As high as 75% of people who are 13+ around the world using social media, including social media marketing to your overall marketing plan should be an easy decision. Yet, up to 25 percent of British SME managers say they don’t make use of social media marketing in any way.
If you’re part of 33% of UK businesses that aren’t using social media marketing, you may be losing out on a range of amazing benefits. We’ll provide the benefits. From brand recognition to higher sales numbers, better communication with your customers and increasing traffic to your website Here are the top 13 advantages of using social media for marketing for your business.
1. Brand Awareness and Recognition
One of the greatest benefits of social media is that it offers direct access to 4.62 billion people across the globe. It takes just 5-7 impressions for someone to first remember your brand. The more they see your logo and your message the more they create a connection between your visual branding and the products you sell.
The simple act of getting users to share, comment or like your social media posts exposes your content to of a new group of potential customers as well as partners. The more exposure your company gets, the more widely recognisable it is, which results in greater brand recognition.
2. Brand Authority and Becoming a thought-leader
Social media marketing can do more than let people know about your business, it can also help you build your authority in your field. The more content of high quality you provide to your followers, the more you will establish yourself as an expert in your field particularly when other well-known brands in your field interact in your content.
As you increase your authority in the band as you gain authority, people are more likely to come to your aid with queries relevant to your field of knowledge. This is often described as becoming a thought leader. It’s not something that can be achieved overnight, however, if you put in the time and effort to implement an effective strategy for social media You will likely observe your influence on social media expand.
3. Let your brand’s story be heard
Since social media offers you a direct line of communication with potential and current customers, as well as prospective and current business partners and suppliers, it is the perfect platform to share your company’s story. Whether that’s important news – such as expansions, new products, new hires and more, or simply telling people about your brand’s history and beliefs – there’s simply no better method to tell people the persona of your brand, what you stand for and what you’re committed to.
Telling your story humanises your brand and helps build a deeper emotional connection to your audience. As your social media followers get to know your brand they are more likely to get involved in it and interact with your updates.
4. Brand Loyalty
Emotional attachment and consistent customer satisfaction create brand loyalty. Reportedly, 56% of buyers feel loyal to brands who seem to be able to meet their wants, needs and way of life. When your relationship with your followers grows and you build a loyal fan base of your brand. This is considered to be a top social media marketing benefit according to 61% of marketing professionals.
The creation of loyal customers adds long-term benefit to your company since customers are more likely to pay more for a good or service from a company they believe in. For instance, customers who are members of loyalty programmes spend 12-18 percent more on their preferred brands than first-time purchasers.
5. Customer Engagement
It is social media’s sole medium, short of face-to-face customer interactions in your physical store that lets you be in a constant two-way conversation with your prospective and existing customers. It is not a surprise that over 80% of marketers utilize social media marketing to improve their engagement with customers.
If you know your target audience well, you can use a variety of methods to boost the customer experience by sharing content at specific hours of the day on a particular platform or by sharing a particular type of content (text, image, video).
6. Better Customer Services
Being able offer superior customer service is on the list of social media benefits your company will enjoy. In terms of customer service, email and inquiry forms don’t suffice. The majority walk away from a brand that doesn’t offer live support for customers and 1 in 5 never returning.
By utilising your social media channels, you are able to answer client queries in real-time through comments and private messages. But if you’re taking customers’ requests for assistance on social media, you should always be aware of it and respond quickly. Studies have shown that almost half of all customers would think about contacting a company for assistance via social media. Of these, 2/3 would expect to hear from a representative and half of them expect the response to come within three hours.
7. Higher Customer Satisfaction
Getting your social media communications strategy in order will result in more satisfied customers. It’s a great opportunity to publicly show that you are concerned about your customers’ opinions and feelings and that you are prepared to spend all the necessary time to react to their concerns and resolve any issues that be arising.
The satisfaction of customers in the online space is as crucial as when you’re in the real world. 71% of customers who have had a good experience when interacting with a company online are more likely to recommend it to friends and family. Another advantage of social media marketing that’s certainly worth investing in.
8. Reputation Management
When we talk about engaging with your customers, being responsive and providing an overall positive experience, we should not forget the value using social networks as a way to manage your reputation. In particular, knowing that 54 percent of people who use social media look up a brand’s online presence before making a decision to purchase their product or service.
Negative reviews can be more damaging than you realize with 57% of buyers reporting that they could be turned off from purchasing by reading negative comments on a website. Thus, being proactive with your responses to criticisms can be a big difference in the conversion of potential new customers.
9. More Sales & Conversions
Every business wants to make a profit and social media marketing can be employed to your advantage in doing just that. According to 60% of marketers among the most significant positive effects they’ve experienced has been an increased sales as a direct consequence the social media efforts. Also, 78% salespeople who engaged their clients through social media were according to reports, more successful than those who did not.
The bottom line is that taking the time to engage with your existing customers and to maintain long-lasting relationships with your brand and the loyal customers it serves results in higher conversion rates, which is a good use of your resources.
10. Website Traffic
The best social media content is shareable which means that what you share is seen by your existing audience but also their social media networks. This means that more people will be able to see your publication and if those include links to your website, you are likely to get an increase in visitors to your site as a direct result of your social media posts. This is why a increase in traffic to your website is believed to be a significant benefit of social media marketing by 79% of experts in marketing.
However, a spike in traffic generated by just one social media posting will not make a lasting difference. For a significant increase in your website’s performance in terms of ranking (or in other words to become more likely to show up at the top of the results page on the search engines when people search for related items to your field) it is necessary to maintain improving your presence on social networks continuously over a period of at minimum six months to a year.
11. Lead Generation
Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram, as well as YouTube as well as TikTok include channels where you can meet new clients and business partners. This is one benefit of social media marketing you must take full advantage on. 66% of marketers report they’ve seen lead generation benefits from advertising on social networks.
The reason that lead generation through social media is because it needs little or no commitment from prospective customers. All they need to do is tap one of your posts in your latest Facebook advertisement to find out more about your service or product, check out your prices and find the information they require, they have no risk. This requires no input of data or complicated actions on their part. As a result, the number of potential customers on Facebook will surely grow.
12. Data-Driven Insights
With powerful in-built data-gathering functionality and analysis, along with countless external tools available, social media gives you an abundance of useful information… if you know what to look for and that’s.
For instance, you could use social media to keep your eye on your competition look at what they’re doing, and what their customers are interested in and gather market information that can help your shape and refine your business plan.
In addition to this, you can learn a whole lot about your target audience, from who your customers are and what topics they are interested in, to what kind of content they interact with and what motivates conversions. Then, you can use that knowledge to create targeted marketing campaigns that result in higher conversion rates and a greater return on investment. You can also use social media to serve as remarketing tool to connect with customers who have already bought your product or service.
13. Cost-Efficiency
Social media marketing can be the opportunity to make connections with your audience, building your brand, and generating more revenue. There are many methods of achieving this. Repurposing content is a fantastic strategy. It is possible to share the same article with minor variations across multiple social media platforms to target different types of audiences. Additionally, it permits you to share helpful information from your website to a an even larger audience.
Do you want to give some of your content an extra push? The best part is that using social media advertisements is highly targeted and can be seen by those who are most likely to engage with your product and convert, so you can spend your money on campaigns that actually work.
Additionally, you don’t need to make a huge investment in the development of a chatbot that is smart on your website if you can create a trustworthy customer support team in charge of monitoring your social media platforms, because your communication channels across all social media platforms have been created and ready for use.
In the end you can see that there are many social media marketing benefits you can take advantage of by investing in your business’s social media presence. And the 13 points we’ve discussed just scratch the surface of what social media can do for your company’s image. Because your competitors are likely on social media already If you’ve not yet started getting started, it’s probably time to start putting in the work, find your voice and connect with your clients online.
