While you might enjoy marketing your brand through billboards or radio ads, the reality is that, in 2023, including social media in your marketing strategy is essential. Apologies if that doesn’t align with your preferences! Social media is a crucial way to connect with your customers, gain valuable insights, and boost your brand. If you’re avoiding this powerful communication tool, you’re missing out on a fantastic opportunity to engage with your audience. (Is this the “inner saboteur” RuPaul often talks about?!) Keep reading for a comprehensive guide on creating a successful social media marketing strategy for your business.
‘Social media for business’ means companies using popular social platforms to promote their products or services to their target audiences.
While millions worldwide use social media for personal reasons (like my aunt, Madonna, and others), brands also use these platforms for marketing and communication.
Take Earths Own, an alternative milk brand, for instance—they share recipes on their TikTok account.
@earthsown We’re coco-nuts for overnight oats 😋 Especially when it comes with brownie chunks 🫶 #easyrecipes #breakfastideas #plantbasedmilk
Whether your business is big or small, social media is a powerful tool. It helps with brand awareness, content promotion, customer engagement, lead generation, market research, competitor analysis, audience insights, and influencer collaborations. The best part? It’s all free to join!
What is the best way to use social media for business?
Boost brand awareness
Social media provides businesses with a chance to develop and distribute content, increasing awareness of their brand. By consistently sharing relevant and engaging content, word might spread across the internet about the exciting things your business is doing.
Engage your customers directly
Yet another advantage of social media for businesses is the direct line of communication it offers between companies and their customers. Whether on Facebook, Instagram, or other platforms, companies can engage with their audience directly and publicly. This interaction feels more responsive and personal compared to email or a 1-800 hotline.
Employ this personal communication approach to address inquiries, respond to concerns, and foster a stronger connection with your customers.
Promote your content
Consider social media as your latest preferred publishing platform. Use your Facebook account to direct traffic to blog posts, share articles on your X account, and distribute videos through TikTok. You’ve invested considerable effort into creating informative or entertaining content for your potential customers and existing audience—leverage the power of social media to ensure it reaches people.
Create new sales leads
People are on social media every day—go connect with them!
Besides making friends and selling stuff on social media, you can also put up ads. You can pick certain groups of people based on things like age, interests, and what they do. This helps you build a great list of potential customers.
Carry out market research
Once you get the hang of using social media analytics tools, you’ll be flooded with awesome market info. Social media gives you a peek into what customers like, what they think, and how they act. This helps you make smart choices (both online and offline!) about your products and services.
Keep an eye on the competition
Take note of your competitors to see what’s going well and what’s not. Use tools like social listening, social streams, and studying your competitors to find useful info about your customers, business plans, and industry trends.
Collaborate with influencers
In the last ten years or so, social media platforms have created their own group of famous people. These folks have knowledge, influence, and lots of followers—and smart businesses know how to use that influence. If your business is on social media, think about teaming up with an influencer for a campaign or a longer ambassador program. Check out our influencer marketing guide to quickly understand how this new world works.
Maintain your reputation
Even if you haven’t been using social media all this time, it’s likely that your fans and customers are—and your critics might be as well. People could be discussing you without you knowing, chatting a lot on X, or sharing not-so-great Instagram Stories about your product. If you’re not there to guide the conversation, who knows what might unfold?
For any business looking to safeguard its reputation, staying engaged on social media is crucial. Identifying negative feelings is the initial move to address issues early. Conversely, acknowledging and celebrating your dedicated fans and supporters could inspire more people to express affection for your brand.
Advertise to hyper-specific audiences
Using social ads is a cost-effective method to advertise your business and share content. They also provide robust targeting choices, enabling you to connect with the right audience and maximize your budget.
With ads, you can choose who sees them based on things like age, where they live, language, and what they do online. This means you can create messages that work best for different groups of people. Plus, you only pay to show your ads to the exact people you want to reach.
Demonstrate your ROI
Marketers always find it tough to show that what they spend brings back value. But with social media tracking tools, you can see exactly how your social media efforts pay off, whether it’s through more followers, interactions, or actual purchases.
Tools like Google Analytics keep tabs on the traffic your website gets from social media. They also show you things like conversions, email sign-ups, and the return on investment for both the stuff you do without paying and the ads you run.
Why should businesses use social media?
Assuming you’re a numbers-loving business person, here’s a stat for you: over 4.74 billion people worldwide use social media, accounting for 93% of internet users and 76% of North Americans.
If your business isn’t on social media, you’re missing out on connecting with these potential customers. Here are more stats that highlight the impact of social media:
– 90% of Instagram users follow a business.
– 62.3% of global Instagram users use the platform for brand and product research.
– 70% of users are okay with seeing ads while watching videos on Instagram.
– X posts can reach over 544 million users worldwide.
– 9% of web traffic referrals come from X.
– YouTube ads have the potential to reach 2.51 billion users.
– 68% of users watch YouTube to help them decide on a purchase.
– 13.8% of internet users aged 16-64 use videos for brand research.
– Almost 10.4% of users aged 16-64 use online pinboards for brand research.
– 80% of weekly Pinterest users discover new brands or products.
– Snapchat’s total potential ad audience worldwide is over 575 million.
– Snapchatters hold 4.4 trillion in spending power.
– 66% of Facebook users visit a local business page weekly.
– 69% of weekly Meta platform users who shop online make purchases after seeing personalized content on Facebook or Instagram.
In short, the numbers speak for themselves, and there’s money to be made on these apps. So, what are you waiting for?