Background: For startups and SMEs that are generally strapped for cash, social media marketing is an attractive option to spread brand awareness due to its inexpensiveness and efficiency. Debasis Pande explains in detail the benefits of social media marketing.

Do you want to grow your brand like never before? Or increase your brand’s recognition, traffic, and sales with little to no cost? Then social media is the best platform to leverage. About 90% of marketers claimed that social media generated immense exposure for their company. Social media is now a substantial part of every business’s marketing strategy, and the benefits of using social media are so great that anyone not implementing this cost-effective resource is missing out on a phenomenal marketing opportunity.

According to Social Media Examiner, about 96% of marketers are currently participating in social media marketing.

According to Hubspot 92% of marketers claimed that social media marketing was important for their business, with 80% indicating their efforts increased traffic to their websites and 72% of marketers are using social media to develop loyal fans.

Below are few benefits that your business will get by implementing a social media strategy.

1. Increase your brand awareness

Implementing a social media strategy for your business will greatly increase your brand recognition since you will be engaging with a wider audience compared to any traditional advertisement where you have to spend millions to reach out to a wider audience. Also, social media makes it easier and more accessible for new customers to find about your business and makes you more familiar and recognisable for existing customers. For example, when you tweet or post something on Facebook/Instagram about your new product launch, your customer will instantly come to know about it and will engage with your content. By investing only a few hours per week, over 91% of marketers claimed that their social media marketing efforts greatly increased their exposure.

2. Build a loyal customer base

Social media is the best platform to build your brand loyalty for free. Customers follow and interact with brands they enjoy. But what’s interesting is that 53% of customers who follow your business are likely to be loyal to your business specifically. If customers follow you, they are more likely to choose you versus your competition. Furthermore, if they’re loyal customers they will refer their friends as well.

Also read: Build your business’ social media presence with your smartphone

3. Grow your inbound traffic by 10x

Social media can help your business grow your traffic by sending customers directly to your website or store. With social media, you have an opportunity to acquire a new customer base. By marketing on social media, you can effectively open your business to a wider variety of versatile consumers all over the world. By not utilising social media as part of your marketing strategy, you’ll find it harder to reach out to anyone outside of your loyal customer circle.

4. Reduce your overall marketing costs

It’s free to create social media profiles and post organic content. Social media can deliver thousands of relevant clicks to your website at low costs, compared to other traditional marketing. Recent research indicates that social media advertising could be more than 10x cheaper than bidding on keywords through Google advertising. Social media marketing is possibly the most cost-efficient part of an advertising strategy. Being cost-effective is such an advantage because you can see a greater return on investment and retain a bigger budget for other marketing and business expenses.

5. Improve your sales 

Did you know that 70% of business-to-consumer marketers have acquired customers through Facebook? Or that 84% of CEOs and VPs say they use social media to help make purchasing decisions? With a great brand, website, and product or service, social media can dramatically impact your sales. With an effective social media marketing approach, your business can increase sales. However, it takes time and expertise to perfect a revenue-generating formula.

Also read: Expert social media tips for the modern entrepreneur

6. Offer better customer service

Social media is a great platform to interact and solve your customer problem with one to one communication that no other platform provides. Customers appreciate knowing that when they post comments on your page, they will receive a personalised response rather than an automated message. Every customer interaction on your business’s social media accounts is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate that you care about your customers. Customer satisfaction and brand loyalty go hand in hand. Loyal customers buy more from you, stays with you longer and tell their friends about you.

7. Increase word of mouth

The more engaged your customers are, the more likely they are to refer your product to a friend. In an article on why word of mouth is the most powerful form of social media, Kimberly Whitler indicates that 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising. Hubspot also researched this and found that 71% of people are more likely to purchase based on social media referrals.

8. Measure ROI of your marketing campaign easily

The reason why social media advertising is so effective is that you can track each and every metrics. Compared to the traditional advertisement, in social media marketing you can measure sales, website traffic, email subscriptions, how many people read and share your content and most importantly, what is the cost per acquisition.

9. Acquire new customer at much less cost

The customer-acquisition cost of social media marketing is much less than traditional outbound methods, such as cold calling, print, radio, and television commercials. According to Hubspot, inbound marketing leads cost 61% less than outbound.

10. Social media help you to beat your competitor

Social media is the best platform where you can actually beat your competitor by providing excellent customer service and by engaging with your customer with great content. Also, through the use of social media, you can gain more market share and compete with your competitors.

Are you ready to increase your sales, increase your brand awareness and get better ROI from your marketing campaign? Explore our social media marketing services today to get more leads, conversation, traffic and search engine ranking.

Also read: How to build your brand on social media

Image source: shutterstock.com

To explore business opportunities, link with me by clicking on the 'Invite' button on my eBiz Card.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, official policy or position of GlobalLinker.