One of the most popular forms of marketing your business these days is social media marketing. It is fast becoming one of the most popular Internet marketing methods available and has many advantages.
As an Internet marketer or business owner, tapping into this resource can help you build your brand and make more sales than any other marketing channel. Statista found that 81% of people in the United States are on social media platforms every day. In this article, we will cover the main benefits of social media marketing and why you should focus on making sure that your business is investing in it.
But you might be wondering…
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing refers to the use of social media platforms to build your brand, drive website traffic and increase sales. This can be done by sharing quality content to attract and engage with potential prospects. You can also run advertisements to reach a targeted audience to promote your product or service.
The most popular platforms (at the time of this writing) are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Tiktok.
These social media networks provide tons of opportunities that will help you grow your business.
There are 3 main types of social media marketing services:
Social Media Management
Social Media Management refers to the creation and management of social media profiles on various platforms. It involves creating and distributing quality content to engage users and build brand awareness.
Advanced management services include developing engagement strategies such as viral giveaways, contests, and referral campaigns.
There are many types of social media management tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, and Hubspot. Plus, there are plenty of done for you social media management services such as Social Builder Pro that can take your social media to the next level and provide the benefits of social media marketing that you are looking for.
Social Media Advertising
Social media advertising involves the creation and management of advertising campaigns on social media platforms. An effective advertising campaign includes strategy, ad creation, finding the right audience, and budget management.
An effective advertising campaign will provide conversion and sales with a low cost of acquisition. It takes time and skills to find a winning campaign that can be scaled with budget increases, which will bring huge profits for your company.
Social Media Reputation Management
Online reputation management is the process of tracking and monitoring your online presence. This is done for multiple reasons, including brand awareness and review management. When done correctly, reputation management builds credibility and trust in your brand.
There are plenty of tools and done for the services that will provide you with your own dashboard where you can log in to see all of your online presence, reviews, reports, and analytics. These tools will also send you alerts whenever there is a mention of your business online.
What Are The Advantages Of Social Media?
Social media presence is a strategy designed to drive traffic and generate interest in a brand, product, or service by building relationships, engaging with clients and followers, and generally enhancing a company’s online image.
Therefore, social media marketing is basically applying social marketing techniques to a brand and its website. Although the traditional terms digital media and e-marketing are still very much alive, social media marketing remains dominant.
Here are the top social media marketing benefits that you can expect.
Building Your Brand
Building brand awareness should be a priority when it comes to your social media strategy. Social media marketing allows you to put your personal touch into the marketing of your product or service. You can brand your business in a way that you normally would do, even if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar establishment. It allows you to imprint your logo, colors, and design in the minds of potential customers every day.
Social media channels allow you to create an online presence that is hard to achieve with other marketing strategies. Every post that you make will go online and be visible to a wide range of people. You will be able to spread your message easier. In fact, a social media presence will build trust and authority within your industry.
High Return on Investment
As Covid-19 continues to keep people indoors, more people are on social media platforms than ever before. Small business owners can take advantage of this unfortunate situation to reach more people. You will also save a lot of money on advertising costs. The return on investment can be high, and you can generate a good amount of revenue with a results-driven social media campaign.
Increase Traffic Flow
Established businesses use this method to get more visitors to their websites. Even new business owners with low budgets can create a following quickly. All you have to do is invite your friends and family members to share your business page with their friends. You can then invite your new followers to your website.
You can also get more organic traffic through search engines. Every time you put out a post or update on your social media profile, it will be indexed by search engines. You will then get a boost in SEO ranking, saving you money in the long run, and get the benefits of social media marketing in 2021 and beyond.
Expand Your Market
You can also boost your posts or run an advertising campaign to get more exposure for your product or service. Boosting a post is pretty straightforward. All you have to do is set up an ad account and start using it. It will not take you much time at all. You will be able to reach hundreds of targeted users in nearby cities or towns. This can help you get a lot of leads from a broader market.
Expand Your Customer Base
Many people are looking for companies that can provide them with great products or services. However, they do not know where to look. Through this method, you can easily expand your customer base. You can post blogs and articles that will help to gain more followers.
You can also reach a larger audience quickly and easily through this method. This is very effective for advertising and marketing purposes. It is a potent marketing tool that you should definitely include in your marketing plan.
Create Engagement
Your target audience will enjoy the interactive aspect of your marketing strategy. They will get to interact with you and ask questions to learn about what you do. This can help you improve your business in a big way.
Effective Advertising Opportunites
As I mentioned before, you will attract potential customers with an effective advertising campaign by offering promotions. This can include offering a discount or a lead magnet to entice potential customers and provide the benefits of social media marketing to increase engagement.
Retargeting Campaigns
You can increase your conversion rates by targeting people that have visited your website. This can be done by setting up a tracking pixel on your website and running ads for that audience.
Now that you understand the main benefits of social media marketing let’s discuss a few of the negatives.
Some Disadvantages Of Social Media Marketing
As you now know, social media provides many benefits to all businesses willing to implement the time and resources, but it does have its downfalls. Here are some of the disadvantages:
Time Consuming
Social media marketing puts great demands on your time. Content has to be constantly created, designed, revised, reviewed and, posted. Comments have to be promptly responded to and pages regularly updated.
This can be stressful and take away the precious time required to run the business itself. But not having a social media presence is not an option in 2021. 73% of marketers agree that social media marketing is an effective strategy. (source)
Social media marketing is not an alternative; it’s a complete replacement for traditional marketing. In the age of the blog, viral video, ebooks, iTunes downloads, instant messaging, and social networking, it is challenging for small digital marketers to maintain a huge audience.
You could significantly reduce these demands by hiring more people or outsourcing the work to a social media management company.
Your Reputation Is On The Line
Doing business online can leave your business vulnerable to negative reviews. This is why you must keep an eye on every single social media platform. If a dissatisfied customer leaves your business a bad review, you should respond immediately. If it was your fault, you could apologize, and if it wasn’t then, you could tell your side of the story.
A social media management company can set you up with a profile monitoring account that will alert you as there is any activity about your company online. A social media marketing team can also take this disadvantage and turn it into a positive by getting our business more positive reviews and increase your engagement with users.
Consistently Evolving
When it comes to social media marketing, strategy and testing are critical. Many business owners fail to realize that what was working last month might not be effective this month.
Before Covid impacted our lives, it was easier to determine the best times to post and the days that users were most receptive to promotions and discounts. But now things have changed dramatically since people are staying in most of the time.
Plus, people are becoming less receptive to the same old campaigns, so it’s important to keep innovating strategies. The social media marketing benefits require a team that consistently monitors, tests, and pays attention to different industry news, reports, and analytics.
Moving Forward With Social Media Marketing Benefits in 2021
Overall, there are several pros and cons associated with social media marketing. Although it can be difficult, it does have the ability to drive significant conversions. It can also lead to a boost in brand loyalty and increase traffic.
The cons of using social media for digital marketing should be weighed carefully before a company decides to take on the task in-house or hire a digital marketing company that is up for the challenge.
You should definitely consider this. It is important to get the most from this medium. You can use it effectively to get your message across to those most likely to buy your products or sign up for your services. You can also use it to promote your business. It is a potent tool. Therefore, you should definitely learn to use it well to increase your chances of making big money.
If you would like to take advantage of the benefits of social media marketing but don’t have the time to invest in creating your social media strategy, take a look at our social media marketing services today!
