Do you realize the impact social media can have on your business? You might never know the magnitude until you start your social media marketing campaign. The effect it can have on your business goes beyond sales. With the right marketing strategy, you can grow your business and achieve your targeted goal in a short time.
So, whether you are looking to write a custom dissertation on social media marketing or tap into the system, check out the importance of SMM.
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Importance of Social Media Marketing
1. Strengthens Customer and Brand Relationship
Providing exciting stories, news about quality products and informative topics for promoters and other experts to share with their followers can help to strengthen your bond with potential customers. But you have to develop an understanding of how to create engaging posts and stories.
Many businesses view social media as a marketing machine. They come up with special offers, discount and other hard selling approaches that may only fetch little or no traffic gains in the short term. However, the best strategy is to view social networks the way the everyday user sees them.
Understand that social media is not a marketing machine, and trying to use every minute you are active online to talk about your brand will make you sound too desperate in the eyes of a majority of your audience. Instead, you can vary your posts.
One way to strengthen the bond between you and your customers is to avoid pitching customers. Instead, treat social media as a platform to connect. Show your customers, and leads that you care about them by providing answers to their questions, and be honest while interacting with them. Once you can provide answers to questions, entertain and inform your targeted audience, you may likely receive a high ROI and achieve your targeted goals in your social media marketing campaign. Just try to engage with your audience any way you can. Make them feel there is a human behind the brand, not a machine.
2. Boost Social Listening
The simple act of monitoring what people are saying about a specific topic is called social listening. And it has great importance for any brand looking to launch a successful social marketing campaign. Monitoring social conversations can help you understand what is more important to your targeted audience. You will also be able to identify the trends they are paying more attention to through social listening.
As earlier mentioned, social media is a platform to connect with people. But for a brand that is looking to interact with potential leads, learning about their challenges and interest will help you develop contents that stand out. If you can also address the essential points your targeted audiences are struggling with; you may likely earn their trust and loyalty. Another advantage of social listening is that you will get to understand the slang your targeted audience are using, especially the younger generation, and be able to match their style and tone.
3. Opportunity to Share the Brand Story
You can use social media to tell thrilling stories about your brand, which might get to a broader audience at the end of the campaign. Once you can draft out a captivating story and share on social networks like Twitter, your post may likely receive more real retweets and get found out by more people. Others might also share your posts on Facebook to expand your exposure.
However, try to make your post simple to read and engaging. Understand that sharing a great story about your brand can help improve public image.
You can also share stories of people that are using your products or services. But make sure they are compelling and honest stories to avoid embarrassment. If there are great comments or feedback about your products or services, you can also share them too.
4. Promotes Data Gathering through Audience Research
Whether new or existing, there is a need for businesses to conduct thorough research before launching their social media marketing campaign. Audience research is one vital research you can use to plan your social media marketing strategy and increase your chances of running a successful campaign. It is almost the same thing as social listening, only that in this case, you will be more concerned about the keywords your targeted audience is using.
You can use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to gather information about your audience and also have better knowledge of the performance of your posts. On Twitter, you can view the performance of your post and identify the ones that are performing better.
Also, when conducting audience research, you need to focus on your product or service. Find out the keywords your targeted audiences are using to have a better understanding of how to create your posts.
5. Opportunity to Boost Customer Loyalty
Social media offers an excellent opportunity to increase brand loyalty. And the positive side of this is that you can increase brand loyalty for free.
Statistics shows that over 53 percent of customers who follow a particular business on social media end up becoming loyal customers. So, have this in mind when running your campaign. When customers regularly interact with a company or brand on social media and enjoy it, they are likely going to stick around for a long time.
However, it is possible that customers following you on social media may likely prefer doing business with you than your competitor. One of the reasons is because you have successfully built trust and won their hearts through the little responses and contents you post online. Also, your loyal customers may help to increase your traffic, likes, and retweets if you are on platforms like Twitter. You may also receive more likes and shares on Facebook too.
Also, make an effort to engage and keep your loyal customers happy. You can offer them free giveaways or post open-ended questions that will provoke them to respond positively. Offer promo codes for discounts if available, but ensure you are not only just concerned about marketing your products or services.
6. Enhance Brand Awareness
Social media provides the right opportunity for new and existing businesses to improve brand awareness. And you can increase business exposure and reputation without breaking the bank. The first step to get started is to create an account on social media and start sharing captivating contents that will captivate social media users. Posting thought-provoking questions, tips, and answers to matters you believe are of utmost importance to them.
However, your social media marketing strategy can take any shape you want. But understand that you can boost brand recognition if your marketing strategy is effective. Over 91% of marketers using social media marketing strategies claims they were able to increase brand visibility and achieved other benefits.
And you can achieve this by devoting at least 5-8 hours a day to run your social media campaign.
7. Budget-friendly Marketing Strategy
Social media marketing is cost-effective for new and existing businesses working on a tight budget. Open a social media account and start posting relevant contents to attract potential leads. Also, having an account on most of the platforms is free, quick and straightforward. And there is a paid advertisement option on the various social media platforms you can take advantage of if you are looking to target a broader audience in a short time.
Using a paid advert on social media to target more people is an option most business go for, but consider starting small until you are sure of things. You will have a better view of the impact social media paid adverts can have on your business and come up with a visible budget plan for further usage.
Overall, social media is a cost-effect way to market a brand or service. It is also an excellent option for new businesses that require all the financial support they can get to grow.
8. Relevant for Effective Customer Service
Social media is essential as far as customer service is concerned. Quick response to your customers’ questions and complaints can help you to build a stable relationship with your customers. And compared to email messages, social media will offer you a better chance to interact with your customers and find the best way to resolve challenges.
Regarding customer service, a study conducted by Jay Baer with the Edison Research indicates that 40% of consumers that lay complaints on social media expect a quick response in less than an hour, but most businesses do not meet this expectation.
However, the average time most companies respond to a complaint on social media is about 5 hours. But thanks to chatbot and advancement in artificial intelligence, response to consumers is now almost immediate. Large companies with thousands of customers now have the opportunity to attend to their customers faster with the help of chatbot. In fact, chatbot is also cost-effective to use.
Conclusion
No matter the nature of your business, you can benefit from social media marketing. First, register an account and start sharing high-quality posts and comments to attract social media users. One of the keys to running a successful marketing campaign is staying active online. You can draw inspiration from the importance of social media marketing to grow your business.