According to a recent research conducted by HubSpot, 90% of marketers confirm that using social media for marketing purposes has exponentially increased both business and brand exposure. Another research points out that 66% of marketers that spend a total of 6 hours on social media each week achieve more leads. These statistics are promising and they will only get better when you plan a proper social media marketing plan.
Data such as the above keeps changing because there are new analytics to hit, new ways that social platforms are being used and there’s also the evolving needs and interests of target groups. Changing your social media marketing plan to evolve with these changing needs are extremely crucial to ensure that you stay consistent in the hearts and minds of your audience and fans.
There’s no way that you can run a business nowadays without some form of a social media plan put together. In fact, not having any kind of social media platform means you are missing out on potential and highly targeted audiences.
Here are some ways that you can use social media marketing to increase your ROI and sales.
The truth is, any form of communication to the masses whether it’s a video or a press release, helps increase sales and ROI, but with social media, you get more than that. It’s one of the ways digital marketing agencies such a https://elkhq.com/ uses. Here are some stats- 70% of B2C businesses mention that they have acquired new customers via Facebook, and at least 84% of VPs and CEOs make purchasing decisions based on what they see on social media.
Apart from increasing brand presence, social media helps influence customer purchasing decisions at different entry points of the funnel. Blog targeting at the top of the funnel, amplifying white papers or answering customer questions, addressing their pain points, and incentivizing coupon codes.
Think about it- when you want to purchase something, what do you do first? You look it up on Google and click on the first three websites that sell the items you are looking for. What do you do next? You go to Instagram and look for reviews, or YouTube to see tutorials and unboxing videos or to Facebook to see any comments or posts on the product you want. Through social media, you have a channel to reach and connect with the type of customers that are looking for content related to the product you sell. Using social media can help you reach out to these customers because they are looking for the solutions you provide. Even if they are not familiar with your company, they will purchase your products if it will help them solve the problems they have.
By joining Facebook groups, answering Quora questions, interacting on Reddit even- all of these provide perfect opportunities to showcase your expertise in the subject and show your leadership in the industry. Doing this regularly will result in your answers showing up on Google searchers and on other social platforms, which means other users will retweet and reshare your posts or refer them to friends and colleagues. These new leads will create better traction on your site and increase sales—all of this just by answering a few questions online. Your potential target will view you as a reliable source and will be more open to trying your products and services.
Learning how to use social media ads is an important element in social media marketing. When you boost the right posts on your social media, you attract better and more traffic at a fraction of what it would cost you to run Google ads. Google AdWords, as of 2018, costs $1.20 per click for travel and tourism and up to $5.27 for employment and education. You could be paying up to $50 or more depending on the keywords you target. This cost per acquisition is the amount of money brands spend on ads to get one single customer is huge. Here are some of the most expensive Google AdWords keywords:
“Press release distribution” = $29 per click
“Divorce attorney” = $31 per click
“Cloud computing” = $72 per click
“Car insurance brokers” = $21 per click
“Solar installation” = $11 per click
Using boosted posts, you have better control over how and when your messages can be promoted. It also means you can spend your marketing budget strategically by focusing on posts that matter the most to your followers. Targeted boosted posts on social media can send traffic to Pinterest and Facebook for as little as $0.12 per click, and you get ten times more traffic than you get from AdWords. Social media advertising is also slightly cheaper than conventional advertising methods yet it brings in the highest sales lead.
Social media is fun. Like everything else in life, you need to know the ground rules and the necessities of what works and what doesn’t. Social media is a great place to create a new, vibrant ambiance for your customers- a place where your customers can get a closer, personal connection with you. Use social media as a form of brand expression, a means of interacting with them and also to build genuine relationships. These connections are incredibly rewarding.
Remember that your audience on social media knows what social media should be. They interact with other brands too and expect more or less from you, or even better. Nobody wants to keep being bombarded with continuous sales pitches and only talk about how excellent your company is and why your brand is the next best thing. Showing them a more human side of you, interacting genuinely, responding to them when there are issues and concerns- all of this helps you market your brand without even knowing.