In a digital landscape, having and managing a social media presence feels like a no-brainer for anyone who has something to share with the online world - whether or not you have physical or digital products to showcase, or services that you can uniquely provide. But there are some (reasonable) hesitations around investing in a social media marketing strategy, and here’s a handful of stats that prove that it’s worth the resource investment.
- There’s around 92% of marketers that use social media as a significant part of their marketing strategies
- 78% of salespeople that engage in 76% of buyers are ready to have a social media conversation with potential providers.
- 53% of customer loyalty is driven by a salesperson’s ability to deliver unique insight, easily done through social media.
Sometimes the hard numbers don’t tell you everything - for instance, there’s a real disconnect between people who don’t use social media: some might be doing it with limited results, or don’t know how to get started at all. Whichever one applies to you, this post can help you better understand just how much more you have to gain when you invest in a social media management strategy.
In order to not only take space in your niche, but to completely stand out from your competitors, you need to be aware of emerging trends and get ahead. Make informed business decisions based on the data you see: what your target audiences are buying, what experts in your industry are talking about, what trends have passed and what new ones are popping up. Having a social media strategy allows you to have a finger on the pulse of these information channels and gives you visibility on how and where you can invest your resources.
Brand awareness and recognition
Becoming the first name that people think of when they need your service is the goal for anyone who sells anything. It's a key marketing goal to be recognizable by their brand and even develop a level of customer loyalty when their product aligns with their needs. Social media is one of the easiest and most effective brand building.
Social media gets ahead of traditional media because of how much faster it can put your brand and company in front of your target market. Some consumers nowadays even turn to social media to verify brand credibility.
When you have a social media profile, consumers of your products are available and able to share their reviews and feedback where potential new customers can discover you. That ability to be perceived is the first step into the path of converting a passing audience into a loyal customer.
A great tip to increase brand awareness and recognition through social media is to make sure that your branding and values are visible throughout as many possible interactions as possible. Your profile photos should reflect your logo, and your recurring visual elements in your posts should align with your branding - but be careful to balance these without becoming overbearing.
Generate impactful conversions
This feels like a second step to the first item, but a strong social media management strategy should be able to utilize a brand’s presence and visibility to convert audiences into customers. The best way to do this is to create meaningful interactions with your customer base through all available channels. That means responding to comments, liking tweets, and resharing positive reviews. Beyond talking to your customers, having a good social media strategy can even open you up to business partnerships with brands in your niche, foster good relationships with companies you work with, and even start important conversations in your industry.
Remember: in order to be seen, you need to be involved.
Connect with customer need
In order to connect with your customers, you need to know what their needs are. Start to monitor social conversations around topics in your niche. This is how you can gain insights to the trends they’re following and learn what they’re struggling with - this becomes an opportunity to be the solution for those gaps by providing the missing services, or sharing relevant content that directly addresses customer pain points.
Platform for brand story
Social media is also a great avenue for deepening your connections with like-minded audiences by showcasing how your company works to achieve its vision and mission. Utilize effective and strategic storytelling around how your brand makes positive impacts in its interest areas, and tailor those messages to the right platforms. Some platforms benefit from long-form messaging, others require a short and sweet message under 140 characters to connect to a target user-base.
Understand target audience
There’s an incredible amount of data that you can make the most out of that can only come from social media. For each platform, businesses can go to their settings and be able to see various data points of the kinds of people they’re able to reach. Does your audience have a certain majority towards a certain gender identity or is it more impactful to sort your audience by age groups? Are you more popular in certain locales beyond your HQ?
All the answers to your questions are only a few clicks away.
Responsive customer service
Because of the real-time nature of social media, your customers might take to the platform as a shortcut to reach you for any problems they might have. While having a website is a no-brainer, some customer interactions start on social media platforms where they don’t necessarily expect a direct answer. Having a robust social media management strategy allows you to not only prepare content for frequent concerns, but allows you a direct channel to immediately address customer questions.
Drive traffic to website
Using social media to link to your products in your site store is kind of the obvious answer here, but driving your users to your site also allows for your other content to reach more audiences. If you have thoughtful blog posts and other thoughtful insights about your niche posted on the site, you can use social media to give even some older content more life.
Your old advice is someone else’s new advice. Make the most out of your website by sending new visitors its way.
Cost-effective
Creating social media profiles are usually free along with some initial access to your audience’s data - with a slight learning curve to find those features. Social media management strategies are also much cheaper than full traditional marketing suites, and have the additional benefit of getting right in front of your target market much faster.
Social proof impacting content performance
Once you get a hand on responsive customer service and showcasing why you’re a lead in the industry, having a good social media management strategy builds on those values and continues to keep you informed on what style of marketing works the best for your brand. Your customers now think of your company first for the specific services you offer and new audiences that look at your platforms and website can continue establishing your credibility to assuage any concerns skeptics have enough to try your product for themselves. Having a social media management strategy ensures that you don’t fall off industry relevance and keeps you visible.
Regardless of where you are at in your existing content strategy, investing in social media management just positions your business for more gains with a lot less investment than a full content management suite. The benefits are definitely worth the learning curves, but the best part about it is - you don’t even have to do it yourself!
SPYCE Media understands that a social media management strategy can and should be scaled according to your business goals. If you already have social media profiles set up - or are starting from scratch, we can meet with you to develop how you can make the most out of social media to drive positive conversions into your brand.
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