Social Media Marketing plays a crucial role for brands. If you’re asking yourself why, try to think of one successful business that doesn’t have an online presence. Ok, you can stop guessing because you’ll be here for awhile. In the past, simply having a website was enough. Now, just having a website or blog simply doesn’t cut it. There is so much competition online that you have an extremely slim chance of standing out amongst the congestion if you don’t adapt to your consumers behavior. Today’s Consumers are smart, connected and social. They expect exceptional, personalized service and won’t hesitate to share any discontent with their networks if their demands aren’t met.
When a consumer is in the explore phase they use a variety of channels to research the products and services they discover. With that being said, it’s crucial that you try to hit all of the different touch points that coincide with your consumers purchase path – social media being a big one. This will not only help you break through the clutter and stay top of mind, it will lead your consumers closer to converting.
The fact is, everybody is using social media. It’s efficient, cheap, easy to use and utilized by billions of people. People don’t want to just read facts off a website or listen to an automated voicemail – they want a human element and personalization. Without social media, it’s nearly impossible to impose a human aspect via a plain old website. Think of social media marketing as a shift from cyberspace to humanspace. This simple shift will increase your conversion rate dramatically because it will strengthen the consumers relationship with your brand. Social media allows business to enter the conversation and become part of their consumers “social sphere” — allowing them to tap into their consumers needs, wants and desires.
If you don’t have a social media presence, I’m afraid to say you’re simply not in the game. In my opinion, I believe that any effective marketing strategy needs an online presence. Having an online presence can build your online brand, create loyal customers, improve website traffic and increase search rankings.
Build your online brand
Nobody can be awake 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. You know what can, though – your online brand. That’s why it’s so important to build a seriously kick ass online brand. Your social networks and website don’t have an off switch, neither does your brand.
Facebook alone has over one billion active monthly users. You need the power of social media to put your business’ name in front of this massive audience. By tapping into these social communities, you are opening yourself up to thousands, even millions of potential leads.
Creates loyal customers
Hands down, the biggest advantage of social media is the ability to enter the conversation. This is an extremely valuable tool that wasn’t possible just a decade ago. Being able to directly interact with your new and potential customers on a personal level is more important than ever. You can get instant feedback, answer questions and establish a relationship with your community without being invasive. Remember, your best customers are not the ones who buy the most; they are the ones who sell the most.
“71% of social media users say that they are more likely to purchase products from the brand they follow online.” CLICK TO TWEET
Improves web traffic
Social media marketing can help boost traffic to your website and/or online store. This is because social media allows for your content to be shareable, thus expanding your reach and exposing it to more users. More eyeballs on your content = a greater chance of driving traffic to your online platforms.
Increases search rankings
Not only can social media marketing help drive traffic to your website, it can also help improve your SEO campaign. The more buzz your content gets via social networking sites, the higher its search engine ranking will be. That’s right; search engines have included social media results in their index. As Google continues to alter it’s algorithm, many of it’s recent changes have come in the form of rewarding businesses with strong social media activity. The takeaway, to get higher rankings in Google, your business needs to be more social.
As you can see, there are a plethora of reasons that support the importance of using social media marketing as part of your digital strategy. The companies who don’t think creating a strong online presence is important will suffer a slow and painful death — there really isn’t a way to sugar coat it. Social media marketing is an invaluable asset for any marketing campaign. If you aren’t taking advantage of social media already, contacts us today so we can help get you started!
Does your company partake in Social Media Marketing? If so, we’d love to hear the type of results your getting in the comment section below!