According to Hootsuite’s Global State of Digital 2022 survey, nearly three-fourths of small to medium-sized companies have some type of social media presence. If you’re one of the 25% that has yet to open a social media account, you’re losing your potential customers to your competitors who are established online.
Launching a social media page can positively impact your business. Consider the following benefits:
Table of Contents
Brand Recognition
Your target audience first becomes aware of your brand at the beginning of their customer journey. You can leverage social media to present your brand in front of a wider pool of potential customers.
Social media gives you the ability to create visual content that upholds the messaging of your brand. This makes it easier for customers to understand your brand and respond to your marketing.
Before you start a social media marketing campaign, it is important to take your brand into consideration. For example, choose platforms that are more popular amongst your target demographic. For example, people under 30 are more likely to use Instagram, while people 30 and above prefer Facebook.
Your social media use should also complement your product or service. Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube are ideal for showcasing products. Twitter may be more suitable for sharing text-based information, such as links to white papers or case studies.
Data Collection and Analysis
Nearly all social media platforms offer a backend dashboard that enables you to track your posts and paid marketing campaigns.
You can use this data to identify patterns and boost your campaign’s effectiveness. This translates into more sales and increases the bottom line for your business.
Social media metrics such as shares, likes, and comments, can let you know which types of posts or ad campaigns resonate more with your audience.
Social media analytics also provide anonymized demographic information about your social media page’s visitors. You can view data such as location, age, gender, and related interests. This can give you insight into the type of people who are interested in your products or services.
Social Media Help to Increase Customer Engagement
You can also leverage social media as a communication channel. Since social media is accessible 24/7, more and more consumers turn to business social media pages to interact with companies.
Customers may leave feedback, requests, or complaints on your posts. You or your customer service team can engage with these customers directly or provide them with contact information to escalate the issue.
You can also control customer engagement by creating interactive posts that encourage audience participation. For example, you can launch a contest for user-generated content containing your products. This type of campaign can build buzz around your brand and products. Customers will also appreciate being recognized by their favorite brands.
Cost Effectiveness
When compared to traditional marketing mediums, social media is highly cost-effective. Social media campaigns also reach far more people than other types of advertising like newspapers or radio, which only appear in front of a localized segment of consumers.
While social media has a lower upfront cost than other types of marketing, it is a time-heavy investment. Creating an effective social media campaign requires strategic planning that should be led by a social media professional.
Further, since customers can interact directly with your company, you must also ensure that your customer service team can view and respond to customer interactions in a timely manner. As a result, incorporating social media into your business model may require investing in new hires and software.
Customer Service
Social media can improve many of the most common customer service processes. Customer service through social media is such an expected aspect of the online buying experience that many social media pages publish company response times on their business pages.
One benefit of using social media platforms as customer service communication channels is that you do not have to educate your customers on how to access you. Social media users are already familiar with the platform’s features.
For example, in addition to interacting with customers through posts, customer service agents can use social media messaging features to field customer questions and concerns. Since clients already know how these systems operate, they can feel confident that their message was received.
Conclusion
If your business sells its products directly from social media, offering customer service through the same platform will also improve customer experience. Buyers do not want to open a different webpage or enter another system to interact with your company.
