If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, you are probably familiar with the term “social media marketing.” It seems as if every other business is on social media these days and you might be wondering: are Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram too saturated for your business to succeed? Is it even worth it to promote your business on social media? The answer is still… yes, it’s definitely worth it! Social media marketing is on the rise and becoming one of the most important forms of marketing in modern day and there are several reasons why most businesses are continuing to utilize social media to help their growth and succeed.
Increased Brand Loyalty
One of the most valuable benefits of putting your business on social media is the more personalized connection with your target audience that having social media profiles allows you to make. Never before have we had such instant access to communication with one another. Social media opens the doors to providing a form of virtual communication with a wider audience of people that your business would not have been able to reach before. This means more potential clients or customers and better relationships formed with your current audience. Having a lot of followers on social media is one thing, but having good engagement on those profiles is what really drives sales. Let’s face it: your business can be the best business in its field, but if your audience doesn’t personally connect with it, you won’t be able to gain success. Forming that genuine connection with your target audience is made so much easier by marketing your business on social media.
Everybody Is On It
No matter who your target audience is, they’re most likely on some form of social media. Though it seems to be the most obvious reason that social media marketing works, when researching the numerical data of social media’s success, the results are still shocking. Over a third of the United States population is on Instagram, while Facebook boasts an astounding 66.8% of Americans. With these percentages, it seems that social media marketing is clearly the most effective way to market today, especially considering the fact that word-of-mouth and client/customer reviews are the top two most successful forms of advertising. People really do just buy what their friends like, and influencer marketing (sending your product or offering your service to individuals with high follower counts and trusted fan bases) is growing in popularity due to its success.
Improved Customer Insights
Technology has allowed the world to consume more data than ever before, and that includes helpful insights on the target consumers for your brand or business. Marketing firms are now able to determine specific demographic data about your customers, such as their age or gender, and even information like their city of residence or their marital status from their social media. These demographics are helpful to know when trying to gauge who is interested in the product or service that you are offering. Having this valuable information more readily available than ever before is one of the most important benefits you can receive from marketing your business on social media.
It’s Easy And Cheap
The harsh reality is that while as fulfilling as it may be, owning a business can get costly. Having a good budget specifically for marketing purposes is essential to curating a successful brand, however it’s important to spend that budget wisely. Spending your money on social media marketing is the easiest, most cost effective way to start marketing your business successfully today. Hiring a marketing agency or public relations firm (like Otter PR!) to help you increase your visibility on social media or get verified on Instagram can influence your target audience to have a more positive perception of the image and the legitimacy of your brand. Setting up a social media account is also easy — it’s free and most of the time, takes no more than five minutes of your day.
There are many positives and hardly any negatives to marketing your business on social media. Learning to navigate a new social media platform at first may seem overwhelming, however, due to their increasing popularity, social media and the marketing tools used to manage it are getting more and more user-friendly every year. Your business’ target audience is on social media right now and there is no better way to connect with them and boost sales and brand awareness than marketing your company on social media and staying connected.