Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Businesses

Recently, Social Media Marketing is all the buzz. And perhaps you’re wondering if you need to start doing social media for your business too.
To answer this question, you should have a good idea on why so many people are looking into social media for marketing – what are its benefits?

Brand Awareness

Social media marketing is arguably one of the best ways to increase, or even create brand awareness. Engaging potential customers with relevant content can drastically improve brand recall and recognition. To accomplish this, you must first create relevant social media profiles for your business. Now that your brand has a social media presence, the next step is to increase interaction. To start with, you can ask your employees, business partners, and sponsors to like and share your page. Later, when you start posting content, the likes, shares, and comments you receive can increase brand awareness and even help build or improve your business’ reputation, if done right. Every post of yours that is shared will reach a new network of individuals, and each of them can be a potential customer. More than 91% of marketers claim to have successfully increased their brand exposure by investing a few hours every week towards social media marketing. There is no doubt that just having a social media presence will benefit your brand, and that strategic and regular usage can help build a wider audience.

More Traffic, More Conversions

As we always like to say, your website is your online storefront and identity. So, it makes sense that a lot of your online marketing are efforts to drive more traffic to the website. This is true for social media as well. However, we don’t recommend using hard-selling techniques being used on social media. This will only serve to alienate your audience if done too often.  Nevertheless, all your social media profiles and some of your posts can, and should, include links that lead back to the website. People who already like and trust your business due to their interactions with you on social media can be converted to website traffic. This can be done with the right quantity of clever calls to action made at the right timing to take them to relevant pages of your website.

This leads me to the next point, which is that increased visibility also means higher conversions. Social media marketing, when done right, can humanize a brand – which in turn increases the likelihood of positive interactions with potential customers. Also, the two-way communication afforded by SMM can increase customer satisfaction. This is because social media allows you to foster and develop customer relationships like never before, which helps with sales as well. In an atmosphere where sharing, liking, and discussing are the norm, it is only normal that adding your brand and branded content to that mix can greatly improve conversion rates on your existing traffic. Additionally, it was reported that using social media platforms for at least 6 hours per week helped 66% of marketers find leads.

More Brand Authority

If a company posts useful and informative content about their field and their work, it increases the brand’s credibility in the customers eyes. Even more so if the content is original. Thought leadership in the industry can be established using a specially curated content and social media strategy, if necessary.

In addition, regularly interacting with customers, and proactively solving their problems shows that you prioritize customer satisfaction. These interactions can also be used to answer their questions or subtly push them towards conversion. At the very least, brands should take advantage of the two-way communication to ensure you leave a pleasant impression on your current and prospective customers. As people consider their social media to be personal, their interactions on it will be seen as more genuine, even if it is with a brand. When a brand consistently interacts online, consumers who follow your brand’s social media accounts will tend to trust the credibility of your business more, subconsciously or otherwise.

This can also help with word-of-mouth marketing through delighted customers- which exponentially increases the business’ credibility. This will also impress new customers who visit your social profiles, further adding to your brand authority. Customers sharing or interacting with your content or sharing positive opinions about you on social media is also more impactful as it reaches a much wider audience than it otherwise would. Client reviews are also considered to be more trustworthy than brand messages and advertisements.

Cost-Effective

The ultimate benefit of social media marketing for businesses has to be its cost efficiency.

Social media marketing is arguably the most inexpensive part of your advertising strategy. For almost all social networking sites, signing up and creating a profile is free of cost. And compared to traditional marketing mediums like outdoor advertisements, TV, and radio, even the paid promotions are priced significantly lower. While I’m sure cost effectiveness is a great benefit on its own, it brings added advantages in the form of greater ROI and ability to set aside a bigger budget for other marketing and business expenditures.

It is better to start smaller when running paid campaigns on social media for the first time. You can increase the budget once the campaign is more optimized, and you know what to expect. Putting in this extra effort and relatively small amount of money can increase conversions and therefore return on investment.  

It is obvious that social media marketing is advantageous for your business in many ways. So, don’t hesitate and create social media profiles for your business, if you haven’t already. With a consistent and well-planned social media marketing strategy, you can reap the benefits of improved brand awareness and authority, along with increased conversions and ROI. Not to mention, access to a cost-effective marketing channel as well. There is no reason to wait any longer before investing in social media marketing. Do keep in mind that your competitors are likely to already be on social media. So, the sooner you start building a social media presence for your brand, the better.

If you don’t know how to go about doing that, or you need help – we are always happy to help your business grow with our digital marketing services in Abu Dhabi. Our experts can handle the hassle of creating and executing a tailored social media marketing strategy for your business so that you can focus on your core competencies.