An 86% Increase Shows The Value Of Social Media Marketing

We all know just how important the world of social media is to modern businesses. Without effective social media marketing, there's no way that your business will be able to attract the engaged audience that you need in order to make a real impact in your industry. Whether you're a B2B or B2C business, social media offers a complete range of advantages which are absolutely essential when it comes to building awareness around your brand.

More and more businesses are waking up to the fact that social media is an essential part of their marketing strategies. The spend on social advertising jumped by as much as 86% in the first quarter of 2016 – no doubt related to the massive 122% rise in mobile advert spending. Other trends which contributed to the rise in social spending included the rising number of businesses which advertise on Instagram as well as a growing budget for Facebook Dynamic Product Ads.

Why Are So Many Businesses Increasing The Social Media Spending?

It isn't really hard to understand why social media is such an essential component of any omni-channel marketing strategy. You only need to look at some ofthe statistics – for example, social media marketing has a 100% higher lead-to-conversion rate than similar outbound marketing? And that's research from way back in 2012! Over the past 4 years, the number has continued to grow as social media becomes an ever more integral part of our lives.

If you think that social networks are only suitable for B2C companies, then you might be surprised to learn that more than 84% of all B2B marketers use social media in some way – whether that's to raise awareness of their products and services, or just keep in touch with their customers. No matter what you sell, who you sell it to, or even how you sell it, your business will be able to benefit from a strong social media presence. Social marketing can not only work to build brand awareness and community engagement, but it can also work to pad out your wallet.

Why Is Social Media Marketing So Important For Web Traffic?

1. Social Media Can Raise Awareness Of Your Brand – Here's the thing; you might have the best brand in the world, you might have the best products in the world, you might have the best website in the world – if you aren't taking advantage of omni-channel marketing, which includes the full benefits offered by social media marketing, you'll never be able to build a real audience for them.

Social media gives you the opportunity to raise awareness of your brand and appeal to a much wider audience. There's a lot of evidence that social media can be essential to building an audience around your brand and business.

2. Social Marketing Is A Great Distribution Strategy – One of the biggest problems that businesses come up against when enacting a content marketing strategy is building the initial readership. Getting your content in front of people who will find it useful and interesting is extremely important, and you are severely limiting your business capabilities if you aren't constantly using your content to build a new and dedicated readership.

In the past, we've seen social marketing work to great effect when attracting readers to content. Finding a topic that resonates with your potential readers and making it genuinely useful increases the chances of it being read and shared. If your content can go viral then you can quickly get your products and services in front of thousands of potential customers.

3. Social Is The Perfect Companion To Your Search Engine Optimisation – Search engine crawler algorithms, such as those by Google, Yahoo and Bing, know which pages are consistently earning traffic and which are not. It's true that you need the best SEO techniques in addition to a great content marketing strategy if you want to have any hope of climbing the search engine results pages, but the popularity of your site plays a key role as well.

By having a strong social media presence, you can improve your website's search engine friendliness thanks to social signals which can include shares, comments, likes, favourites and more.

4. Social Media Is The Best Way To Connect With Consumers & Authorities – Social media marketing can lead to great relationships between consumers and industry authorities. The high levels of interaction available on social media enable you to talk to your customers as well as any authority figures on an even-playing field. Social media networks, Twitter in particular, can be seen as the ultimate equaliser. They enable truly honest and rewarding conversations between brands, customers and celebrities.

Authority marketing remains one of the most effective ways of advertising your products and services. Just think how much attention your business will gain if your products are regularly tweeted or shared by a celebrity like Lady Gaga or Justin Timberlake. Of course, for effective authority marketing, you are better off sticking to people who are well known in your industry.

If you worked in SEO, for example, getting someone like Matt Cutts to agree with your views would make a real difference to your reputation and provide a huge boost to your business' online presence.

5. Users Will Be Receptive To Your Message – Users of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest don't view them as marketing platforms – they see them as social networks. That means that, when you post content or advertisements, they will be more receptive to what you have to say. This can quickly translate to serious web traffic to your website; what's even better is that it can target relevant and interested traffic who are actively looking for the products and services that you have on offer.

6. You Can Take Advantage Of Targeting And Retargeting – One of the biggest advantages for social media platforms is that the adverts themselves are highly customisable. You can use extremely specific information to target your customers in the first place, and retarget them as you please.

By targeting your perfect audience member, you can greatly increase the chances that your ads will earn clicks that will then lead to conversions and sales. Just some of the unique characteristics that you can target your marketing towards include:

• Location,
• Education,
• Age,
• Gender,
• Interests,
• Purchase History.
  

You Can Use Social Media To Control Your Brand Image And Keep Customers Happy

7. Your Business Can Respond To Problems Instantly – If there's a particular problem with any of your products or services, then you should want to know about it as soon as possible. Thanks to effective social media use, you can get your customers to message your business directly with their problems.

That way, you'll be able to deal with any issues they have in the quickest way possible. Even more importantly, you can make sure that the rest of your audience can see you respond to your customer's complaints. So long as you remain courteous and do your best to help them, your customers will feel much more comfortable interacting with your business. What's more, great customer service is one of the main driving factors when your customers are considering whether to buy from your business or not.

8. Your Strong Social Presence Can Build Brand Loyalty – If you take the time to keep your social media platforms active, then you'll find that your business will enjoy a much higher sense of brand loyalty. When you engage and interact across Twitter or Facebook, your business will become less like a faceless corporation and become much more personal.

People aren't loyal to businesses; they are loyal to brands and personalities. You need to make sure that your social presence fully reflects your unique brand identity and that you are taking the time to interact and share great content on a regular basis.

The Right Social Media Marketing Can Let You Leave Your Competition Behind

9. Every Business Knows The Value Of Social – If still think that you've got plenty of time to start on your social accounts; you should know that 91% of all retail businesses are already using at least two social media platforms. Catching up on social media can be extremely difficult; you need to get a head start on your competitors' social media marketing. You need to build an active and engaging community around your brand as soon as possible – otherwise, you could find yourself trying to steal audience members away from your competition.

10. Social Media Marketing Is The Last Level Playing Field – When it comes to social media marketing, it doesn't necessarily matter how large a budget you have. All companies start off on practically equal footing, especially new start-ups. It largely comes down to the quality of the content that you create, the techniques you use and the effort that you put into it.

The businesses that will do well on social media are those which combine high-value content with their own unique personality and managing to be entertain their followers. If you want to get lots of relevant, engaged traffic and increase your business' presence online, you're going to need to take the time to outwit, out-write and out-network all of your competitors.

How Important Is Social Media Marketing For eCommerce Sales And ROI?

11. Social Media Will Bring In More Clicks, More Conversions And More Sales – More than 70% of B2C marketing specialists have acquired customers through Facebook, and that an astonishing 84% of CEOs and Vice-Presidents use social media to influence their business purchasing decisions.

Thanks to effective social media, you'll be able to keep your brand identity in front of your customers for much longer. When they decide that they need or want one of the products that you offer, they are far more likely to choose your business to purchase from.

What's more, you can constantly work to incentivise your customers through coupons and follower deals. Not only can that improve your conversion rate, it can also keep your followers active and energised when engaging with your brand.

12. You'll Find Consumers That You Didn't Even Know Existed – When you put effort into your social media marketing platforms, you might find that your products and brand identity naturally attract a different audience than the one you are targeting. Social networks are a great way for people to find and engage with all kinds of businesses – that's a two-way street.

As your social platforms continue to develop, you'll be able to use that audience base to make adjustments to the kind of content you create and make sure that you are appealing to the right audience.

For Complete Social Media Marketing, Get In Touch With Promote Today

Here at Promote, we are able to provide a complete range of marketing solutions for businesses of all shapes and sizes. As well as comprehensiveomni-channel marketing, we can provide social media,search engine optimisation and pay-per-click advertising. Our team have been working to provide complete marketing solutions for many years, and we have helped hundreds of businesses to improve their online presence and build brand awareness.

So, whether you're looking for search engine optimisation to make your site appear in Google, Yahoo and Bing, pay-per-click advertising to attract relevant traffic to your website or social media marketing to build and engage with your audience, you've come to the right place. The Promote team specialise in omni-channel marketing as well as dedicated inbound marketing.