Social media is the new go to advertising platform that businesses are swearing by. Over time, and as social media platforms across the board have proved that they are not a fad, many businesses now have budgets on how to reach the billions of people on social media.
Social media companies are making more money from marketing efforts such as advertising than the traditional advertising channels of TV, radio and print.
Here are some benefits that businesses gain from social media marketing.
1. Audience targeting
This is one of the greatest benefits that social media platforms have brought into the world of business. When a business sets up an advertisement on a social media platform, they indicate the profile of the person they want to view it. As a result, businesses can effectively reach their products’ target market.
Prior to social media, it was difficult for businesses to determine how well their advertisements were targeted and whether they reached the right audience.
2. Provides direct access to customers
Through social media platforms, business has a method to directly contact and stay in touch with their customers. Rather than going through other channels, a business can communicate directly to its customers if they have any new products, sales or any other news they would like to share.
3. Easy to measure the impact of your campaigns
With social media, it is quite easy and fast for a business to measure how well or poorly it did in its marketing campaigns. Social media platforms provide actual and real time numbers of the people engaging with your communication. You can get numbers of how many people responded to your call and clicked through or liked your post.
Other marketing and advertising methods such as TV or billboards inherently have this limitation. You cannot accurately tell how many people watched an advertisement on TV.
4. Build a community
Another benefit of social media is that businesses can easily build communities around their brands. Loyal customers can quickly and easily communicate with the world and the organization about their product. The company is in turn able to respond as soon as possible with the necessary information sought.
5. Much cheaper
Social media marketing is way cheaper than traditional methods of marketing. Most times it is free. With no costs involved, a business can easily inform their customers and the world at large of an offer happening at their locations via a simple post on the social media platforms.
Rather than take out a full-page advertisement on a newspaper or pay for expensive prime time on TV, social media has seen the reduction of previously high marketing costs.
6. Enhance customer loyalty
With social media businesses are able to speak directly to their customers. When a business is able to engage with its customers to ensure the best service and satisfaction with their services or products, they are able to improve loyalty of their customers.
With traditional media, it is quite difficult to have a one on one conversation with your customers as social media enables.
7. Can engage professionals for better results
IF as a business owner you do not feel confident of your skills marketing on social media, you can easily outsource this task to a social media management and marketing agency. Following your brief, they will set up your posts and help you build a community around your brand.
Marketing agencies will help you gain value from having a social media presence for your business.
Conclusion
Businesses can derive a lot of gain from social media. Marketing on social media is cheap and enables direct and quick communication between businesses and customers.