Getting Social; Business Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Social Media Success
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is the act of marketing through a social media platform.
There are many social media platforms today with the largest names being Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, and Pinterest. However, various platforms like Periscope and Snapchat continue to gain popularity as well. The wide adoption of social media by the general public has created an opportunity for businesses to connect with large amounts of potential customers through these platforms. In fact, of the 7.7 billion people on earth, nearly 4.4 billion have access to the Internet and 3.5 billion of them are active on some form of social media. (Link Humans). This number makes social media marketing an important marketing front for all businesses. Social media marketing can include creating a presence, interacting with people, placing ads, selling products and running other types of paid/unpaid campaigns.
Why Use Social Media Marketing?
According to Hubspot, 92% of marketers reported that their social media marketing efforts generated increased exposure for them while 80% claimed that they had increased traffic as a result. Additionally, social media can:
Improve Insights on the audience- With the use of marketing tools through social media platforms, namely Facebook, you are granted access to intimate information about your audience, allowing you to launch extremely targeted marketing campaigns. Additionally, all platforms open up communication between a brand and their audience.
Easy distribution- As we mentioned, social media platforms have many users. When posting content, the platforms allow marketers to easily distribute content to a wide audience.
Better customer service- Social media allows you to respond to clients immediately and personally. By doing this you are also publicly displaying your customer service skills, further solidifying your marketing efforts.
Enhance SEO- When customers Google your business or keywords, you want to show up in the results. An active social media presence helps to establish your company as an authority in your industry so you do show up. This happens because activity on social media platforms is factored into the search results algorithm.
High ROI-Costs to market on social media platforms are relatively low for the amount of exposure which is possible.
CASE STUDY
Air Asia is one company that used social media to boost their engagement and sales when they were limited budget-wise. They launched a campaign via Facebook that asked people to fill a picture of a plane's seating chart with 303 friends and submit it as their entry to win. The winner got a free flight for them and their 302 friends. Air Asia found that after the campaign ended and the winner was awarded, their overall flights doubled, their Facebook page increased by 30% and their advertisement reached over 2 million people on Facebook. This demonstrates the reach and sales building potential of social media marketing.
Works Well With…
Social media is not a lone island, it works best when integrated with other digital marketing channels such as:
Social media marketing provides an opportunity which was not previously possible, for businesses to reach a wide range of potential customers, target very specific demographics and analyze marketing results scientifically. Furthermore, businesses can position themselves as an authority in their industry through their social media presence. In our world today, social media marketing needs to be a fundamental part of a business's strategy in order to stay competitive.
Business Marketing success is a team activity. Any single marketing tactic alone won't make your business succeed, which is why you’ll want to combine Social Media with other forms of web marketing. Search engine optimization and content management strategies and social media are effective methods of promoting your website and generating traffic for it. Additionally, analytics are an important tool for assessing the strategies you've employed and maintaining your web presence's competitive edge. Social Media is one of our specialties’ at Visible Strategies Marketing. We regularly include social and mobile services as part of the CTO Services package we design for our clients.
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Your Social Media Apps Are Watching You.
