Advantages Of Social Media For Businesses

The way innovation has hit almost all sectors, marketing has also reached a whole new level. It has become more personal and precise allowing brands to reach their exact audience at the exact time in the exact place. All this, thanks to the advent of Social Media marketing.

 

Listed below are a few advantages of social media marketing for businesses:

1. Establish Trust

People purchase from brands they trust. You can establish trust through social media. Studies show a direct correlation between trust, perceived usefulness, and intent to buy. When people trust your brand and perceive your product or services as useful, it indirectly influences their intent to buy For Example, Bloggers or Influencers endorsing a brand or a product helps enormously to promote trust in potential customers. YouTube star Corallista promoting any beauty brand on her channel has proven to increase sales of the brand.

 

2. Enhance Brand Image

When people connect with your brand on social media, you can enhance your brand image and tell your story. Not only can they promote their products, but they can enhance their brand by sharing their story. By communicating the meaning of your brand and sharing your story, you can establish an emotional connection with buyers. For Example, After appearing on ABC’s Shark Tank, Grace And Lace gained thousands of new fans and followers.

 

3. Develop Relationship Capital

Building strong and meaningful relationships is a major benefit of social media. You have access to engage and interact directly with your preferred customer to build a bond. For Example,- In Dove’s #SpeakBeautiful campaign, they engaged thousands of users through inspiring positive remarks. This national campaign won the hearts of thousands of people, which ultimately developed Dove’s relationship capital with their customer base.

 

4. Use Various Media Formats (For Example, Video, Images etc.)

By using various media formats, you can improve the customer experience with your brand. An example of this would be Boom By Cindy Joseph’s website and social media presence. Cindy Joseph uses high quality images and videos on Pinterest, YouTube, and her website to walk her customers through the buying process. Below is a screenshot of her website shopping cart, which wisely incorporates a video description.

 

5. Geotargeting

Geotargeting is targeting people who are within a certain mile radius of your business location. For brick and mortar companies, geotargeting is extremely important. Very few advertising sources can pinpoint people within a 10-mile radius of your exact business location. Social media happens to be one of them. Geotargeting will help you attract more walk-in customers, drive more purchases at sales events, and build more loyalty. For Example, Mac Craig’s is a small local bakery in bandra and is targeting walk-in customers from the vicinity.

 

6. Advanced Targeting (For Example, Interests, Keywords and Followers)

As mentioned earlier, you can leverage social media to attract people who have a sincere interest in your brand. Through advanced targeting that is available on various social media platforms, you can target people differently. For Example, On Twitter, you can target people who follow certain brands. On Pinterest, you can target people who search for different keywords with promoted pins. On LinkedIn, you can target people who work in various industries and hold certain job positions. By far, the benefit of advanced targeting on social media is one of the most important.

 

7. Track Your Results

The reason why social media advertising is so efficient is because it is trackable. You can measure sales, website traffic, email subscriptions, and most importantly, the effectiveness of your social media advertising efforts. For Example, Facebook Insights allow you to track every engagement the customer has made and if it translated into sales.

 

8. Retargeting

On average, less than 10% of your website visitors will convert on their first visit to your website. With retargeting, you can reach the people who visit your website again. On social media, you can target advertisements specifically at people who viewed your website. This gives you an opportunity to increase your conversion rates. For Example, Sameer is searching for places so he can go on a spontaneous weekend trip. An ad by Make My Trip shows up on his Facebook feed vibrantly displaying “Last Minute Deals” “Book Now”. This option is gently pushing him and at the same time creating a sense of urgency to book the hotel displayed.

 

9. Reputation Management

People will talk about your brand on social media regardless of whether or not you’re active on the platform. It’s in your best interest to be proactive by using social media monitoring tools to see what’s being said. You can use a tool like Sprout Social to monitor mentions of your brand name so that you can quickly respond to customer complaints or issues.

 

10. User Generated Content

Not only are your employees willing to advocate for your brand on social media, but so are your customers. You’ve undoubtedly seen Instagram posts of people showing off products from their favourite brands. Embrace that and get involved by highlighting and even requesting user generated content. For Example, GoPro is an excellent example of a brand that uses UGC effectively. Their entire Instagram feed is made of photos and videos regrammed from their customers.

 

Above are just a few advantages of Social Media marketing proving how social media is extremely beneficial to small and big businesses. Additionally, studies have shown that social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing, and a higher number of social media followers tends to improve trust and credibility to a brand, representing social proof. As such, simply building an audience on social media can improve business greatly.