Social media is everywhere these days. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and on and on the list goes.

Smart business owners are using these platforms to grow their brand awareness and get more fans, leads, and sales than has been
possible from using traditional marketing methods.

You know that your business could benefit from implementing a social media marketing plan, but you aren’t quite sure what that entails.

Where would you even start?

Here are 20 ways that social media marketing can benefit your business and why you should get started on adding it to your digital marketing
plan sooner rather than later!

1.

Increases Brand Awareness & Recognition

Social media marketing is the perfect way to get the word about your business. You can start creating and promoting content that reflects how your products and services can help people.

The great thing about social media platforms is how easy it is for one of your customers to share to a lot of others who don’t know about you. This is a great opportunity to grow the reach of your social platforms as your fans let others know about how awesome and valuable your business is!

2.

Attract & Connect With Your Ideal Customers

Your social media content is an opportunity to attract your perfect customer avatar.

What market demographic do you serve and what kind of content will bring them to you?

Since just about every type of person is on social media these
days and social sharing, this is a surefire way to build a bond
with your marketplace.

People like doing business with companies that have a social media presence. Consider this:

“86% of consumers prefer an authentic and honest brand personality on social networks.” 1

Social media marketing allows you to let people know what you
offer and build trust with them so they will buy from you.

3.

Demonstrate Your Expertise

One of the best ways to show your customer that you can help them is by helping them!

Your content on social media can provide helpful information that provides value to your customers and brands you or your business as the authority in your niche.

4.

Stay On Your Customers’ Minds

Whoever has the most contact with the marketplace is typically the market leader.

The great thing about social media (as opposed to email) is that the more content you or your social media manager put out, the better!

Most people are checking social media multiple times per day. 2 With platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram….you are able to reach your customers in a variety of ways multiple times per day!

5.

Increase Your Website Traffic

The more you start getting seen on social media, the more people are going to want to learn more about your business.

This will naturally result in more visits to your website, where you can really show what you can do for your customers.

6.

Get More Leads

When more people start seeing your posts on social media and going to your website, you can naturally guide them into your lead funnels.

This way you can move the business relationship forward with them via email marketing or over the phone.

7.

Increase Your Sales

All those extra leads you are collecting because of your social
presence are giving you the opportunity to make offers to more people.

This of course gives you the chance to make more sales and grow
your business!

8.

Customer Service

Social media is the perfect place to deal with customer complaints. Some business owners are hesitant about this aspect of marketing on social.

But it is a golden opportunity to win your customer over and
demonstrate to others your business’ professionalism and
ability to take care of people.

9.

Protect Your Reputation

If something goes really wrong, your social platforms are a perfect opportunity for your business to jump out ahead of any negative news that may come out.

Your business made a mistake? you can apologize quickly and preserve customer goodwill.

With so much distrust of the media these days, your company’s
social media message is a way to protect your reputation
when it counts.

10.

Promote Your Content

If you have a new article on your website, you can share it in a post on your social media platforms.

You can also cross-promote content across platforms (i.e. sharing an Instagram picture on Facebook) so that more people will know how
to engage with your company in multiple places.

11.

Interact With Your Customers

When a customer comments on your social media page, this is
an opportunity to have a real conversation with them.

You can answer a question, post about upcoming
promotions, like a compliment about a product, and so on.

You or a member of your team can even go live on video to answer questions or announce product or service launches!

These little interactions go a long way toward making your customers feel like your business cares and values them.

12.

See What People Are Saying About Your Business

Social media searches are a great way to see what people are saying about your business, good or bad.

Are people really happy with a particular product or promotion? You can double down and promote it even harder knowing that it is going well.

Are there complaints, bad news, or falsehoods? You can jump in and address people personally or create a big post to clear up any misunderstandings.

13.

Target Your Perfect Customers with Paid Ads

Paid advertising on social media allows you to reach specifically who
you want to reach based on the demographics that you have identified.

Whether you know who your ideal customers are already or if you want
to go after a new group in the market, paid ads improve your reach and
allow you to engage with exactly who it is that your business can help.

14.

Save Lost Sales With Retargeting

One of the best things about paid advertising on social media is
the ability to save sales that may otherwise have been gone forever.

This is accomplished by the amazing feature known as retargeting. By using a small bit of computer code known as a pixel, you can have ads ready to go that follow up with your customers if they left your sales process.

This is a powerful marketing tool, especially when you consider
that customers who see retargeted ads are 70% more likely to convert! 3

Didn’t sign up for your email list? No problem. Your retargeting ad can ask them if they left by accident.

Abandoned shopping cart? No sweat! Your retargeting ad can offer them an extra 10% off coupon at checkout to come back!

15.

See Real Numbers To Indicate
Return on Investment (ROI)

Historically, most marketing options don’t give a very good indication of how well they are working.

The old way is that you could buy a full-page spread in a newspaper or magazine. If sales came in, then great.

If not, then you would have to try something new.

The great thing about using platforms like Facebook is that on day one there can be some very good indicators and statistical data available to measure the success of your efforts.

Brand and content engagement can easily be seen through metrics like views, likes, comments, and shares.

But you can also see through paid advertising how many leads were acquired and how many sales were made.

You can additionally see what the cost is to get a good idea
of the profitability of different campaigns.

These social media analytics tell you what works for your market and what doesn’t. By knowing this your business can hit home runs with your social media efforts more often.

16.

Social Media is Budget-Friendly

Social Media marketing is extremely cost-effective on both fronts of attack.

Organic content is normally very inexpensive to produce and can be posted multiple times per day across all available platforms. With a good content syndication strategy, one piece of content can be split up and used multiple times over a long period of time. This gives each organic campaign serious bang for your buck.

Paid advertising and content increases your reach to ensure that you are reaching your customers and potential customers.

This encourages them to keep interacting with your brand and buying what you sell!

17.

Gain Valuable Data

One of the best things about a social media strategy is that
it is okay and even encouraged to fail, especially in the beginning.

You get to see what kinds of content customers like and don’t like. You can most importantly see what kinds of offers your customers respond to and buy from and which they don’t.

Offer more of what they like and less of what they don’t and watch your profits increase.

18.

Potential To Go Viral

Another amazing thing about social media marketing is that it gives your business the chance to see incredible gains in brand awareness
through viral content.

It can also boost sales for products that you may have thought
were not going to work out.

The best part is that viral content doesn’t even have to come from your business. It could come from a customer!

Remember the Chewbacca mask lady? She made a video laughing hysterically with her talking Chewbacca mask on.

That mask was doing terribly in sales and overnight
because of the viral video she created it skyrocketed.4

Aim to create content with viral potential but also
take care of your customers so well that they
would want to create a viral testimonial
for your business!

19.

Social Media Improves Your SEO

Google can see which websites that traffic is flowing to and monitors social media trends to help update the relevance of their search rankings.

The great thing about this is that your efforts can help your
new pieces of content when people find your brand
on social media.

But it can also boost older pieces of content when
you reshare them to send a new flurry of traffic
to that page.

Using social media alongside your other marketing strategies will make them all more effective.

20.

Build Brand Loyalty

As you can see, social media is a powerful business tool. It allows you to put out a message, promote offers, and attract your best customers.

You can deliver excellent customer service, address complaints or negative news, and interact with your customers in a more connected way.

By being top-of-mind and delivering a valuable experience that your market is happy to hear, you increase the ability of your business to grab market share by bonding with customers.

Long term and profitable relationships can be created with customers through social media marketing. By implementing a smart plan, you are able to build brand loyalty with your customers who will in turn spread your message to others.

Need Help?

Do you need help putting together a winning plan for your social media marketing strategy?

We know that creating content, running ads, and navigating the social media landscape can seem like a tall task for most business owners.

It’s challenging enough just running your business, even before you
get to the online marketing part!

In a lot of cases, you would be better off hiring a marketing agency to take care of the heavy lifting for your social media marketing plan.

The good news is that you don’t have to deal with this by yourself.

Contact us today and let’s talk about how to grow your business using social media!