Importance of Social Media Marketing
Have you ever wondered why there are so many advertisements when you are using any social media platform like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, and many others? Not only this you also see advertisements on any online platform whether it’s a website, blog, any type of application or a game. What do these advertisements depict? This is Social Media Marketing (SMM).
Social Media Marketing or SMM is a marketing strategy that makes use of social media and other online platforms to promote one’s business. It helps small business owners to convey their services and products on a larger scale to increase their customers, sales and grow their business. No wonder, social media is becoming a large platform for people to do marketing. As more people will be oriented towards using social media instead of watching TV or reading print media, so will the marketing trend be.
The most used, reliable and user favorite social media platforms include:
· YouTube
Why SMM?
Some of the reasons why social media marketing is important and becoming more predominant day by day are following:
Cost Effective
With social media marketing, one needs a very small budget for promotion as compared to the budget needed for print marketing.
Less Manpower and Resources
In print marketing, the person needs more manpower, resources for printing, distribution of advertisement. But a person can do social media marketing totally on his own with minimum assistance.
Time Efficient
While print marketing requires time for advertisements to reach an audience, collect their feedback and response and observe if the people are availing themselves of the services of a company, social media marketing concentrates all these aspects on a single click. Ever seen the link to the shop at the bottom of advertisements?
Business Promotion
Social media marketing is the best option for people who are launching their brand. With this, one can customize their audience depending on the interests of the people. The person who is searching for relevant products and services will be shown your advertisement on their respective social media platform. In this way, more people having interest in the services your company is providing will be drawn to you
Brand Growth
For the brands that are struggling with their targets and trying to grow, social media marketing is a blessing. Because nowadays, most of the people are on at least one of the major social media platforms and this makes the fact that they are already in touch with it. Brands do not have to convey their publicity manually to the consumers. Their advertisements will automatically pop up on consumers’ accounts and in this way, more people will know about your brand and that increases the chances of sales.
Improvement in Customer Service
Luckily, various social media platforms allow the option of like, share and comment. Through this, the brand can learn the interests of the people. Moreover, people also share their feedback about the products or services of brands in the comment section. If this feedback is positive, it attracts more audience as a lot of people rely on the experience of other people about a product. If negative, it will help the brand improve their products and services to match the interest of people.
Builds Brand Trust and Originality
If the people are satisfied with your services, it builds the trust of customers on your brand. They are most likely to get their products from you every time they need it. Moreover, they will also attract more audience for your brand based on their user experience. Ever seen social media influencers promoting to use a specific product?
Increasing Traffic
When a brand gives the link of its website or online store with the advertisement, it’s most likely that people will follow the link even if they are not meant to buy anything. It increases the traffic of the website. There are also chances that people will buy something if they like the product and its ratings and reviews. Not only in online stores, traffic can also be increased on other websites and blog posts. It is done by giving the people a catchy phrase in the text with its link. People tend to open it to learn more that will increase the website traffic.
Brand Discovery
Social media marketing also helps related brands discover each other. In this way two or more brands can work together to promote themselves with combined efforts and goals and reach more audience.
While the worldwide trend of media is shifting progressively towards electronic media and most importantly, social media, it is most probable that marketing trends will follow the same. Maybe in the coming decades we’ll never see any advertisements in newspapers, flyers and brochures!