When Mark Zuckerberg and his team founded Facebook in 2004, it was basically for social purposes – making new friends, connecting with old ones, etc. However, over the years, social media has become more than just a place to meet friends, it has evolved into a place where organizations meet with potential customers, maintain existing ones, and market their goods and services.

According to statistics from Oberlo.com, about 3.5 billion people use social media every day, and this figure is about 45% of the world’s current population. Other statistics are

With these figures, it becomes increasingly clear why social media marketing is rapidly becoming a thing in today’s world.

However, despite this drastic shift in marketing, it is surprising that some organizations have not seen the need to increase their budget on social media marketing. This article will be discussing the benefits of social media marketing, to encourage you to invest more in social medial marketing. However, before we do that, let us know what Social Media Marketing entails:

What is Social Media Marketing?

Investopedia defines Social Media Marketing as the use of social media and social networks to market a company’s products and services. Social media marketing provides companies with a platform to engage with existing customers and reach new ones while allowing them to promote their desired culture, mission, or tone. For more details, visit www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-media-marketing-smm.asp.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

The benefits of social media marketing are as follows:

Boost Brand Awareness

With about 3.5 billion people on social media (and still increasing), you have the world as your audience. You can seize this platform to boost your brand awareness.

According to figures from Facebook, about 60% of social media users said they discovered new products on the platform. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/business/goals/build-awareness.

So it is quite clear that social media offers you the opportunity to grow your brand, and extend it to reach customers who were initially not aware.

Provides An Opportunity To Interact With Customers And Potentials

Did you know that some adults would not buy your products or services until they have seen another customer who has had a positive experience using that product?

According to a study conducted by Trinity Mirror Solutions, they discovered that more than half of adults do not trust a brand until they see real proof that the brand delivers on its promises. For more details on this study visit www.trinitymirrorsolutions.co.uk/whentrustfallsdown.

Having an active social media marketing system allows you to engage customers and potential customers, and demonstrate to them how effective your products are.

It also gives existing customers a platform to express their experience with your products or services. And if this feedback is pleasant, you can be sure that you will have more buyers knocking on your doors almost immediately.

Finally, if you receive negative reviews from customers, it allows you to know “real-life” problems about your products and go about fixing them. So in any case, you still win with an active social media marketing plan in place.

Stay Top of Mind

As the saying goes: out of sight, out of mind. With 3.5 billion people, login into social media on daily basis, social media marketing gives you the opportunity to remain in the sight and the mind of customers and prospects all day long.

However, some caution is necessary here. You should have the right mix of content to post, as that will keep your followers on social media looking forward to seeing your content on their feed.

www.lightspeedhq.com recommends the 60/30/10 rule for social media posts. According to them, 60% of your posts should be engaging content that attracts comments, likes, etc. from followers. 30% should be shared content while the remaining 10% should promote your products and services, etc.

Boost Website Traffic

Social media marketing helps to boost the website traffic of your organization. One quick way to achieve this is by sharing content from your website on your social media accounts. When readers click on this shared article, it will redirect them to your website, thereby increasing the number of visitors to the website.

Also, you could place an advert on social media, for products/services on your website. When these adverts are clicked on, it will redirect them to your website. This will also boost your website traffic.

Generate Leads

Another benefit of social media marketing is that it offers organizations an opportunity to generate sales lead at a lesser cost.

Knowing how important leads are to sales teams, makes social media marketing a good move for your organization.

Increase in Sales

The consequence of an effective social media marketing campaign is the increase in sales of goods and services.

When you have properly engaged customers, boost your brand awareness, and have customers singing your praise, a natural consequence will be the increase in sales of your products or services.

This is even truer when you consider that social media gives you access to more customers.

Collaborating with Promoters

Having a Social Media Marketing plan allows an organization to benefit from collaborating with social media influence-rs. Social Media influence rs are individuals with a large following on social media.

Research from Nielsen suggests that collaborating with an influencer is more beneficial to an organization than collaborating with a celebrity. For more details on this research visit www.thinkwithgoogle.com/advertising-channels/video/youtube-influencer-marketing-rulebook/.

Promote your Content

Another benefit of Social Media Marketing is that it offers an organization the opportunity to promote its content.

When your organization has properly researched content that could paint them in a good light, it only makes sense to publish such content. Publishing such content consistently helps to establish the organization as a thought leader in that field.

Going Viral

Going viral happens on social media when a post has been shared thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of times. An organization can go viral on social media for the right reasons if its content is shared multiple times.

Going viral will mean more potential customers getting to know about the organization, following them on social media for more useful content, and then paying for their goods or service.

Manage Brand Image

Having a Social Media Marketing plan allows an organization to build a credible brand image. This happens when they consistently post the right mix of content; respond to questions and accusations from their audience, etc.

This allows an organization to create the kind of brand image it wishes to have, as she is actively involved in building it.

Crisis Communication

An active social media account with high engagement offers an organization the opportunity to communicate directly with customers and the public when they are facing a crisis. It helps them get out their perspective directly to members of the public before things get out of hand.

The Deeper Life High School Uyo (Nigeria) scandal that came up in December 2020, buttresses this point. When the mother of a student used her social media handle to drag the institution, they replied on social media apologizing promptly and promising to start an investigation. This situation would have deteriorated if nothing was done promptly.

Customer Service

Social media channels give organizations another alternative to responding to customer inquiries and queries quickly.

According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, brands that do not respond to customer queries on social media usually sell less than other brands that do. For more details on this research, visit www.hbr.org/2018/01/how-customer-service-can-turn-angry-customers-into-loyal-ones.

Feedback Mechanism

An active social media channel allows an organization to receive feedback directly from its customers and antagonists. This will help the organization identify what to improve on in their product line or service delivery.

Know your Customers

Social media analytics tools help you glean vital information about your customers that can be used to improve your marketing and improve your product or service to satisfy the unspoken needs of your customers.

Of course, all this will not be possible if you do not have an active social media marketing plan in place. This is another benefit of social media marketing.

Measure Customer Sentiment

The nature of the post a customer makes indicates their sentiment towards a product or service. If the post is negative, obviously they find the product or service to be bad.

Social media marketingprovides a platform where customer complaints can be received and their sentiments gauged. This data can then be used to correct what has been criticized about the product or service.

Monitor the Competition

Social media marketing also offers you the opportunity to monitor what the competition is doing, and what people think about it.

Monitoring the competition may reveal their weakness that you can exploit to your advantage. It can also offer insights into what they are doing to put you out of business.

In any case, social media marketing enables you to monitor the activities of the competition and use them to your advantage.

Stay Current

It helps you stay abreast with the trends and the latest news in your industry.

Targeted Adverts

An integral part of social media marketing is the placing of adverts. Social media channels offer organizations the opportunity to place adverts that are targeted to the audience of their choice.

This is a more efficient and cost-effective way to advertise since the adverts are targeted to a population that has a high conversion rate.

Retargeting Customers

Retargeting customers refers to advertising to customers that have visited your website, browsed through your products, and even placed some in a cart but did not buy them eventually.

In retargeting, you advertise the particular products they nearly paid for, to them on social media. This could make them have a rethink and go ahead to make the purchase. This kind of adverts is available on Facebook.

It’s Cost-effective

After reading through this long list of benefits of Social Media Marketing, you will be forgiven if you assume that it must be quite expensive since it comes with all these benefits.

Truth is, it’s mostly free. Setting up a social media account for your organization costs no amount of money. To make posts on your social media account costs nothing as well.

However, if you wish to make promotions for your products or services, on social media, it will cost you some money.

Promotions can be done on Facebook and Twitter at any budget. Moreover, these promotions will only be directed at users interested in the goods or services you offer. Therefore, in the end, you will be getting a good return on the money invested in the promotion.

Conclusion

Social Media Marketing comes with a lot of benefits as can be seen in this article. It is therefore necessary for your organization to tap into the power of social media marketing.

A good place to start your social media marketing is Facebook, as it is easy to use and has lots of tools to boost the promotion of your goods and services. To sign up, visit www.facebook.com. Thanks for reading through.