Top Benefits Of Social Media Marketing

2+ billion and counting! Yes, that’s the number of people on social media. Therefore, the chances of your target audience being on social media is very high. One might have a secondary thought that social media channels are mostly for personal communication so what benefit can it possibly serve my business. Well, a simple answer is more than what any possible advertising medium can currently serve. The reasons are many like the ability to target the audience, interact with them, know their buying behaviour, etc.

This being said, marketers have already realised the potential of social media and are spending time and money on these channels to promote their brands. So, let’s look at 10 benefits of social media marketing-

1. Develop brand awareness- Social media has become a major tool for brands to reach their target customers. Many people search for the brand they like, on social media and like the brand’s page to get more updates. Also, the promoted and shared content would grab the eyeballs of many thus increasing brand awareness.

2. Know what your customer does- With analytical tools recording what your customer does, what they prefer and many other such data. Social media analytics is really helpful for brands to get an insight of the consumer behavior. This insight would be used in creating effective marketing plan to woo the customer.

3. Know what your competitor is up to- Not only can one know the information about their customers, but also about their competitors. One can easily see their competitors upcoming products, offers, marketing strategy, etc. Using social media monitoring tools one can gain information about their competitors and an insight on their social media page. This information can easily help you to make plans to tackle your competitors.

4. Improvement in SEO- Seeing upfront one might think that social media marketing only helps in bringing traffic to the website. True! But, this is not only the only thing it does. Social media marketing also helps your website in SEO. This is how it does-

a. A user follows a link to your website, thus increasing traffic to your website.
b. Google+ gives a dofollow link which directly increases your search engine ranking
c. For branded keywords, a company’s social media page comes on top of the page.
d. Social media greatly helps in amplifying the content distribution and bringing in larger audience.

5. Higher Conversion rates- A well targeted social media campaign can easily help a brand to increase their conversion rate. The major factor that leads to this conversion rate is that social media brings humanisation to the company and people love to do business with humans rather than company. When one makes post, shares content, interacts with their users, it personifies the brands. The more you interact with your customers, the higher would be your conversion rates.

6. Cost Effective- Compared to other advertising medium, social media is very cost effective. The reason being that on social media channels one can easily target their customers based on their age, region, preference, etc. This type of customer targeting is not available in most of the advertising mediums thus they require a large budget.

7. Higher Brand Authority- The biggest advantage that social media has is that you can regularly interact with your customers. Also, when people want to give review about a product/service, they mostly turn towards social media. These reviews when seen by others creates a better brand image for your company leading to higher brand authority.

8. Thought Leadership- When one posts a content that is informative and insightful, then people start following your content. Slowly, people would take you as the leader of the field and in need would refer to you for help. One important thing is that becoming a thought leader is a gradual process. You must make continuous effort towards it by making quality content. Not only this you have to also engage with your audience by replying to their comments, appreciating their suggestions, etc.

9. Better customer experience- There are hardly any advertising medium that has a two-way communication with the target audience except social media. Most of the customers expect your company to be on social media and would be using it to address their complaints. Therefore, one must be active on social media to answer people’s complaint and give them a better experience.

10. Improve brand loyalty and build relationship- Social media has been a great place for brands to create loyalty among their followers and create an everlasting business relationship. Following few steps such as posting topics helping users on certain common problems, thanking users for availing their services, replying to their queries, etc. can greatly help you in creating a loyal band of followers.

Social media has many benefits of which we have listed a few. We are sure there are many more advantages of using social media. But, one thing is for sure that social media as a tool to market business is going to be even more prominent in the coming years.