It’s 2018 and while social media has been in our lives since the mid-1990’s when websites like SixDegrees, and even AOL where members could send instant messages to family and friends across the miles, today’s social media plays a far bigger role than many people in the early days would have even thought possible.
We’ve watched as social media has seemingly taken over how we communicate with others daily. It’s great to be able to click a button on your phone and see what friends and family thousands of miles away are doing at any given time of the day. Even better, social media has grown to have such a hefty presence in our lives that it is now considered one of the best ways for businesses to be able to reach out to their clients.
In today’s world of business, simply having a Facebook page is not going to fly. As a business owner, you cannot merely exist on social media and not be fully invested in your social media marketing. According to Small Biz Trends, more than one out of every three people say they use social media to get more information about a brand or a product offered by a company.
For social networks, the average age range of internet users searching for businesses spans from the age of 16 to 45. As a business owner, failing to maintain a strong online presence can mean you’re going to lose out on customers who are actively searching for what you offer. To see success, you must take the right steps to have a quality social media strategy to make sure your business isn’t looked over when people need a product or service that you have. Social media has become a critical factor in having a successful business today.
So, beyond the obvious, why is social media so important in the business world? Here are ten of the top reasons you need to start marketing with social media now to help guide your business towards the overall success you want to see it achieve.
- Customers you never even considered will be able to find you. Let’s say, hypothetically that you own a business that makes hammers. You might push most of your marketing dollars into ads that are geared towards carpenters, handyman contractors or builders. It’s easy to forget that crafty women who make doll furniture with their kids or who love to try DIY projects at home will also need a hammer. So, when you start a good social media marketing campaign, you will be just a few good hashtags away from bringing new customers on board to see your products and buy those items from you. By joining groups on Facebook or tagging various keywords in your Twitter posts, you are increasing your potential to increase your customer base.
- When you stay on top of things socially, customers are more apt to buy from you. For instance, let’s say two businesses are in one local area and both businesses sale the same merchandise. Business “A” has no social media presence but they advertise on the radio or in a print newspaper. Their prices are good, and they have typical business hours. Business “B” has social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. They post merchandise sales and maintain a very visible presence online with new posts, replies to customers and great pictures. They even reach out on holidays to wish their customers a nice day. Which company do you think people will trust more? People trust companies who seem to be transparent and who show they care about their customers. Simply having a Facebook page won’t cut it today. You must be proactive and interact with people.
- Social media marketing lets you post directly to your targeted audience. Placing links on other pages, in groups or even on other websites is a great way to target the audience you need to see your posts the most. Yes, you absolutely need to post daily or at least every other day on your own business page, but it’s important to mingle online in group settings or branch out to websites like Reddit, Digg or StumbleUpon and others where even more people can click your links and see who you are and what you offer.
- You can’t beat the ROI on a FREE ad! Yes, hiring a social media marketing agency will cost you monthly in fees to the agency, but the ads that you place on Facebook and other platforms don’t have to cost a dime to place. Your marketing team can come up with the best wording for your ads as well as great photos to make the ads pop to people. Also, even without a team working on your ads, you can always post the things that you want customers to see and promote those by boosting your ads for very little money per day, week or even monthly. When you post an ad however, you need to make sure it is well-written and hiring a good PR team to handle this is the best way to go.
- Social media is fun! Whether you’re hopping on the computer during your lunch break or you spend hours every day communicating with people, social media is a great way to stay on top of the world today. It allows you to interact with people to see what demands they have for the products they really want. By doing this, you can easily see what merchandise you can sell and which products you may want to drop.
- You do not have to branch out to every social media platform out there. If your target audience primarily uses Facebook or Twitter but they don’t use others, then stick with what works best for you. Be sure to check all avenues out, but over time, drop the ones that you see the least results from.
- You can create a loyal customer base when you maintain a strong social media presence and stick with quality social media marketing techniques. You need to respond to questions from people and if someone fusses, respond by being nice to them. Others will see how you talk to your customers and when they see a company go above and beyond what is expected, and the business owner or staff are easy to contact, people tend to stick with them.
- Social media marketing allows you to not only reach your customers, but it also lets you see what your competitors are doing. Check the pages of companies who are in the same line of business that you are in and see if they’re running specials, how they interact with people and what people are saying about them. If things are going well for other businesses, take time to see what it is about them that people like, and then take those things and use them to your advantage by doing even better!
- Using social media can help boost your business website SEO and move you up in the search rankings. When you post ads linking to pages on your website, it drives traffic to your pages and will help your site climb up the search pages faster. This means when people do a Google search for companies like yours in your local area, your business will be ranked higher and people will contact you before they contact others.
- Social media can increase your response time when customers have a question or concern. For instance, prior to social media, customers could only reach a business during normal operating hours. Thanks to social media, customers can reach out in the evenings or late at night and if you stay on top of things, you can respond quickly to help. People like feeling that a company cares enough to answer their questions even when it is after normal operating hours.
If you work your social media marketing the right way, you can stay active and keep people engaged on various networks and by doing this, you are already a step ahead of your competition. To put things into perspective, social media is here to stay and if you haven’t already, you need to start right now with gaining your following on social media and using it to your advantage to increase your sales and boost your business.