Social Media benefits for your business

Why you need to leverage Social Media to enhance your business

Social media is essential to get your company, products and services visible to the online world and your potential customers.

While young millennials are early adopters and leveraging every platform to their advantage, serious business owners might have dismissed social media as being irrelevant. This is a grave mistake!

This article explains why social media is a marketing tool to get brand exposure and engagement. We also break down why you don’t have to be a millennial to create a successful online presence for your company.

The power of Social Media

Nearly 90% of businesses say that social media helps to grow their business in terms of brand exposure and bringing in new sales.

According to “We Are Social” more than 4 billion people use the internet and that many of the sales are as a result of accessibility.

Smart devices make accessing online stores and interacting with various business social media pages like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram possible. It goes without saying that being able to complete your online purchase using your smart device just about anywhere in the world makes shopping so much easier.

In other statistics:

• There are also over 3 billion social media users making up around 40% of internet users
• More than 4 billion internet surfers making up more than 50% of the population
• More than 5 billion people are using smartphones and other mobile devices, making up over 60%
• There are over 2.5 billion online users who are active on social media via their mobile devices rounding up an estimate of more than 35%

In a further statistics check, it shows other devices play just as big a role in helping internet users connect online such as the following:

• Over 40% via home computers or laptops
• Over 50% via mobile phones
• Only 4% via mobile tablet devices
• And a low 0.13 by other devices such as gaming consoles

It’s crystal clear that having a strong, mobile-friendly online presence will definitely benefit the growth and success of your company.

While focusing on social media, it’s also very important to make sure that your company’s website and blog format are optimised to mobile devices.

What is you online presence saying about your business?

A strong social media presence is a big advantage for your business, and how you post and interact will affect your brand in a positive or negative light.

Your company’s social media profile also helps foster likability and trust. These elements are key for encouraging people to do business with you.

Some of the ways that social media nurtures your audience include:

• It shows your company is real. Authenticity cannot be underestimated
• It helps your prospects learn more about what you offer
• Social Media encourages engagement and conversation
• Viewers can learn how you can solve their problems and how much they need your brand
• It builds a psychological dependence on your product (people don’t want to miss out)
• You gain the opportunity to answer questions real-time

Essential benefits of social media for your business:

• Stand a better chance against your competition

Your competitors are all online, marketing their products, interacting with viewers, generating leads and the works. This is more than enough reason why your business should get social and establish a strong online presence.

Larger businesses are already established online and they would have already established a strong online presence. While some smaller businesses may resort to social media because it is affordable and allows them to post adverts, larger businesses can use it to its full extend financially.

However, when you don’t properly plan your social media channels and create a strategy, as a small business owner, you may not yield the remarkable results you thought you would. Not knowing what to do with your social media marketing can make things a whole lot more challenging.

For this reason, many business owners elect a marketing agency to take control of the reins and help to establish their business online presence more efficiently. A trusted marketing agency will do the hard work online for you.

• Build your brand awareness and loyalty

When running a business, loyalty from your customers is quite crucial, because the same loyalty will help advertise via word of mouth.

If you’ve managed to build a strong online presence, current and potential customers will relate to your business and products and will trust your brand over that of your competitors.

What’s more is that when your brands is flourishing, you can provide your visitors with the information they need about your business without forcing a sale. This adds customer value and leads to retention.

• It gets you noticed

Just like with brand awareness, once you’ve managed to establish your social media presence, you may even have your very own online community following you. Once word is out, people might begin to recognise your company’s name in other areas and you could reach a larger market or audience in this way.

• Beneficial and affordable

Making use of social media to channel sales and promote your business as a whole is very affordable. It is also a much cheaper way to advertise as opposed to creating a whole website for your brand.

When you get a good marketing agency to support your social media efforts, they will know what aspects to focus on and target. This will put your investment to good use, as hiring professionals to help build your brand will improve your marketing strategy even more.

• Return on your investment

As mentioned in the previous point, when investing in social media, you can be certain that with the proper actions and strategies in place, your business can reap a good ROI.

Social media takes time, effort and lots of patience, which can be a difficult thing to achieve on your own, especially if you’re not sure, what to look for.

A statistic shows over 70% of businesses gain their customers through Facebook marketing. That’s a staggering number, but true even based on the previous mentioned percentages that state how many people use social media and access online companies via their mobile phones.

• Engage, engage, engage

Engagement is a big deal these days because it allows for that interaction and level of trust between you and your visitors. Facebook opens the doors to engage your viewers by promoting adverts, which inform your viewers about what you have to offer.

At the same time, you can answer your customer’s questions by addressing their queries and allowing for commenting within your Facebook page.

Google also allows people to give feedback about a business, so if your brand is well known and established, this will allow them to engage by sharing their positive experience.

• Social media marketing is unique

In the old days, you couldn’t really engage with someone without it being over the phone or in person but social media and the internet has helped make interaction with customers even easier.

At the end of the day, you can grow your network and community online and establish a sense of trust. Besides, there are times those comments, and question sessions become so popular, they could bring in more traffic, not to mention more recognition for your business and brand.

• Easy way to channel people to your product

Let’s face it, using social media networks is an easy way to speak to your audience and to market your products. It’s also a good way you can really showcase your shiny reputation by displaying those great feedbacks and customer reviews.

The Takeaway

It’s without a doubt that social media, even though seemingly simple, is a strong means of publication and brand growth.

All businesses should be be active on social media because to compete in the marketing world, this is going to be one of your strongest trump cards.

If you haven’t established social media channels for your business yet, then it’s high time you start making a move.

With the right marketing agency on your side, you can create a stronger online presence even if you’re starting out small. With time you can continue to grow your brand and your business popularity online and create better leads.

Remember, social channels are affordable, great investments, and very beneficial to businesses of all sizes!