We’ve all felt pressure at one time or another to have our business be visible and active on social media. Yet posting updates, advertising, and engaging with your audience on social media platforms takes time and resources you could be spending elsewhere. It’s common for small business owners to wonder what they’ll get for their social media marketing investment.
If you’ve ever doubted the power of social media, this blog post is for you. Let’s dive into five solid benefits of social media marketing to convince you it’s worth taking the plunge.
5 Benefits of Social Media Marketing
#1 Being active on social media drives visibility
According to the Pew Research Center, seven in ten U.S. adults use social media today (2021). For the vast majority of businesses, your target market is part of that group. Among all the benefits (particularly for small businesses), being active where the majority of consumers are will
- improve your brand awareness,
- increase the perception of your authority, and
- boost web traffic.
#2 Being active on social media keeps your business top of mind
Our human brains can only remember so much. Whether it’s deciding what we want for takeout tonight, or where we want to take friends who are visiting from out of town, our minds go to what we remember most—not necessarily what we’d enjoy most.
Being consistent on social media helps keep your brand top of mind, with quick “brand recall,” so when consumers think of a service or product in your industry they’ll think of you before your competitors.
#3 Being active on social media drives conversions
Social media marketing does a ton of the legwork turning consumers into warm leads, even if it often doesn’t always get credit as the direct source. Two recent studies done by Facebook showed that 81% of Instagram users research products or services on the platform, and 80% use it to decide whether to purchase a product or service.
Although organic (unpaid) social media content generally has a low conversion rate—averaging 0.71%—the example below shows how it can be an unsung hero in influencing conversions. Analytics help us peek under the hood to see how social media is building brand awareness (organic reach and page views), building a following of subscribers to future content (new fans), and how much content is resonating with our audience (engagement rate).
And as shown below, paid social media content (such as Facebook ads) has even stronger conversion rates—largely due to the ability to target specific audiences with paid content. Paid content delivers direct ROI (website conversions and landing page views) that we can track, in addition to influencing conversions in other ways that it doesn’t get credit for (similar to unpaid social media content).
#4 Being active on social media gives credibility to your business
Being active on social media gives credibility to your brand by showing that you are actively—and currently—in business, engage with your customers, and collaborate with other businesses (by using “tags” and “mentions”).
Consumers are 71% more likely to purchase based on social media referrals, so having content and a profile or page that social media users can share from opens the door to new audiences.
#5 Being active on social media builds your audience
Being active on social media is going to naturally expand your “reach”—the number of people who see your page and read your content. When you create engaging content and engage with other brand’s content, it builds your following. And as existing fans start introducing you to people within their network by sharing your content, this builds your reach and engagement even more—effectively allowing your investment in social media marketing to build on itself.
Where will you go from here?
Are you encouraged to start marketing your business on social media, but not sure where to start? We recommend exploring which social media platforms are best for your business.
Or have you been dipping a toe in social media and aren’t sure where the results are? Partnering with a marketing agency can help in two ways:
- By refining your strategy and improving your content
- By digging deeper into your analytics and interpreting the data to see what’s really working and show you where the gold is
We can help with either of these paths forward. If you’re ready to begin or expand your venture into social media marketing and you’d like a solid partner to walk that path with your brand, set up a no-cost, no-obligation exploratory call with us to talk through the possibilities.
Key Takeaways
- Social media marketing includes posting updates, advertising, and engaging with your audience on social media platforms.
- Being active on social media helps build your brand awareness, increase visibility to new audiences, and stay top of mind.
- Social media marketing builds new business by growing your fan base, showing credibility to interested customers, and driving traffic to your website (or other places you’d like your customers to take action).
- Many small business owners feel stuck when it comes to social media marketing, because they either don’t know where to begin, or they don’t know how to uncover the ROI under the hood. That’s where partnering with a marketing agency can take you to the next level.
Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels
