates your target keywords. The most common content types include blog articles, infographics, interesting case studies, educative information and cool employee photos capturing good moments in the firm etc will make your firm look more credible in social media and this will attract more followers to your social media pages. Your contents will be liked and shared thereby increasing your searchability. This reputation will also help other social media influencers to write about your business and provide backlinks that will help to improve your firm’s search engine rankings.
Higher Conversion Rates
With more visibility, your company gains increase in opportunities for converting prospects into customers. Each post on your blog, be it an image, an article, video or comment leads more viewers to your website and consequently increase the website traffic. Social media marketing facilitates creation of positive impression to your business as the humanization factor can be felt in online interactions with your business. When brands lively interact by sharing various content, commenting and posting statuses on social media, it gives a more personified image for a brand, people would get a feeling that interacting with a live person. It is a fact that we all prefer to do business with others, rather than with companies. Over 50% of marketing professionals claimed that spending time to develop bonds with customers showed better sales results. The better the impression that your overall brand or firm makes on a visitor, the more likely are the visitors to recall your business when the requirement for your product category or services arises. Studies have also clearly indicated that social media has higher lead-to-business rate than usual methods of outbound marketing. When a brand becomes interactive online, consumers that follow your brand’s accounts often begin to start trusting the credibility of your business than other methods traditionally followed. We use social media platforms to stay connected to our friends, family, and various interested communities. Since people are already out there, talking, why not throw your brand of product or service into the mix? Because it’s more likely that such an intervention will lead to people mentioning your brand to a friend when your products or services are needed, providing your firm with credible social proof of the quality of it’s brand. More than 60% of marketing professionals saw lead generation benefits by using social media platforms at least 6 hours per week.
Better Customer Satisfaction
Social media is a platform for networking, communication and entertainment. Creating a voice for your company through such platforms is pivotal in projecting the human aspect of your company. Customers feel better when they know that the comments that they post on your pages, will receive a faster and personalized reply rather than an automated acknowledgement. Being able to acknowledge each comment projects credibility and the company’s willingness to attend to the needs of visitors, in addition to a willingness to provide the best quality service.
Every customer interaction on your firm’s social media platforms is an opportunity to publicly showcase your compassion for customers. Whether an individual has a query or a complaint, social media allows the individual to receive solutions with a personal touch at a faster pace. A brand that believes in customer satisfaction takes the time and effort to compose personal messages that will add on to credibility and better closure of a complaint.
Improved Brand Loyalty
One of the main goals of a company is developing a customer base that is loyal. It’s proven by experts that customer satisfaction and brand loyalty are two sides of a coin, hence it is of great importance. Social Media helps companies to regularly engage with customers and create trustworthy bonding with them. Social media is not just limited to showcasing your company’s products and campaigns. Consumers see these platforms as a direct channel for communication and service. The millennial generation, especially have higher loyalty towards brands and social media is the one factor that can help a company create loyalty.
Higher Brand Authority
Customer satisfaction and brand loyalty both play a part in making your brand more authoritative, but in the end, it all comes down to the right communication style. When customers see that your company is posting on social media, especially when they see that the firm is replying to customers and posting original content, it makes you appear more credible and credibility leads to better authority. Regular interaction with customers demonstrates that your company cares about its customers and their satisfaction. It also is important to understand the fact that the company is ready to answer customer queries will lead to better authority. If a customer is satisfied, they are more likely to spread the word about the company’s brand and express their opinion on social media itself, which again adds credibility.
Value For Money
Social media marketing offers better value for money or better return on investment with lesser cost than traditional marketing campaigns and advertisements.
Gain Marketplace Insights
One of the advantages of Social Media marketing is that the firm gets an access to real deeper insights as humans are in a process of real communication over social media platforms. Things like which campaign execution or type of social media advertisement is gaining importance and getting more shares and likes.
Thought Leadership
Posting insightful and well-written content on social media is a great way to become a subject expert and a respected leader in your field.