Social Media Marketing: 10 Reasons Why It Is Important

Social Media Marketing: 10 Reasons Why It Is Important

SMM, short for social media marketing, is undoubtedly an integral cog in the digital marketing machine. In SMM, imagination and tactics are essential to win the game, and beat the social media algorithm.

According to Forbes, 97% of marketers are actively utilizing social media marketing, and 78% of sales staff outperform when they engage social media in their sales strategy.

Surely this goes to show you how big an impact social media marketing can leave. In addition, the benefits of social media marketing reach far beyond increasing brand awareness.

Wondering what other benefits social media marketing can bring? Read on to find out!

Heightened brand awareness and exposure

Heightened Brand Awareness and Exposure

With social media marketing, we dare say anything is possible. Not only can you invest in paid strategies, non-paid efforts can bring great returns as well. One of those returns include greater brand awareness through a stronger social media presence.

Social media platforms are crucial in activating a digital presence in this age, and bringing higher visibility for your brand. With a strong social media strategy, you can raise brand recognition, especially when engaging with audiences online.

Over time, people who follow you or look out for your content will form a community. This helps to bring your brand to more people in a short amount of time.

Wondering how to begin? We suggest you start with your closer networks, such as your employees. Create social media pages on Instagram and Facebook, and get them to engage with your brand’s content.

On top of that, professional avenues such as LinkedIn can also allow employees to interact with your brand online. Simple acts such as liking or sharing your post can do your brand a whole lot of good, as it pioneers a new set of social networks for you to leverage on.

More inbound traffic with social media marketing

More Inbound Traffic With Social Media Marketing

Let’s say you don’t have a strong digital presence for your brand yet. That means your inbound traffic is pretty much restricted to people who already know of your brand’s existence. These could be friendship networks, professional networks or just word-of-mouth.

However, social media offers the valuable opportunity for you to broadcast your brand by creating relevant content that your audiences are sourcing for.

For example, you could do this through branded keywords, long-tail or short-tail keywords. Those who are asking questions that your brand can offer answers to will naturally click into your social media profile.

Higher ranking on search engine results page

Higher Ranking On Search Engine Results Page

Now when we talk about traffic, surely we can’t forget how important our rankings on the search engines results page are. The higher you rank, the better it is for your brand. Social media marketing therefore comes into play by improving your brand’s SEO. It creates an indirect effect on your SEO by assisting with link building.

To demonstrate, let’s say that Brand A has 500 shares on a blog post, and 200 comments. This is likely because the type of content that Brand A has been posting is relevant to its audiences, and many people are engaging with it.

If you have sustainably built a strong following with your content, it would help you achieve stronger thought leadership. This can improve your SEO link building when people reference your content and link back to your site, or social media profile.

A consistent, decent amount of references to you can help to direct traffic to your page, and tell Google’s algorithm that you are a reputable source that produces content people have been sharing.

Gain valuable insights on your audiences

Social Media Marketing: 10 Reasons Why It Is Important Gain Valuable Insights On Your Audiences

We have to say that the best part of social media marketing is how accessible and insightful the data can be. Tracking and analyzing key social media metrics helps you understand the behaviors of your audiences and customers.

By monitoring their interests and opinions, how they are interacting with your content, at what time they are the most active, can help you to understand your audience better.

After analyzing the demographics of your audiences, you can then segment your content to cater to each group. Coupled with competitive analysis, social media analytics equips you with the ability to understand what makes customers convert, and then utilize it in your marketing plan.

Audience retargeting

Social Media Marketing: 10 Reasons Why It Is Important Audience Retargeting

Social media advertising platforms harness the power to retarget your audiences. Generally, only 2% of users will convert when they first chance upon your website. Remarketing allows you to strategically position your ads in front of users who previously interacted with your website but did not convert.

Installed tracking pixels, tags and cookies collect and store your website users’ data. Retargeting ads then show targeted ads to these users who have already visited and interacted with your website.

This helps increase your brand recall and reminds people to complete a sign-up or purchase. Overall, these can improve your conversion rates in a cost-effective way.

Use A/B testing

Social Media Marketing: 10 Reasons Why It Is Important Use AB Testing

On social media, you can use A/B testing to experiment with similar posts, and track the effectiveness of each. Thankfully, social media platforms nowadays are well-developed with analytics dashboard. These reveal data such as impressions, views, shares, visits, follower increases.

The importance of social proof

Social Media Marketing: 10 Reasons Why It Is Important The Importance of Social Proof

Your social channels can offer important social proof that convinces potential customers to convert. Content that receives a lot of shares are likely to have higher authority, more originality and more engagement.

Manage your customer relationships online and increase customer satisfaction

Manage Your Customer Relationships Online and Increase Customer Satisfaction

As a platform for networking and communication, social media has the power to build customer satisfaction in your target audiences. This is achieved by creating a voice for your brand, and helps to improve the overall brand image that people might have of you.

Commonly debated about is the fact that many brands have been sending out automated messages with online bots. This dehumanizes the relationship that they could have with their customers, and reduces the potential for conversion.

On the contrary, with social media comes the opportunity to personalize your message to your audience. When they receive a customized response, they would feel your compassion. This also tells your audiences that you are listening to their needs, and is pivotal in improving customer relationships.

Promotions and updates

Promotions and Updates

Social media is one of the best ways to promote a new product or service, or to update your customers on upcoming events. Events like online giveaways are good in generating anticipation and attention around brands on social media.

Drive stronger conversions

Drive Stronger Conversions

There are multiple ways to increase conversion rates with social media marketing. Firstly, you can add call-to-actions (CTAs). They help to motivate users to do the action you want them to do.

Next, events like contests and giving away free stuff help to compel users to purchase a product from you in the future.

Lastly, ads help to capture attention from your target audience when they appear in the news feed. These can bring users directly to your site, and increase the conversion rates of your leads and sales.

Conclusion

And there you have it – 10 amazing benefits of social media marketing. Developing a social media marketing plan is essential in building your overall digital marketing strategy.

One way is by integrating your social media marketing strategy together with other channels such as SEO and SEM. You can start by taking the first step to create a social profile, and start connecting with your audiences.

Ready to Elevate your Business to the Next Level?

Discover how we can help accelerate your business growth through our FREE digital strategy session. Let’s Work Together

Previous Post
Newer Post