The Pros of Social Media Marketing
When it comes to social media marketing, there are two ways you can advertise your business: through regular organic posts and paid social ads. Both organic and paid social media marketing strategies have their benefits and are typically used in tandem for a more competitive strategy.
Before we dive into the pros of social media marketing, it is important that you understand the differences between organic and paid social media marketing so you can better develop your strategy.
Organic social media marketing is anything that happens on your page that is not a paid promotion. Organic social typically includes posting regular content and staying engaged with your followers or other companies without putting any money behind it.
Organic social media marketing is similar to SEO because it is a cost effective, long-term strategy, meaning you don’t need to have a large budget to get started. For many businesses it is a great way to start building your social media marketing strategy and brand. Although it takes longer to see results, organic posting is vital for your overall social media marketing strategy because it helps you maintain your following, nurture new followers into customers and increase your validity.
Paid social media marketing is anything that is influenced by money spend on advertising. Paid social ads are meant to build on your existing strategy to reach more customers. Similar to paid search ads, social media ads are meant for driving revenue and achieving short term marketing goals.
Both of these social media marketing strategies are typically used in tandem because social media posts are no longer shown to users in chronological order. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn all have algorithms that show posts based on user behavior and preferences instead which means your organic posts might not reach your followers if they do not seem relevant to your followers’ usual behavior and engagement. Although your page may have 10,000 followers, if your posts are not relevant to their typical patterns or your strategy is not competitive, you may only be reaching about 200 of your followers a day.
With more than 4.5 billion people using social media in 2020, you do not want to miss out on the advertising opportunities that are available. Whether you choose an all organic strategy or decide to incorporate ads too, there are many potential pros of social media marketing for your brand.
Let’s go over each element.
(Learn More. Take a look at some of the best and most popular sites for social media marketing in 2020.)
Pros of Social Media Marketing
Increased Traffic and Reach
Without social media marketing, your inbound traffic can be limited to your usual customers. Utilizing social media helps you reach the people outside your loyal customer circle. Having social media accounts on different platforms can also help you reach a wider range of demographics. The best part is that you are able to use social media to drive traffic directly to your site.
There are opportunities for users to find your page naturally via organic social media methods like shares and hashtags, as well as ways for you to reach them through social media ads.
Using social media marketing, you open up your business to a wider variety of consumers who might not be using the same keywords that you are targeting with SEO to find your products. With the use of hashtags as well, you can reach even more people on your social media platforms without even paying for an ad.
Increased Conversions and Revenue
If you are increasing your reach and traffic using social media, your opportunity for increased revenue and conversions goes up as well. Social media has been known to have a huge impact on buying decisions with about 76% of American consumers purchasing a product after seeing a post from that brand.
Each post, photo, video, comment or ad you post on your social media accounts leads viewers to your businesses profile or website. Conversions depend on your goals, however, some might include increasing followers, email subscriptions, or just generating traffic to your site.
Your end goal will most likely be a purchase, but all the small steps in between can help catch the user’s attention and bring you one step closer to your goals. Investing in social media marketing where people share, like and post about brands that they love can only improve your conversions and increase revenue.
Increased Link Building Opportunities
Another important advantage of social media marketing is that it can have an indirect impact on SEO through link building. For example, if you post a blog on your site and share it on your social media page, some of your followers might find that content useful and might include it in their own content as a link back to you. The increased reach you have using social media makes this even more possible and can help with growing your business online, organically.
Search engines will notice that your content has been linked back to and hopefully rank your post higher than your competition. If you are already using social media, maybe now is a good time to start promoting your posts on more platforms.
Increased Branding Opportunities
One of the greatest benefits of social media marketing is the many brand opportunities. Social media is among the most cost-effective ways to increase your brand’s visibility. Using organic posts can help build your social media profile to build brand awareness, while paid social ads can help you build brand recognition among people who do not already follow you. Interacting with customers will help you build your reputation and shared posts can help you reach potential customers or leads. Not to mention the fact that brand recognition is also valuable in the search engine results page (SERP). Customers who become aware of your brand via social media marketing are more likely to click on your business’s page if they recognize it within the SERP.
In addition to making your brand more visible to followers and non-followers, social media also provides opportunities for increasing your brand authority. Whether you want to be known as the expert on a topic or the best place to buy a specific product, social media is another way you get to build your authority as a brand. A brand with a deep knowledge of their product is extremely valuable for shoppers.
Another one of the pros of social media marketing: Sharing the content on your social media page that makes your brand or its products unique and reliable will entice users to want to learn more. Making them more likely to become a customer.
Building brand loyalty is another advantage of social media marketing for your business. Customers typically follow and interact with brands that they enjoy. What is great about social media is that 53% of customers who follow you are likely to be loyal to your company specifically. Brand loyalty is important because it means followers are more likely to buy from you rather than your competition. They will also help increase your traffic and revenue through shares and purchases.
Increased Customer Satisfaction
Another important advantage of social media marketing is increased customer satisfaction. Not only is it much quicker than customer service phone calls and emails, it is also a great place to gather customer feedback and establish a relationship with your followers. Whether you are listening to feedback or addressing a specific customer concern, you are able to provide quick answers and build trust and demonstrate transparency with your customers.
Interacting with your customers allows you to inform them about products, promotions and more and it is all free. Through social media you can build a bond with your followers and potential customers which is important when it comes to boosting confidence in your brand and turning leads into customers. When it comes to social trust, 39% of customers say they only trust brands they have interacted with on social channels, so it is important for businesses to stay connected.
You also have the opportunity to learn from your followers and to make improvements on your products or services, so it is important to stay connected with your audience on your social platforms to better improve your business.
Social Media is Low Cost
One of the greatest pros of social media marketing is that it is relatively low cost. Just making your account, posting, sharing and commenting is all free for your business. If you take the all organic marketing route, your social media marketing is free unless you have hired a marketing team or customer service team to manage it.
With ads, how much you spend depends entirely on your set budget. And it depends on which platforms you decide to focus on, but the average cost of social media advertising ranges from a few hundred dollars to tens-of-thousands. These amounts include advertising on more than one network as well as expenses like technology, talent and management.
Many social media platforms have a range of minimum ad spends depending on if you want clicks, impressions, likes or conversions. There are also several bid types that are available depending on the platform such as, cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM), cost-per-like (CPL), cost-per-action (CPA) and more.
Whether you decide to use organic or paid ads, as you can see the many pros of social media marketing for your business. Use your organic posts to focus on your existing customers, while incorporating paid ads to reach new leads and build brand recognition. With this low-cost, high ROI marketing method you can extend your reach beyond the SERP and better communicate with your customers.
Learn More
Contact our digital paid media marketing team to learn more about the pros of social media marketing and advertising. We can help guide you to better business success with resources and expert ad strategies.