9 Benefits Of Advertising On Leading Social Media Sites

With an estimated 2.46 billion people worldwide now on social media sites, any business that doesn’t have a social media account is missing out on a great many potential interactions with its customers. Some business owners are put off by the time and resource effort needed to maintain a great social media account. However, affordable solutions like $99 Social mean that price and time can no longer be an excuse for not being on social media.

"Apart from organic social media, there is also social media advertising, which offers businesses a cost-effective way to increase awareness and reach a vast number of consumers. Still need convincing? We’ve detailed 9 benefits of advertising on social media sites to help win you over"

Increased Brand Recognition

Every business wants to get its name out there to as many potential customers as possible and social media sites offer a relatively easy way to do this. Your social media channels offer another way for you to spread your brand’s voice and content. It also makes it easier for new customers to access you, and can make you a familiar face on the market. For example, a regular Facebook user could stumble across your content for the first time and become a loyal customer, or an otherwise apathetic current customer may see your posts and become more of a convert thanks to relating to your brand.

Naturally, if you then sponsor your content in the form of sponsored tweets, suggested posts and text ads, you reach an even wider pool of consumers.

Better Brand Loyalty

Parallel to increased brand recognition comes improved brand loyalty. If you’re a regular presence on the market, your business may become a go-to for anyone looking for your particular products or services. A well thought out and open social media strategy can drastically build your following and turn your customers into your very own brand advocates.

Higher Brand Authority

Likewise, if you’ve got an active social media site that regularly interacts with your customers it shows your business off in a great light. Striking up a conversation with your customers not only build loyalty, but it shows your business cares and can help with customer retention. Any prospective customer that comes across your page will see this as well. The key here, however, is to have an active and up-to-date social media page. If not, you’ll come across as stagnant and uncaring. There are many low cost social media management solutions now available, including $99 Social which will manage your page for a flat fee of – you guessed it! - just $99.

If you’ve got a loyal following, you’ll also get mentioned by customers who may then recommend your product or service. Essentially that gives you some free advertising! The more people you’ve got talking about you on social media, the more trusted and valued your brand will be.

Again, you can take this a step further by advertising and driving more people to your social media site to see all the great content you’ve posted on it.

More Potential Conversions

Social media has a vast audience, offering you a great way to communicate with a great many of your target audience. Every post you make on social media offers an opportunity to reach and convert a customer. A well-built following will give you access to current, old and potential customers. Every bit of content you share could drive one of these followers to your website or company page and eventually make a sale.

More Traffic To Your Website

With a carefully thought out social media strategy, you can drive every single one of your followers to your website and vastly increase traffic. Without social media, you’re limited to users who either directly go to your website or find you on a search engine. However, with quality content posted regularly on your social media, you can lead a person to visit your site, especially if you include a link to your site within your post. The more posts you create, the more inbound traffic you’ll create, which could then produce more leads and eventual conversions.

Supercharged SEO

Good SEO is essential for ranking well on search engines, however the rules for successful SEO can change rapidly. It’s no longer good enough to blog regularly, have optimized title tags and meta descriptions (although these do help!). Search engines may now calculate their rankings with social media presences as a weighty influencer. This could be because many large companies with strong brands nearly always use social media. Being active on social media is therefore a good indicator to a search engine that your brand is legitimate and trustworthy.

Better ROI With Decreased Marketing costs

Marketing to a wide audience can be a costly affair which offers poor value in terms of ROI. However, with social media, you have the opportunity to reach a great many people, and fine tune campaigns to only target the people who’d be genuinely interested in your brand. With a good social media strategy, your ROI could potentially be far higher than other marketing channels. Paid advertising on social media sites is relatively cheap and you can always start small to test it out first.

Additionally, dedicate a few hours each week to building your organic content and audience, and you’ll reap great benefits in the long run.

Improved Customer Experiences

Every interaction you have on social media gives you an opportunity to showcase your customer service skills and develop your relationship with your customers. Obviously, this only works if your social media is monitored and well maintained. If a customer compliments you or your product, you can recommend relevant products or even send them a discount as a way to say thanks. Incidentally, if a customer complains to you, you can immediately address the issue and offer a public apology to show how much you care about your customers. It’s this kind of personal service that keeps a customer returning time and time again.

A More Detailed View Of Your Customers

When you speak to someone regularly, you build up a pretty good idea of what makes them tick. That’s also the case for social media. It offers a great opportunity to gain valuable insights on what interests your audience and how they behave. Advertising takes this one step further by opening up those insights beyond your organic audience. You can monitor how people respond to a specific campaign via their likes and comments. This helps you tweak and improve future campaigns to hopefully improve your ROI with every ad. Eventually, with enough monitoring, you’ll find the perfect combination to drive sales.