5 key reasons why your business needs social media marketing
Virtually every business sees the value in social media, but not every business has a social marketing strategy, or invests in paid for campaigns that will deliver a return on investment (ROI). As social media platforms actively suppress organic reach, investing in social campaigns is a must to reach a targeted audience, generate leads and sales, compete for brand awareness, and achieve your marketing aims. Here’s why…
A social media reality check
Since its inception, social media has become a key asset for brands and businesses in every market sector and genre. But it has changed fundamentally. Rewind a few years and it was relatively easy to attract relevant followers. It was also revolutionary, as brands and businesses benefitted from a free communications resource that meant they could build a fanbase and communicate what they want, when they want. Fast forward to today, and now social media has you in its grip, its algorithms actively control and suppress your organic reach. For all the time and resource you dedicate to creating and publishing amazing content, with the aim of reaching, inspiring and influencing your fans, your content is organically served to around 10% of your followers, and engagement typically ranges from 3%-5%.
If you have 2,000 followers, this means your content will only be served to around 200 users, and this will be a mix of followers and non-followers. Even if we take the higher potential of organic engagement, only around 10 users will actively engage with it. The reality is that if you want your commitment to social media to pay dividends, you need to act to amplify your reach and engagement, and achieve a positive ROI.
Amplify! Why social media marketing is a must-have part of your marketing strategy
Social media marketing is essential, as it plays a crucial role in so many ways including brand building, customer engagement, and revenue generation. By investing in social marketing, you can amplify your content to targeted audiences that are key to achieving your marketing aims, whether it’s selling appointments or products, promoting education, building your fanbase or generating leads by getting people to your website.
Social media advertising is cost-effective, when compared to more traditional forms of advertising, and it ensures you reach a wider relevant audience that goes way beyond what’s achievable via organic means. With so many campaign types across the different platforms, strategy is key. Understanding where your customers are, and ensuring you’re targeting the right people at the right time is crucial to getting results.
5 reasons why you should become a social marketer
Unlike most other forms of brand communication, social media is time and labour intensive, and it requires imagination, creativity and strategic skills. This is why so many businesses opt for the services of a specialist agency, like ours, but regardless of that, here are 5 key reasons why social media marketing is essential.
1. Access billions of users worldwide
Social media platforms give you the potential to access billions of users worldwide. This extensive reach means you can connect with a diverse, yet highly targeted and relevant audience to increase brand visibility and recognition. The ability to share content quickly and widely also means you can support both short and long term objectives. For example, building your brand profile and earning the trust of people may take time, while short term sales promotions and product launches can be activated in the now. Remember that, in essence, social media is ‘social’, so you should be building a social connection with your fans, while running separate marketing campaigns that serve the marketing function. It’s important to remember that people generally venture onto social media for leisure, pleasure and entertainment, not to be sold to. Social marketing should run alongside your overall aims to connect, socialise and add value to fan relations as a way of nurturing your community for the long term benefit of your brand.
2. Launch highly targeted campaigns
Social platforms provide sophisticated tools that enable your businesses to segment its audience based on demographics, interests, behaviours, and location. This precision ensures that your marketing efforts are directed toward individuals or business customers that are most likely to be interested in the products or services you offer. This increases the efficiency and effectiveness of your social marketing campaigns. For example, you’re a guitar store with 1,000 fans on Instagram, and have a sales event on Gibson guitars. An organic social post will likely reach 100 with around 5 engagements. However, you could launch a social marketing campaign relatively inexpensively and reach many thousands of people that are interested in guitars, Gibson guitars, bands, live music etc. within say a 30km area of your store. This can be activated quickly, whereas trying to build your fanbase organically could take many years to accomplish.
3. Cost effectiveness
Social marketing is significantly more cost-effective compared to traditional advertising methods like TV, radio, or print. You already know that your audience spends time on social media and social media campaigns can be launched with a relatively modest budget. While social marketing is essential for businesses of every size, it does present particular advantages for smaller brands and businesses. The affordability of social media marketing and your ability to control advertising investment allows you to compete with larger corporations without substantial financial outlay. Plus, with free tools and analytics, the performance of your campaigns can me measured and strategies adjusted based on the results.
4. Real-time interaction and feedback
Real-time interaction with customers is a unique feature of social media marketing. Not all social marketing campaigns have to be focussed on sales. You can run campaigns to build brand awareness, promote your values and culture, highlight your ethics and approach to sustainability, offer access to free and added-value resources such as education and tutorials, or campaign to build your fanbase. Social marketing serves multiple functions allowing your business to engage with your audience through comments, messages, live videos, polls and competitions. This fosters a sense of community and building stronger relationships, while immediate feedback provides valuable insights into customer preferences and concerns. These responses enable you to tailor your offerings to meet market demands.
5. Accelerate your potential
As alluded to, social marketing gives you the opportunity to reach, inspire, educate and inform your target audience, and welcome them into your community. If you’re positing great content and hoping for miracles, looking for an immediate reaction or a sales uplift, or hoping to see your fan numbers accelerate, the likelihood is this could take years to achieve. If you have a few thousand fans in a market with hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of potential businesses and consumers the reality is the only way to reach these people is via social marketing.
So, what are you waiting for? Social media marketing is relatively inexpensive, immediate and results driven. It’s also measurable and you can use the results to evolve and perfect your strategy.
Ready to boost your business?
Feel Marketing is a Surrey-based marketing agency that specialises in social media marketing in the UK. Social media marketing perfect for businesses of all sizes and genres.
Contact us now to see specifically how social media marketing can boost your business performance.
Contact us on 01372 635 638, email us or complete and submit the form below.
Why it Feel’s right
As with all our services, our social media clients have the added assurances:
1. Experience: We’re a UK agency with over 24 years experience, and we specialise in social media management and social media marketing
2. Integrity: We do not outsource our services either in the UK or overseas - all services and clients are managed by our UK team
3. Transparency: We provide evidence based campaign forecasts and outcomes that are clearly reported and evaluated
4. Value: Our management fees are competitive and fair
