Social Media Marketing is not a foreign concept anymore. Almost all businesses, big and small, have jumped on the social media bandwagon to keep up with the current buzz around social media and its trends. If you are about to take your brand on social media just because “it’s trending”, we’d like to remind you that social media marketing can be a very lucrative option for your business if you take some efforts to understand the tricks of the trade.
In a nutshell, Social Media Marketing is the use of social media platforms to promote your brand, increase sales and drive website traffic. These platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and LinkedIn.
Why should your business invest in social media marketing?
Why businesses need social media marketing? Social Media channels allow your business to establish a relationship with your customers by interacting with them on various platforms. Your presence on social media ensures your customers that they wouldn’t be tossed from one customer representative to another for their queries or concerns.
Customers view social media channels as a platform to voice their feedback on your brand. They also use these channels to share your content on their own pages if they like your brand’s idea and communication. Yes, another form of word-of-mouth advertising! The only difference is that social media platforms help you connect with larger audiences and provide an instant glimpse of your brand.
Customers are looking to establish a relationship with the product or service they’re spending on. In such a case, social media channels like Instagram and Facebook allow customers to interact with the brands before or after making a purchase.
When you respond to your customers online, it makes them believe that your brand is concerned about their emotions, preferences and opinions. This in turn offers your business an opportunity to involve your customers in new endeavors. For example, you can start exclusive sales, rewards, beta-testing for new products and promotional offers for a select group of customers. This builds customer loyalty by leaps and bounds.
Social Media networks also allow you to filter your audiences. This not only saves time but also ensures that your business is popularized among the desired target audience. Thus, investing in social media can turn out to be the best bet for your business as it offers multiple channels to build and strengthen your relationship with your consumers.
Is Social Media Marketing worth the investment?
Very often, businesses find it hard to measure the return on investment (ROI) on social media marketing. Brands and companies are skeptical about the money they shell out for social media just to get a few likes or comments. However, to get the best results from this form of marketing, it is important to understand that you will not get high ROI in a jiffy. Your social media efforts need to be precise, consistent and thoughtful to produce desired results in the long run.
If you’re responsive to your customers, you earn loyal customers who wouldn’t visit your competitors’ stores. Imagine the amount of money a customer would spend for your product/service over a lifetime! This is referred to as the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) which is defined as the net worth of one customer to a business over a lifetime.
The more you work on customer loyalty, the more likely you are to receive a higher ROI on your business.
If you’re wondering how to define and analyse your social media growth, these points might help you out:
- Define your social media campaign goals
- Make use of social media insight metrics to measure the response and success of your campaigns
- Make an effort to understand the behavior, thoughts, emotions, problems and concerns of your targeted demographic
- Use goal tracking in Google Analytics
What is Social Media ROI?
The Return on Investment is measured as the amount a business receives in return for the time, money and resources it spends on social media marketing. It is important to consider this for your business as it helps you understand if your marketing efforts are headed in the right direction. This also gives you an opportunity to constantly update your business’s efforts based on the results you get from your consumers.
In order to get an accurate picture of your business’s performance in the market, it is advisable to have a focused goal for your marketing efforts or campaigns. Let’s take a look at how you can measure your business’s ROI from social media marketing.
- Define your social media goal (clicks, contest entries, customer acquisition etc.)
- Choose the correct plattform: Analyse if you get maximum interaction and response from Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
- Track your ad campaign (this includes the time, effort and cost put in your campaign)
- Review the results: It is important to study the reports or statistical data displaying the results of your investment to understand how well your marketing strategy is working with your target audience.
Now that you’re convinced with the ROI of social media marketing, here are a few more benefits you can reap from social media channels:
- Firstly, we would like to reiterate that customers are more responsive on social media as it makes for a fun, easy and interactive experience.
- Marketing through social media can increase your brand visibility and recognition.
- Social Media Marketing increases your inbound traffic. The content that you post on social media offers an opportunity to drive customers to your website. Thus, in order to get heavy inbound traffic, it is important that your content is engaging and adds value for your target audience.
- Different social media channels help you target specific audience groups for your product or service.
- Social Media Marketing is cost-effective.
- It can improve your search engine rankings. It is advisable to have a strong social media presence as it can serve as an indicator to search engines that your brand is valuable and promising.
- You can keep a close watch on your competitors and their marketing efforts.
- It leads to higher conversion rates.
Before you pick a social media channel for your brand, make sure you thoroughly study the social media platforms of your competitors. This will not only help you understand how they are using social media to popularize their brand, it will also help you devise marketing strategies that outshine theirs.
In order to achieve the desired goal for your business, just ensure that your content on social media is insightful, gripping and interactive. Oh, and don’t forget to believe in your marketing efforts and strategies with complete conviction.
