How Can Social Media Help Your Business Marketing

Despite its many advantages, social media is often still overlooked by a wide range of businesses. It seems that the medium of social media itself has become associated with a fickle audience, along with a quick and extremely temporary boost to a business' performance and its brand popularity.

Perhaps one of the major reasons behind this is due to the fact that social media itself exploded in popularity during the early days. What was once regarded as a passing trend is now an integral part of people's lives, with which they engage on a daily basis. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google + and Instagram have all continued to go from strength to strength, and they seemingly attract new users with every passing second.

Now, millions of people are taking advantage of these services to engage with their friends and family, share pictures and content that they find interesting, interact with businesses in a personal and public way. From the perspective of a business, or a marketer, this is a massive opportunity.

As a forum for marketing, social media is unparalleled and is easily the most exploitable for intelligent businesses. Social media has other advantages over alternative forms of advertising as well, including its incredible impact, low price tag and, surprisingly, longevity.

The Advantages Of Social Media For Your Marketing Campaigns

Lower Marketing Costs

When you're talking business, you've got to think about every component of your efforts. You need to weigh up the cost, including both time and money, with the overall benefits. If you're a small business, with a limited workface and a smaller budget, this is extremely important.

By choosing to invest as little as six hours a week into you social media activities, you can start to see a huge increase in the amount of traffic that arrives at your site. It is good practice to assign a small budget to both your Facebook and Twitter accounts, but these budgets can be relatively inexpensive when compared to the returns that you will expect to see.

Heightened Brand Awareness

Simply, social media is another avenue for your brand to be viewed by your audience. Every single time someone sees your brand in a positive light, or engages with it in anyway, your company will benefit. By running an effective and, above all, co-ordinated social media campaign, you will be able to increase your exposure to your target audience and you will give them an easy way to follow your developments.

More Loyalty From Customers

Increased brand awareness will also provide the added benefit of allowing your customers to engage directly with your company. This added engagement will increase the likelihood that your customers keep returning to you, instead of switching to one of your competitors.

Increased Likelihood Of Conversions

Every time a visitor engages with your company, you are creating a new opportunity for conversion. This might not mean that every single click on your social media profile will instantly convert into a loyal customer, but it can be a fantastic way of creating new customers and introducing a new audience to your products/services.

Humanise Your Brand

One of the major advantages of social media is that it allows your marketing efforts to actually humanise your brand. As a forum where people go to interact and engage with others, to share views and inspirational content, your brand can mimic this approach when you create blog posts and make conversation with potential customers.

@jasonchunkypie That's good to hear Jason. Did you enjoy it? Danny.
— Sainsbury's (@sainsburys) July 10, 2015

After all, people prefer to engage with people, rather than some distant, faceless brand. It also gives you the opportunity to build its creativity. That more followers that you have on a social media platform, the more likely it is that your users will view your brand as a trustworthy and reliable authority.

Increased Traffic And SEO Improvements

Through social media, you can make your major eCommerce website visible to a wider audience of people. If you produce or post high quality content on your site, then you will definitely increase the amount of traffic that arrives at your site. The more traffic that you receive, the greater the likelihood of rewarding conversions.

Social media and social signals are also one of the most effective means of increasing your site's SEO. If you are engaging with your customers on a regular basis, then it is likely that they are going to feel satisfied when it comes to your service. This means that your site is more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Visible Customer Service

Social Media enables you to engage with your customers in a way that no other avenue can. The public nature of social media, like Facebook and Twitter means that if someone makes a complaint via Twitter, you can publicly address the issue. Even if the problem cannot be instantly solved, ensuring that your customers see that you are working on the issue is essential to building trust when it comes to your site.

@nikkijhayes It looks very plain! Pop the packaging back to store and we will get this refunded and replaced right away! Zak
— Asda Service Team (@AsdaServiceTeam) July 9, 2015

The Benefits Of Social Media For Your eCommerce Website

Here at Advansys, we are dedicated providing complete eCommerce websites and solutions to help you make the most of the exciting opportunities that the internet has to offer. No modern business can afford to ignore the free and long-lasting advantages offered by social media.

For more information, get in touch with our experienced digital marketing and web design team today on 0845 838 2700, or email us directly at sales@advansys.com.