Why businesses need social media marketing
Social media has engineered a paradigm shift in the way people do business. Though initially social media emerged as a means for people to remain connected with their friends and acquaintances, it evolved over time to gain relevance as a tool for marketing for businesses.
Today, social media is growing increasingly popular in the business world, so much so that if a business is not in social media, it is generally perceived not to be in existence at all.
Significance of such perceptions aside, social media provides some real benefits for businesses. Here are some of the ways in which social media can bring value to businesses.
Social media gives wider reach and allows targeted traffic – People who are in various social media platforms are increasing at astronomical rates. Businesses can make use of the wide reach of social media to gain wide exposure to their products and services.
Social media also allows businesses to target their audience based on specifics like a person’s age, gender, education, location, purchase history etc. Businesses could use this feature to create and deliver customised social media ads.
Social media costs less than traditional media – Traditional marketing requires huge amount of money. May it be printing brochures, giving ads in television, hiring people for tele-marketing, they all involve huge allocation in the advertising budget.
In comparison, social media marketing is generally free, and even if you use paid options available in social media, still a business will incur only nominal costs for their marketing in social media.
Businesses with strong social media have more loyal customers – Since businesses with strong social media presence interact and engage more with the customers, they have more loyal customers. Such building of customer loyalty is all the more important as word of mouth marketing from loyal customers beat all other form of marketing.
Social media is the best place for relationship building with the customers if you have a strong presence in social media and if you know how to make good use of it.
Social media marketing materials are shareable – One of the best things about social media marketing is that the marketing materials that are used here are easily shareable. So if you are having an image that describes the various benefits of your product or service, your followers can easily share that image in their network and it will reach a much wider audience.
Here your customers and your followers will become your marketing personnel who would take your marketing material to your target audience.
Social media provides a level playing field – Big businesses will have huge ad budgets for the traditional media and hence small businesses may find it difficult to compete with the big boys. But in social media everyone starts off relatively on equal footing. Those who can come with attention grabbing, intelligent content that are useful to the target audience can make it in big in social media.
As long as you are offering value to the target audience, you can win in social media, however small you are in comparison with your big competitors.
Social media helps businesses to quickly respond to customers – With social media, businesses can interact with customers in real time. For instance, any complaint from a customer can be easily dealt with in social media. Similarly you can also keep track of customer feedback and comments. By better engaging with the customers, you can make them coming back to you always.
Whatever is your marketing goal – increasing the awareness about your products and services, selling your products or building relationship with your potential client – social media should figure prominently in your marketing efforts. If you haven’t started on creating your social media presence, then now is the time to do it.
Contact us and we will help you in building your social media presence.
