Top 9 Benefits of Social Media for Businesses
There used to be a time when social media was a young person’s game, and it was called a fad that would fade away. Coming to today’s business environment, we can safely say social media is one of the fastest-growing forms of marketing. This communication medium has increased in popularity over the years, and many marketers have recognized its true potential. Just look at the statistics.
According to Hootsuite, there are around 4.2 billion active social media users and 5.2 billion mobile phone users. Social media can be accessed by anyone and at any given time. With these numbers, any business would benefit significantly by tapping into this vast market and using it to their advantage. If you’re still skeptical about the potential of social media, this blog will put your mind at ease. So let’s dive straight into it.
These are the following reasons why social media is essential for your business:
1. Brand awareness
As mentioned before, nearly half the world’s population is on social media. This is a significant opportunity for any brand to use the platform to get their message out. The number of potential customers partnered with the features available to you on different platforms makes this a vital investment for any brand planning to grow. It is sometimes assumed that a business can be hard to find amongst the sea of brands, influencers and icons on social media, but that is not the case.
Instagram reported that nearly 83% of its users found new products and services on the platform. So the key is to find the best way to communicate with your audience and grab their attention.
2. Cost Effective
All social media platforms allow anyone to make an account for free, and you do not have to pay to post your content to its enormous audience. This makes the platform a vital element of any marketing strategy for a business. For example, you might see posts that are paid for promotion. This is a smaller investment than the cost of other avenues of paid marketing promotion. With a larger marketing budget, you can allocate more funding to other elements of your marketing strategy.
This would happen while you reap the return on investment from social media at affordable costs. Even if you decide to use paid social media advertising, you can significantly increase your conversion rates and ROI by experimenting with the platform’s advertising parameters. Experimenting and seeing what works for you on social media will save you time and money in the long run.
3. Customer Communication
Social media has allowed consumers to contact a business without making a call directly, assuming that the business of your choosing is on social media. Businesses can now get valued feedback, reviews and even complaints in real-time through the platform. In the past, waiting on call while you were being transferred was challenging for customers. This tried their patience and trust in the brand.
Today, a consumer has one of the simplest, most convenient and most reliable ways to communicate with a business. Similarly, businesses can now contact their customers via social media and even host live events on the platform which consumers can interact with.
4. Website Traffic
A website is the best place to have customers land when you want to improve the sales of a business. Social media gives you the ability to direct users to your website. There are different ways you can achieve this. For example, you could post excellent content which grabs attention and then link your website. This would allow consumers to click on the link to your website through a post or blog.
You could also participate in social media chats to interact with users and share your expertise, leading them to your website. The key is to focus on assisting users with solutions and less on self-promotion. An important tip is to put your website address on all your social media accounts so consumers can find it more easily.
5. Knowing Your Competition
Consumers are not the only people using social media. You can find your competition there as well. As you post content to create brand awareness and attract customers, so does your competition. However, this does not come across threat but more like a learning opportunity. The idea is to see what your competitors are doing, how they are doing it and why they are doing it.
The end goal for all businesses is to create a product or service that covers all the bases of what a consumer wants. When you learn from your competition and improve, that’s when consumers would pick your brand over the rest. Social media is the perfect way to track your competition and make accurate decisions on your business strategy.
6. Brand Authority
When a business is seen posting content on their accounts, replying to customer queries and listening to their audience, consumers view this as a credible brand. By keeping up with customer communication via social media, you show social media users that the business values its audience above everything else. This translates to satisfied customers voicing their opinion about the brand, product, or service. This is usually shared through social media as well.
When several customers follow this suit, it creates a sense of trust in front of potential customers who see these interactions. Ideally, word of mouth from consumers about their positive purchase experience with your brand is a form of advertising. This is where every brand would like to be.
7. Lead Generation
Social media allows its users to show interest in brands in a convenient and detachable way. Generating leads is a significant element in any business’s marketing strategy. So much so that many social media platforms offer advertising services you can pay for to collect leads. For example, Facebook allows its users to create Facebook Lead Ads to reach audiences that share an interest in the product or service you’re selling.
Once the interest is shown, the potential customer can learn more about the brand through a couple clicks on the ad. But, as we had mentioned earlier, you do not require a significant investment to put out these kinds of ads, but you indeed will have great returns.
8. Learn About Your Customer
As we have seen, many active social media users exist. This means that countless people are accessing these platforms, and their behavior is observed. Social media platforms collect enormous amounts of data about their users in real-time. As a business or brand, you can access this data anytime.
Each platform offers user analytics. This feature allows you to go through demographic data about users who are interacting with your brands, even those who just visited your account partially. Knowing what your audience is like helps you create a better and more efficient social media marketing strategy.
9. Targeted Advertising
Previously, we discussed how social media is a cost-effective way to promote your business. The platform allows you to deliver quality content to users through your account. Along with this, social media platforms also have marketing tools that allow you to target the perfect audience for your brand and let you manage your budget more efficiently.
This targeting tool uses data that the platform has collected. Once you can access it, you can reach consumers that match the right demographic, geography, language and buying behavior. The targeting is so precise that you can curate your ad text for different groups of consumers, depending on your goal. The pay model works so that you only pay for the exact users you want to reach and nothing more.
These benefits should guide you to venture deeper into social media. If you’re starting, not to worry. Everyone was right where you were, and you have numerous resources like this blog to help you navigate each platform. Social media is the future of marketing for many industries and will be around for a long time. The best your brand can do is to understand how it works and utilize it to the fullest.
