In short – yes!
Social media is an absolute beast. You don’t need to be told that – you’ve seen it. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter – social media is everywhere. Every other person you pass in the street has got their head down looking at their phone, over £3bn is spent on social advertising every year in the UK alone, and the average user spends around 2.5 hours a day on social media. And these figures are growing all the time.
The fact is, your target consumer is on social media. They spend a lot of their time on social media. They might even spend money on social media. So by implementing a strong social media marketing strategy, you can put your business in front of your target audience – literally right under their nose. It doesn’t even have to cost you anything – you can start marketing on social media for free.
So what exactly are the benefits of social media marketing for your business?
Promote your products or services to your target market. This is the obvious one really; as we’ve already established, your target customers are using social media, so it’s the perfect place for your promotional content.
You can even take this one step further with paid advertising; social networks all have advertising platforms, where you can provide a budget to promote your content on a huge scale. They also have very powerful targeting capabilities, so you can ensure that your ads are being served to the right people, without wasting budget on people who you know will never be interested in your offering.
Make use of user generated content. There’s no better way to market a product or service than with a genuine recommendation from an existing customer. People are savvy these days when it comes to advertising, and they know that businesses can pay out for high profile celebrities and influencers to endorse their product. Genuine user generated content from your customers goes a long way to building trust, as well as promoting your product or service. If it’s done well, it can even trigger conversions just so customers can take part in your campaign – think of Coke bottles with people’s names on, or the Little Moons craze from just a few months back.
Enhance your customer service. It’s almost an expectation now that businesses will deal with customer service issues via social media. It’s commonplace for customers to try to contact a business through a platform like Twitter to raise concerns, and if you don’t respond then their customer experience is in trouble. You can also use social media to monitor your customer’s perception of your business – even if they’re not contacting you directly, they could be talking about you on social media. You really need to know what people are saying – if it’s positive then great, more of the same! If it’s negative, well then you know what you need to be working on.
Now we won’t lie to you – good social media marketing does take time and effort. You need to post great content consistently to build your following and engagement, you need to continuously monitor for any negative comments, and actively undergo community management activity to build your following. But, when done well, social media marketing is incredibly effective. Not only can it help you to increase sales, it can help you to tap into new audiences, build your brand identity, improve customer retention and brand loyalty – the benefits of social media marketing are endless. So yes, we would say it’s worth it!
If you want to get moving on social media marketing for your business but you’re just not sure where to start, don’t have the time, or just feel a bit overwhelmed with it – we’re here to help. We’re currently offering a month of free social media management to get you started, so get in touch with our superheroes today.