Social media advertising has come a long way in just a short period. When it was first launched in 2005, no one thought that it would hit $8.4 billion in 2015, just ten years later.
So, no matter what you are selling and who you are selling to, social media is one of the most excellent marketing tools to help grow your brand (and wallet) over time.
For now, you are maybe one of those who are still flipping their phones, scratching their heads, and saying, “What is social media marketing going to do for me? Do I really need it?”
Well, the answer is yes, you do. Here are the most compelling reasons why:
Advanced Targeting Options
Social media networks can get a wide amount of user information over time, helping you target your audience in many ways.
This opened a lot of doors to advanced targeting options that boost your ad relevance to users giving a level of personalization that is not achievable via other advertising channels.
Here are some advanced targeting options:
- Interest targeting: Reach out to particular audiences by searching through self-reported interests, skills, pages, and users they have previously engaged with and so on.
- Behavioral and connection targeting: Through behavioral targeting, you can reach out to users based on their buying behaviors, device usage, and intent. Meanwhile, in connection targeting, you can reach out to users who have a specific connection in your group, app, event, or page. Both of these targeting types take in past behavior and helping you determine intent.
- Custom targeting: Reach users when uploading phone numbers, user IDs, usernames, and email addresses. Meaning, if you have a particular group of individuals that you want to target, all you have to do is upload their contact information and directly target them.
- Lookalike targeting: Reach out to new users that are quite similar to the target audience that you care about. It helps you expand your custom audience, helping you reach brand new, similar users.
Understanding Your Audience
One of the primary reasons why social media channels are highly efficient marketing tools is the kind of interaction you are given with your current customer base.
Once you read status updates and tweets, you will slowly grow insight on various user behaviors, and a glimpse of their daily lives such as:
- The kind of products that they are buying and what motivates them to do so.
- What sort of hobbies do they have?
- What types of posts do they love sharing?
- What kind of websites do they visit?
When you understand your target audience more, you’re able to write better and more compelling content for them. This is why at Voy Media Facebook Advertising Company, we always begin our campaign by collecting audience insights that can help with our marketing and advertising efforts.
Over time, this leads to increased traffic to your site. It also helps you understand your customer’s pain points, boosts your conversions, and refine your strategies.
Boost Brand Awareness
Social media can be one of the most powerful tools that you can use if you want to boost your brand awareness over time.
Other businesses dismiss this idea when building a brand. However, by doing so, they let their competitors take advantage. The good news is, boosting your brand on social media is not rocket science.
Here are a couple of tips that you can apply:
- Look for your audience: Before you focus on a particular social media platform, find out whether or not your target audience is on it. You can do so by browsing relevant conversations about your niche and products. For instance, a business with a B2B audience might find its ideal audience on LinkedIn rather than on Instagram.
- Utilize visuals: Once you have an idea who your target audience is, you can now start using high-quality and compelling visuals that can grab their attention. Visuals like images and videos have a crucial role in boosting your brand awareness and increasing your engagement on social media channels.
- Make conversations: Social media is all about being social. If you are only using it as a one-way form of communication, then you would not be able to grab your audience’s attention. You need to know when to talk and when to listen. It is time to get involved and show off your unique personality through conversing, tagging, and mentioning others.
- Track your efforts: Do not just go on aimlessly with things. Utilize tracking tools in these social platforms, as well as other external tools like Google Analytics, link shorteners, and so on. You can use this data to better understand what is working and what is not. That way, you can better optimize your efforts and create a stronger brand on social media.
- Create Authority: If you want to achieve better brand awareness and higher engagement rates, then you should focus on building your authority in your niche by sharing value. The content that you post must be something unique and original, helping you add credibility to your brand.
Remember that every effort that you make to boost your brand awareness in social media will significantly impact the overall growth of your business in the long run.
Strong Relationship With Your Audience
A lot of your prospects see social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as they are. Social media networks and not as marketing platforms.
This can be quite challenging especially if you are just starting out with your social media marketing strategy. But a lot of businesses make the mistake of taking the hard sell approach.
They overwhelm their followers with new product launches, discount codes, and customer reviews. When they get only moderate traffic gains, then they immediately think that social media is not the right fit for their brand.
But here’s the thing: A lot of people do not want to feel as if they are being pitched to. Instead, they want engagement.
When you stop seeing social media as a place to pitch your products and find a way to connect with people at a much deeper and meaningful level, then that is when you will start transforming your brand.
You are entertaining, informing, and answering relevant questions. This helps create a bond with your customers over shared interests.
You are creating vital connections with influencers and industry leaders. You are providing excellent stories. You are not merely a brand. Instead, you are part of a larger community. Over time, this brings you a serious ROI.
When you follow the best practices on social media, you will get a lot of exposure. This kind of exposure brings in new leads, and these leads eventually become followers. Your followers then become your customers, and eventually loyal brand evangelists. It is a continuing cycle.
Final Thoughts
So there you have it. It is clear that social media marketing does have its advantages. So if you are still not maximizing it to its full potential, then it is high time to do so.
Just stay consistent with your efforts and the right social media strategy will help you improve your traffic, enhance your SEO, get better conversion rates, enhance your brand loyalty, and so much more.
There is no reason why you should not implement social media in your current marketing strategy. It is more cost-effective, too, so you have virtually nothing to lose. Your competitors are also likely on it, so do not let them get your customers!
The sooner you start, the better the profit and growth you will see in your business.
Hello Kevin,
Customer experience has become a top priority for businesses. Social platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter aren’t just for promotion but they can also be a way to connect with your customers.
Social platforms help you connect with your customers, increase awareness about your brand, and boost your leads and sales.
Social channels evolve, constantly releasing new features and this rapidly changing environment can be intimidating for business owners.
Social platforms have successfully broken down barriers between companies and their customers. Eventually, thanks for exploring your amazing ideas with us.
With best wishes,
Amar Kumar