4 Reasons Why Your Business Needs A Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media is an integral part of our everyday life. It has become a necessity for most people in this world, and it should be a key component to any business’s marketing plan. With over 2.8 billion active users on Facebook, 1 billion on Instagram, and 740 million on LinkedIn, it is no wonder why using social media platforms is a great way to engage, connect, and generate leads.

Since social media accounts for such a large percentage of people’s daily activity, when utilized with the user in mind, it can be an incredibly powerful tool in growing a business. In this blog post, I will discuss the importance of social media in your marketing plan and how you can use it effectively to grow your business!

1. Builds Brand Awareness & Engagement

Social media proves to be a powerful tool when it comes to growing your brand awareness. It provides a way for you to share your message with the masses, and can also be used as an important marketing tactic. Since social media is so popular among people of all ages, it will allow you to reach more potential customers who might not otherwise know about your business!

Sounds simple, right? Post and engage with your audience on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and then suddenly the crowd rolls in… Not so simple, but incredibly invaluable.

According to Sprout Social, 2021, “57% of consumers will follow a brand to learn about new products or services, while 47% will follow to stay up to date on company news.”

You need a strong brand awareness strategy before you just jump in all willy-nilly. Posting content to your social media accounts that are not goal oriented, engaging, and packed with value will lead to your audience being not only confused, but uninterested.

What are your goals on social media?

Who is your audience?

What do you want your audience to know about your business?

Here are a list of ways to boost your brand on social media:

• Be personable and be vulnerable; this will allow you to stand out from others in your niche. People don’t care to see your robotic promos and offers. However, when you tie them into human-centric content that is story driven, they are more likely to buy in. Remember, “personal” is the keyword here!
• Make your profiles shine. At a single glance at any of your profiles, people should know pretty quickly what you are all about. You only have a few seconds to grab someone’s attention, so make sure your profile is deliberate, tells a story, and is optimised with easy to follow links.
• Make your posts POP! By creating eye-catching content you will have much more engagement.
• Tag others to encourage engagement.
• Use hashtags and even create your own as a way to reinforce your identity. Tip: If you are just starting out don’t just use high traffic hashtags (over 1 million followers), also sprinkle in some mid and low range tags. The way I like to use hashtags is by using 2 personal hashtags, 8 high traffic, 10 mid traffic, and 10 low traffic.
• Comment creatively on other’s posts to start a conversation, but to also show your personality.
• Use variety in your posts to keep them from going stale.
• Post valuable information such as case studies with well designed infographics.
• Don’t be afraid to be opinionated, this will help draw in the type of audience you seek.
• Show up consistently. Know the best days and times to post. I use Hootsuite to pre-schedule all of my posts, but there are many social media schedulers to choose from.

2. Lead Magnet and Leverage Organic Advertising (it’s free!)

For brands looking to engage their customers beyond awareness and engagement, social media lead generation is the next step. Collecting leads on social media will help you find people who are interested in your company, while staying engaged with them through offers or news updates.

Collecting leads through social media will also help you start to figure out the type of people who are interested in what your company has to offer.

Here’s how:

• Offer a lead magnet, which is an item that can be redeemed for free after signing up with your email and successfully completing the tasks in the offer. This includes social media contests, discount codes, giveaways with optional shares on Facebook or Twitter to get more attention from friends of followers.
• Post engaging content that drives traffic to your website

Here’s the cool thing about social media used as a lead magnet…it saves money on advertising! In fact, Optimonster, 2021 found that, “39% of B2B professionals said social selling reduced the amount of time they had to spend researching potential leads.”

Keep in mind that while this does save money on advertising, it certainly does take time as well. In another study, Optinmonster found that “66% of marketers that spend at least 6 hours on social media per week have gotten more leads.” With this statistic in mind, it may be a great idea to hire a professional social media marketer to manage and drive traffic for your business.

Organic marketing through your social media is a free way to promote your products, services, and offers. While this is a free way to sell and promote, it can also be very time consuming and we all know that “time is money.”

How much time, you ask? Well that all depends on how important it is for you to obtain free and organic leads.

As a brand, you can expect that these are the people who are engaging with your content:

• Your followers’
• Your followers’ followers (if people choose to share your post)
• Those who follow the hashtags that you use

While organic marketing is cost-effective, unless you are committed to having a strong, genuine, engaging, and consistent social media presence, paid advertising may be your best option.

3. Paid Advertising

In a study done by Hootsuite, 2021, it was found that 27% of internet users say they find new products and brands through paid social ads, and this percentage goes up when looking at only ages between 16 to 24. Hootsuite also found that Instagram statistics show that “92% of the users report that they have followed a brand, clicked on a website, or made a purchase after seeing a product/service on the platform…” That is nearly every instagram user!

As far as Facebook goes, Hootsuite, 2020 found that “The average organic reach for a Facebook post is 5.17% of a page’s likes, while the average paid reach is 28.1%. It is also important to know that “the average Facebook user has clicked 12 ads in the last 30 days.”

With the growing popularity of social media platforms, it has become increasingly

difficult to successfully market a business on one platform. In 2020, YouTube generated 5 billion dollars in advertising revenue and with over 2 million monthly active users, it is the second largest search engine (under Google). YouTube is not only an important search engine but also a popular social media network for businesses looking to grow their brand awareness and obtain leads. YouTube’s video content is not only far more engaging than any other type, but also has the ability to blast a business’s ad on content specific videos, ensuring that the targeted audience sees it. (Sprout Social, 2021)

One of the main reasons that paid advertising can be so effective is because it allows businesses to target specific demographics in order to promote what they are selling to a large and target audience outside of their organic reach. What is even more appealing about paid advertising is that it allows businesses to collect data about the types of people and key words that are used to entice those who “click.”

The downside to paid advertising is, well… That costs money. However, a good advertising campaign should pay for itself while providing valuable insights in order to run a retargeting ad campaign. The purpose of a retargeting campaign is to re-engage users who showed interest by “clicking” on the offer, but then leaving the landing page before making a purchase. Pretty cool, huh?

Data is king.

4. Use Social Media as a Learning Tool

Social media is a great way to learn about your audience. When you create a strategy that encourages the audience you are selling to, you are able to better understand how to make your content more relevant, and therefore find more engaging ways to promote and sell your product(s) or service(s).

When leveraged in the right way, your social media can be a powerful lead magnet.

At this point it should be pretty clear why social media is an important way for you to promote your business, but before you start creating and sharing content, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Don’t spam!
• Consider your own habits. How do you use social media? What content do you like to see? What interests you?
• Don’t create content or make comments that you wouldn’t like.
• Always provide value.
• Take your followers into consideration by reminding yourself that your social feed is for them, not for you.

Oh, and one more thing before I go… Put your social media content where your mouth is… In other words, if you show up preaching high quality content, produce it! Otherwise, you may as well not show up at all!

Don’t believe me, then check this out: “The top four reasons consumers will unfollow a brand on social media are poor quality of product or support (49%), poor customer service (49%), irrelevant content (45%) and too many ads (45%).” (Sprout Social, 2021)

Mic drop.

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Contact Finn Local Marketing to learn how I can create engaging and lead generating content for your business’s social media!

OR

Book a FREE brand strategy with Finn HERE.

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“There are three types of people, those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who are wondering what just happened.” -Neil Patel