One of the most frequently asked questions I get from business owners when it comes to social media is why they should even bother with marketing their business on socials. After all, it takes a lot of additional effort and if you are not familiar with these platforms, it may seem like a daunting task.
That is why in my first episode of the Let's Talk Socials podcast, I want to answer the question "Why should I market my business on social media?"
If you prefer to listen to the episode instead of reading the written version, click on the player below!
Here are my top 5 reasons why YOU should use social media marketing for your business:
1) Reach & traffic:
If you have a business and you offer great services or have awesome products, you obviously want others to know about them. So, reach & website traffic are really important goals for your business and you can achieve them with social media marketing!
I mean, think of this: Facebook has 2.8 billion (1) and Instagram has 1 billion (2) monthly active users. I found a statistic that said that in New Zealand (that is where I am based in case you didn’t know), there had been an increase in social media users of 2.8% between 2020 and 2021 alone (3). That means, as a New Zealand business, there are now 110,000 more potential clients on these platforms. Just try to imagine how many people you can reach with your content!
2) Cost-effectiveness:
The second reason why I love social media marketing is that it is very cost-effective.
On all social media platforms, you can open an account for free and you don’t need to spend any money on ads if you don’t want to. Organic growth is still very much a thing in 2021!
It might take a little longer compared to when you are paying for ads but you can still grow and get new clients from social media – for free! So you should definitely take up this opportunity!
Plus, it’s easier to target the right people compared to traditional types of marketing. If you hand out flyers in your neighbourhood, you have no idea what people do with those flyers after they receive them. Whereas with social media marketing (& digital marketing in general), you get a lot of information on what your audience does. You know what content they like, you know how many people tapped through to your website, you know how many people & how long they watched your video, etc. So, because it is so easy to target the right people & analyse your results, you end up wasting less money and you reach people that are your ideal clients.
3) Data & market research:
If you don’t do social media marketing, you simply miss out on a lot of data that you can use to do market research. With your social media presence, you can get to know your audience better. Something that I do very frequently is I ask my followers on Instagram for feedback. In this way, I can understand their needs better & serve them better.
You can also gather new ideas from your audience. When I posted about the in-person workshops that I am giving here in the area, a lot of overseas followers told me that they would love to access the content too which gave me the idea to launch it as an online course.
Without them telling me about this, I would have never thought of doing that!
And lastly, you can not only learn about your audience but also about your competitors. You can analyse what works for them, what kind of feedback they are getting and use it as a competitive advantage.
4) Building trust:
The online space is sometimes a bit sketchy and there are a lot of scammers out there, unfortunately. So it’s really important that your audience starts to trust you because otherwise they won’t hire you or buy your products. And a great way to do that is with social media marketing. You can show them your day-to-day life, the behind-the-scenes of your business, and show your personality. This is probably my favourite reason to do social media marketing.
5) Customer service & crisis management:
Lastly, social media can act as an additional layer of customer support and it can help you manage a crisis (however big or small it may be) more effectively.
People nowadays, especially younger people, expect to almost receive instant replies to their inquiries. In a recent study, it was found that 55% of Instagram users expect a reply to their message within 3 hours (4).
So, that gives you an idea of the time frames that people expect nowadays. With social media marketing, you can make sure that these expectations are met.
We are currently living in a time with restrictions and lockdown which means that you really need to communicate with your customers on different channels. And the easiest way to do that is via social media. What costs you more time? Calling all of your clients that had appointments to let them know you have to cancel or posting about it on your socials for everyone to see? I think the answer is pretty clear.
There are many more reasons why I love social media marketing & if you want to learn more about how to use social media marketing for your business, I highly recommend my newest online course The Social Media Basics for Business course.
Listen to this blog post on my social media podcast Let's talk Socials on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
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