7 Reasons Why Every Business Should Prioritise Social Media Marketing

The Global Digital suite of reports from We Are Social and Hoot Suite reveals that there are now 4.39 billion people around the world using the internet. Adding to this, people, spend 1/7th of their waking lives on social media.

Affordable advertising: Most businesses small or big have a limited marketing budget. Social Media Marketing allows the business to be flexible at the same time creative which boils down to its most important feature being cost-effective. You are allowed to advertise on various social media platforms for free before you start boosting and targeting those advertisements.

Brand image thrives on social media: Social media allows you to attach a personality to your brand. The type of personality your graphics and text portrays is the personality you build for your brand. Woodland as a footwear brand displays ruggedness and Harley Davidson has been a rebel from the very beginning. Note: A powerful social media presence builds a powerful brand. Easy products/services access and live chats for queries magnify the brand image by uplifting loyalty and smooth customer service.

Social media helps you target the right audience: Before we jump to the right audience, let’s understand the demographics of various social media platforms, which means various social media platforms have various kinds of people signing up. 29.7 percent of users are aged between 25 to 34 on Facebook. This is a prime target demographic for many businesses, making Facebook the ideal place to engage with customers. Instagram, has users aged under 25 who spend around 32 minutes a day, which increases the likelihood of your brand getting noticed. LinkedIn is regarded as the world’s largest professional network, making it the finest platform for your B2B marketing strategies. Further down the advertising lane, you can target a niche audience once you start boosting your ad campaigns. E.g. You would want to target women between the age of 15 to 40 if you’re a sanitary napkin brand, Facebook allows you exactly this.

Best customer engagement platform: Social media platforms encourage you to engage with the audience with its 2-way communication flow. A TV ad, or a Radio Jingle or a Billboard display send messages from the brand to the masses. Most of the audience prefers to follow a brand on social media. Be it an updated product or an additional service, social media platform fosters you to have a 24/7 customer care strategy. With social media, you can expect customer engagement x 10. The most engaging advertisement campaigns from the old traditional media platforms would be a "call us" action. Whereas here, in social media platforms feedback is instant. You either like or comment on your thoughts and the brand also has a responsibility to revert to your query with a predefined TAT (Turnaround time). Yes, along with customer engagement comes a lot of time that you as a brand need to spend to eliminate the dirt and keep the cream on the web.

Social media marketing and SEO — The perfect marriage for high ROI: Social Media Marketing is best partnered with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for greater ROI. SEO regards altering on-page components like website content, speed, keywords, etc. as well as off-page components like generating traffic externally by blogging and article submissions to various information portals. A social media campaign is intended to generate more traffic to your website, to people who are searching for your products or services. When your social media campaign and your website landing page speak the same language is when there is a higher possibility of conversions. Hence, for a higher ROI keep Social Media and SEO married.

Helps you analyze campaign success for the future: When you opt for boosting a campaign on Social Media platforms you are entitled to get a campaign report which helps you plan your future campaign. Your campaign may fail in the beginning, but the key here is to disinvest in the non-successful campaigns asap and shift your resources towards those that gave you great results like maximum clicks, maximum views, and likes, etc. The analysis report also helps you to get a pulse of what is liked and disliked by your target audience.

Ultimately: Increases conversions: According to the latest studies, social media has a 97% higher conversion rate than an outbound marketing strategy. This is because every campaign you design and each interaction you encourage on your social media platforms is an opportunity to convert a fascinated lead into a happy customer. By building a relationship with your leads and probable customers and posting valuable campaigns consistently, your brand is working towards improved trust and credibility, which leads to more conversions.

Now you have understood the top 7 reasons why your business should prioritize social media marketing, so you must get going. Your eventual customers are searching for you on Social Media, The question is are you available on the right social media website for your business

Carlshen firoze wadia, digital marketing service provider and consultant and a blogger.