rvndr Brar

The importance of social media is growing at faster rate. It is one of most important part of business. On average a person spends up to 135 minutes a day. With more and more people joining social media and using social media sites regularly social media industry is bound to become bigger in upcoming years. By joining your social media not only company gets an image but also connects to new customers. Social media makes digital marketing easier and efficient.

According to one infographic published by Ambassador, 71% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand to their friends or relatives if they have a positive experience with it on social media.

Here are some interesting facts that provide importance of social media in business. Most of business needs to leverage sites like Facebook and twitter to keep up the competition.

The number of social media using adults have gone up from 7% in 2005 to 69% in just ten years later.
Social media use on mobile devices is seeing a 30% growth every year.
2 million businesses use Facebook advertising to promote their products and services.

Social Media Advertisement

Social media advertisement may be new, but it is growing on a very faster rate. Take Facebook ads for example. Even social network launched advertisement in 2005 but it has reached 9.16 Billion in Ad revenue in first quarter of 2017.

Lower cost for Ads: As we compare social media advertisement to those of traditional advertisements like print media, TV and radio advertisement not only social media Ads are dependable but also cheaper. What’s more some of social media sites are free to advertise while some are paid which makes it cheap to advertise.

Targeted reach: Traditional advertisements doesn’t reach to wide audience as social media does. By using social media advertisement business can reach to target prospects, increase your conversion and ultimately get high rate of return on your investments.

Real time performance analysis: Social media advertisement provide information on how well advertisement is performing or not on the other hand keeping track of performance on traditional advertisement methods is difficult. Social media advertisement provides you with option to edit or change your ads on the go and you can see change in results as well.

Boost brand awareness: Social media is a powerful tool when it comes to growing brand awareness. Most of chief marketing managers agrees that social media advertisement helps to grow brand awareness, brand loyalty and ultimately sales of brands. Once it is clear its time to attract them by using great visuals with content. Images, videos engage more customers and play a significant role in brand awareness.

Partnership with influencers: Word of mouth drives 20 to 50 percent of sales revenue. When a company starts talking about their company on social media platforms it derives attention of customers it helps to build brand awareness, credibility and helps to set up for more sales. One example is of Robert Downey Jr., a.k.a Tony Stark partners with Audi to promote their new electric car Audi e-tron GT. Such tactics from company makes people talking about them which helps to improve image of company.

Customers and audience engagement

Social media gives chance to customers and fans to interact with company directly through social media. Unlike traditional advertisement which offers one-way communication social media serves as two-way street. To engage with followers and customers companies answers questions of users and comments on posts related to them. Also, companies can provide customer service and support to their customers through social media. Customers seek out brands and companies on social media and expects them to be available to answer their questions. Research published by Harvard Business review show if brands does not meet those expectations of customers they damage their bottom line. One research by Harvard Business review show that customers who receive a response to their Tweet would be willing to spend more with the brand on a later purchase, especially if they get a response within five minutes.

Keep an eye on competition: It is also important to know what people are talking about your competitors. Keeping an eye on competitors can give a company strength which might be weakness of their competitor. When Uber Canada launched a promotion to deliver free ice cream for one day in Vancouver things went wrong as people could not get their free ice cream. So, customers reached out to social media to complain. Skip the dishes social media team saw this opportunity and reached out to those customers who were complaining about Uber eats with free ice cream delivery of their own in form of skip the dishes credit. All Uber haters become Skip the dishes fans and Skip the dishes gained new customers as customers have to create account to get free ice cream delivery.

Re-targeting and brand loyalty

Nearly 70 percent of online shopping carts are empty. People who leave products on shopping cart on website are prime potential customers as they have found website, browsed products and choose what they want to buy. People usually leave products in shopping carts for various reasons like competitor prices or substitutes or change in mind but if a customer have expressed that much of interest in product should not be ignored. Using some tracking tools like Facebook Pixel companies can show ads about product which was left by customer in shopping cart. For example, Craftsy uses re-targeting Facebook ads to promote products to customers which they have already interacted with on their website. This campaign saw a 4.3 times return on ad spend and 33 percent increase in Facebook-driven revenue.

Brand Loyalty: Getting a new customer is hard, losing a customer is much harder. So, it is important for companies to focus on brand loyalty if they want to get most out of social media marketing efforts. Ask any loyal customer about their trusted brand they will speak positive about it which leads to natural word of mouth marketing. Brand loyalty can be enhanced by creating solid social media strategy, sharing value-oriented content and responding to queries.

Conclusion

Social media plays a significant role in today’s life as more and more people are engaging with social media these days it is becoming more significant for companies to reach out to customers through these social media platforms. Because it has become easy to target audience on large scale with less money spent unlike traditional marketing which cost more as compared to social media marketing. If used in right way social media can prove cost effective in long run of businesses. Your business needs social media in fact every business needs social media if they want to succeed. It will help you increase your brand authority, brand trustworthiness, and it will even help you engage with customers. If main goal a company is to be in touch with their customers social media is a place you want to be on. In conclusion, social media marketing is a gateway to the digital world that provides a great way to connect with your customers.