Using social media marketing, companies can gain traffic, followers, and brand awareness and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So, in short, if you are a business owner, it doesn’t matter which sector you're in, Social Media can help you sell more stuff!
This article explains how using Social Media Marketing can help you build your brand, generate leads and boost conversions, foster relationships with your customers, learn from your competitors and gain essential marketplace insights.
The history of Social Media Marketing
Today, almost everyone knows about social media and the majority of the world population uses it. Even the most remote parts of the world have heard of Facebook and Twitter, and though they might still struggle with internet access, they’ve probably used one or two social media platforms.
I’m old enough to know that it wasn’t always like this, especially considering how technology used to take forever to reach my part of the world. Over the past couple of years, social media has rapidly evolved from a simple website called Six Degrees in 1997, to all the platforms collectively known as social media today.
It has evolved from creating a profile and befriending other users on Six degrees back then to being able to video call other users in real time and advertise products and services. Social media is not just about socialising anymore, it has now become a very powerful marketing tool for businesses of all sizes.
If you are a millennial or younger, you are at an advantage because you probably grew up interacting with some of the most common social media platforms and you were able to grow with them. If you are Generation X and older, I completely understand if you have a lot of questions because I'm sure at some point, you had to embrace it to stay relevant and keep in touch with family and friends around the world. The reason why you are reading this is probably because you’ve come to that point where you need to fully embrace social media for your business. I’m glad you’re here and I’m honoured to hold your hand through the seemingly crazy but not so crazy world of social media marketing.
So enough of the refresher course on the history of social media, in this read, I’m going to help you answer two key questions around Social Media Marketing:
What is Social Media Marketing?
How Can Social Media Marketing help you Grow Your Business and Increase Your Sales?
What is Social Media Marketing?
So, I'll start by defining Social Media Marketing with a very simple definition because the whole point of this read is to break down key marketing concepts for you, so that they are much easier to understand. Whatever else you’ve been reading online should become pretty straight forward after you read my articles. So anyway, back to our core business, Social media Marketing is the use of social media websites and social networks to market a company’s products and services. Straightforward right? So, thanks to social media, the geographic walls that used to divide us as individuals and businesses are crumbling, and now, new online communities are emerging and growing, giving businesses like yours access to a bigger customer base.
I feel like this does not get it said enough, but Social Media Marketing is all about meeting your target audience and customers where they are, starting and joining in conversations as they interact with each other. Just making sure you got that right, if your business sells a product, Social Media Marketing is about you going on a platform like Facebook and telling people about what you’re selling, in a way that gets them to buy from you and recommend you to their friends and family. It’s also about listening for people who might be looking for what you are selling and engaging them in conversations to get them to buy from you. So, the whole point is to convince people to buy from you!
Some of the biggest social media platforms for businesses are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram, depending on your product or service offering. Choosing the right platform for your type of business is important to your business’ success but that’s a conversation for another day. Now let's move to the benefits of Social Media Marketing for your Business.
The benefits of Social Media Marketing for your Business
1. Allows you to build a strong brand
This is one of the most important benefits of Social media Marketing for your business or organisation. It is mostly important for Small and Medium Sized Businesses because with the right strategy and proper execution, you can play on the same field with businesses much bigger than yours.
In building your brand, you want more people to know about you and what you do and by simply sharing content related to your products as well as details about your company, you can increase your brand awareness and visibility. Social engagements like comments, likes, shares, and re-posts will also help you reach even more people than your immediate circle.
2. Allows you to boost conversations and generate leads
With increased visibility, your business automatically gets more opportunities to convert the audience into paying customers. Social media marketing allows your business to give a positive impression through what is called a humanization factor. When your business shares content or comments on other posts on social media, it personifies the brand which gives you a major advantage. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the saying that People like to do business with other people rather than companies, so having a social media profile for your business allows it to have its own persona.
3. Allows you to build strong relationships with your customers
Social media help you create relationships with customers that lead to brand loyalty. By constantly interacting with your customers online, your customers will get the sense that you actually care about them, beyond the money they bring into your business. This way, you will not only create customers who are loyal to your brand, but also build a group of people who are eager to recommend you to their family and friends and there is no marketing material more powerful than a customer testimonial.
4. Gives you a great chance to learn from your competitors
Through Social Media Marketing provides a great way to keep tabs on your competition. This applies to any new marketing tactics they will be using, the products they’ll be promoting as well as their level of interaction with followers. You can take a look at what is and isn’t working for your competition, and use that information to decide the best way to proceed with your own marketing activities. It’s quite the perfect cheat sheet if you ask me.
5. Easily gain marketplace insights
Another valuable advantage of social media marketing is that, it helps you gain marketplace insights directly from your customers. I don’t think there is a better way to know the thoughts and needs of your consumers than by directly asking them and talking to them on a regular basis. You can use social media as a complementary research tool so you can better understand your industry and your customers and give your customers what they need.
So as i conclude, let’s just recap all the benefits of Social Media
Marketing that we covered today:
It allows you to build a strong brand
Helps you generate leads and boost conversions
It helps you build strong relationships with your customers
It allows you to learn from your competition and
It helps you gain marketplace insights on your industry and customers
I hope that you learnt something new and that you'll choose to take advantage of Social Media Marketing to grow your business and increase your sales. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us hello@chenymedia.com or +27 67 805 5591.
If you also need help setting up your business profiles and growing your brand on social media, we will be more than happy to help!
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