Did you know that almost 4.55 billion people are using social media globally? In other words, more than half of the world’s population is active on social media to connect, explore, or just for fun.
Nowadays, you will rarely find someone who is not active on social media, every person out there and even their dogs have a social media account. With the numbers increasing day-by-day social media is becoming a great medium for businesses to engage with their customers.
Social media marketing has tremendous potential due to the fact that users are regularly active on social media and are exposed to many brands on a daily basis. This helps every business out there connect, market their products globally and create a brand presence.
However, you might not realize that you’re already ready to launch your company’s social media right now. Creating social media campaigns can be a very fun process and you don’t need to have hundreds of followers or be very popular.
So, if you aren’t using social media as part of your marketing strategy then you’re missing out on an effective, inexpensive, and fast way to reach about half of the world’s population. You can opt for a social media marketing course taught by experts to gain deep insights into the world of social media and learn how you can leverage it for your benefit.
But exactly how does social media marketing help businesses? Let us take a look at the top five ways
- Brand Awareness
It’s crucial for companies or businesses out there to market their brand in such a way that generates more sales and this will be possible only when people will be aware of their brand. Here’s where social media can help companies. Social media helps you get attention.
According to a survey done by Instagram, almost 83% of their users discovered new products and services while surfing on social media. With social media companies can boost the visibility of the products and advertise their products to a vast community of customers.
- Build Brand Authenticity
Nobody likes a brand that is very stiff or is not transparent about its values and mission. Being authentic with the audience can help companies build trust and help brands’ personality shine through.
With social media, companies get an opportunity to interact with their customers. It isn’t just one-way marketing but more of an interactive approach of marketing, where customers can give feedback regarding the products, and by responding to this feedback companies can build a good rapport with their audience.
It’s a good idea to show how your brand values are being lived out in your product, how your company puts the interests of employees and customers first, etc. through social media.
- Grow Affordably and Build a Community
Over-the-top marketing campaigns usually take a huge chunk out of the companies budget but not all of them can afford this. Through social media, businesses of any size or budget will be able to market their products and reach a wide audience in an affordable manner.
For example, nowadays social media is largely dominated by sponsored Ads, videos with CTA, cross-channel retargeting, and shoppable posts. These help the products get noticed and also build a community of loyal customers who will help bring indirect sales by giving recommendations.
- Increase Website Traffic
Social media ads and posts are one of the main ways through which you can drive traffic to your websites. If you own a website, you should share some snippets from your blogs on social media and link back to it, so that people can visit your website to read the blog.
You can also use UTM tracking tags to know the source of the traffic coming to your website and then make a strategy based on that. Make sure to mention your website on all social media accounts so that interested consumers who want to know more about your brand can visit it.
- Generate Leads Through Collaborations
Nowadays, people’s choices are largely influenced by social media celebrities. It is a known fact that apart from reviews, recommendations play a huge role when we plan to buy anything. So when people see the influencers whom they follow promoting or using any product their desire to buy the said product comparatively increases. This is possible because the influencers tend to have camaraderie with their followers.
Companies can collaborate with these influencers and make their products known to the audience and generate leads. They can also offer coupon codes to people who are buying their products through the influencer.
Social Media Is Here To Stay
With the increase in social media users the need of having a proper social media strategy is naturally going to increase. So it’s better for companies to invest right now in their strategies because social media is going nowhere.
In fact, it won’t be wrong to say that in the next few years social media is going to take over many forms of marketing. That’s why you must be aware of how you can use digital marketing to grow a business.
If you still are not familiar with social media marketing or digital marketing in general then you should probably do an online digital marketing course to help you understand various marketing terms and get knowledge about digital tools.
Karan Shah
Founder and CEO at IIDE
Karan Shah is an Edu-preneur, Tedx speaker, Harvard alumnus specializing in eCommerce, and the founder of IIDE – The Digital School.
He is a reputed author on the topics of education, digital marketing, and Ed-techs. Over the years he has penned a plethora of articles in leading news outlets such as Entrepreneur, BusinessWorld, Education Times and Youth Magazine to name a few.
