Could Social Media Marketing Work for Your Business?
Even if your business has been ignoring social media up until now, it’s never too late to start. Social media isn’t just a fantastic marketing tool but a viable platform for day-to-day interactions with customers. Some businesses turn it into a natural extension of their customer service and is an excellent way to show clients that their opinions matter.
However, some entrepreneurs are still doubtful. Is social media marketing suitable for their business? Will it work? Can they do what it takes to achieve the necessary results? Let’s take a look at what it can do for you, and then decide for yourself if social media marketing is what you need.
Increasing Brand Awareness
Even the best product in the industry won’t sell if no one knows about it. Social media can solve this problem – today it’s hard to find a person without at least one social media account. However, if you want your account to be effective, it needs to be continuously monitored as users get upset if the account isn’t updated regularly or if they don’t get a response to their comments reasonably soon. It could be that you are so busy running your company that you do not have the time needed for social media marketing. Hiring a social media management agency to handle it for you can help.
By encouraging subscribers to share your posts (via competitions and promotional campaigns), the word will be spread about your products and/or services.
Increasing Customer Engagement
Having content that engages users is vital, but it also needs to be promoted and updated on a regular basis. A social media page that wasn’t updated for a while looks out of date and can lead people to think that you are no longer in business. In this sense, a poorly managed social media account can do you more harm than a nonexistent one. The content doesn’t have to be text. Images, videos, and gifs are a great way to get potential customers to see your pages. They are more likely to press the share button for an amusing image than for a written piece, getting you more views without much effort on your part.
Targeting Your Primary Audience
Knowing your target audience and who is looking at your social media pages is an essential part of optimizing your platforms. A particular platform can be an excellent marketing tool for one industry but shows only lackluster performance for another one. Each social media platform has its own character and primary audience. For example, LinkedIn is a place for professionally oriented people, more than 80% of Pinterest Users are female, etc. The analytic tools available will let a social media management agency find out which is working best for your business and what needs to be focused on.
What is even more interesting, social media can help evaluate the approximate size of your target audience – for example, through the use of Facebook Ad Manager. You have to define the portrait of your ideal customer (e.g., male, interested in sports, age 30-55), specify the region you are interested in, and the tool will return the approximate number of people meeting your criteria. Although the estimate is naturally not 100% precise, it still can help decide further steps.
Driving In-Person Sales
The power of social media isn’t limited to motivating people to follow your accounts and purchase products in your online store. Many entrepreneurs use them to improve their in-store sales. If your brand runs enough promotions through its accounts to motivate users to follow you, they can be alerted about the latest sales, special offers and promotions they can take advantage of.
Creating a Loyal Customer Base
According to traditional marketing wisdom, it’s much easier to sell something to a person who already bought something from you before than to somebody who is dealing with you for the first time. Skillful use of social media (based on the promotion of user-generated content, regular interaction with followers, and quick reaction to their comments) will create a loyal customer base or even a fanbase of your brand. They will not only buy from you regularly but will advertise your product to their friends and acquaintances.
All in all, if you ask yourself if your business can benefit from social media marketing, the answer is going to be almost always yes, no matter what kind of business you run. You should, however, be ready to either spend a fair amount of your time and effort learning the ropes and maintaining accounts or hire a team of professional marketers to do it for you.
