No matter how big or small your business, online marketing has become an extremely important aspect of it. And when there is talk about online marketing, Social Media Marketing automatically comes into the picture. It’s become a norm for companies to have accounts on various social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google + etc.
Why social media?
Take a look at why Social Media Marketing is now more of a necessity than an option:
Cost-effective
Any type of marketing is always an ongoing process. It needs constant attention and constant financial investment. This also means you’d have to ensure that the strategies you incorporate into your broader marketing strategy are cost-effective. The cost of maintaining various social networking accounts and hiring someone to ensure they are updated on a regular basis, doesn’t really involve huge expenses.
Effective
It’s one of the best ways to ensure that you are able to get word of your brand out there and expand your business reach. You can reach a very wide audience with very little effort and expenditure. What makes this medium even more effective is the fact that today; about 80 percent of small businesses tend to use social media. Of this number, 85 percent state that it’s given their business a significant amount of exposure.
Branding
For any business, branding is all-important and a large percentage of users choose to connect with brands via Twitter and Facebook. Even when people are making a purchase, they will take their decision based on what others on social media sites are saying. It’s also notable that almost 55% of interactions that Google + users have with a brand are typically positive.
Acquire customers
Over fifty percent of the global population is registered with one or the other social media platform. This also significantly ups your chances of acquiring new customers via various social media marketing methods.
Interact with customers directly
Customers can directly communicate with their prospective and existing customers via various social media sites. It’s not difficult for businesses to use methods like Q&A’s, polls etc to keep the communication lines open; this helps keep your customers closely connected with your brand.
Generating leads
Marketing surveys indicate that almost 75% of users on social media are more apt to buying services/products from brands they connect with via social media. On most social networking sites, the lead-to-close rate is almost 100%.
Marketing the smart way
When you take these stats into consideration, you realise that no matter which way you look at it, Social Media Marketing has become an essential and integral part of a small business marketing strategy. It’s the ideal way to connect with customers in a more effective manner, spread the word about your services and products and increase your sales & profitability.
The aspect to keep in view here is that while it may seem that social media marketing will be easy, there are a number of technicalities that only professionals will be able to deal with. The one way to ensure you get it right is to hire the services of a company that will be able to provide customised social media marketing solutions that will fit into your overall online marketing strategy.
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About the Author
Ben Fewtrell is a sought-after Business Coach, Keynote Speaker and trainer who has featured in Virgin’s Inflight Magazine and Entertainment Portal, SKY Business and “Secrets of Top Business Builders Exposed”. He is also the host of the popular Business Brain Food Podcast where he interviews leading experts on anything and everything business.