How important is Social Media?

Social media marketing enables you to earn customer loyalty, engage with your audience, build brand recognition, enhance communication, and increase sales – not to mention boost your online presence and positively impact your website’s ranking. And, given that nearly two thirds of social media users are active on platforms like Facebook and Twitter daily, you can see why social media marketing is essential. That’s why 97% of marketers use social media to reach new prospects.

But how do you decide which platforms to use and, more importantly, invest your marketing budget on. First, let’s look at some crucial stats to highlight the importance of social media for businesses. 

An Insight into the World’s Largest Social Media PlatformsSome of the less tech-savvy business owners may have little personal use for social media. However, when you consider these statistics, you can see why you simply can’t ignore social media marketing.

• Facebook has over 2 billion registered users and nearly 1.5 billion daily users. It’s primary marketing benefits include engaging with audiences, gathering reviews, enhancing customer service, and advertising products and content.
• Twitter has over 320 million monthly active users who seek news and fast-paced information, making it the ideal platform to build industry authority.
• LinkedIn, a social media platform for professionals, has nearly 600 million users. It’s one of the best marketing platforms for B2B businesses.
• With over a billion users, YouTube provides you with the opportunity to share product demonstrations and tutorials as well as highlight your company culture.
• Pinterest may only have around 175 million users, but 87% of them bought a product after seeing it on the social media platform.
• Instagram has over 400 million users, and you can reach thousands of them with photos easily by using relevant keywords and hashtags.
• Google+ has just short of 400 million users. However, you can use it to manage your Google My Business listing, which is essential for local businesses.
• 79% of social media users are aged 35 or over, meaning social media marketing isn’t just useful for attracting younger customers.
• By 2021, the number of global social media users is expected to exceed 3 billion.

As you can see, one of the biggest reasons why social media is so important for your business is simply the fact that the vast majority of your prospects are active users. However, there are even more reasons than that to embrace social media marketing. 

The Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Being able to reach a huge audience isn’t the only reason why your business needs to remain active on a range of social media platforms. Social media is also important because:

Consumers Trust Brands that Use Social Media

According to research from MarketingSherpa, around 95% of people aged between 18 and 34 are likely to follow brands on social media. Social media allows you to connect with users on a personal level. Marketing on platforms such as Facebook is an effective way to build brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Social Media Marketing Increases Your Inbound Traffic

If you want to drive as much traffic to your website as possible, you need to remain active and ideally advertise on social media. Social media signals, such as how many likes you receive and how many followers you have, can have a direct impact on your SEO rank.

You Can Use Different Platforms to Reach Different People

Finding out which social media platforms your customers use is essential. But you should remember that different customer segments will use various platforms, some more than others, meaning you shouldn’t only market your business on one platform. Think about your target audience’s interests, hobbies, location and demographic to determine which platforms will prove most effective for marketing your business.

You Can Create Highly Targeted Ads on Social Media

Marketing isn’t always about getting your content or website in front of as many people as possible. It’s more about getting your content in front of the right people, which platforms like Facebook allow you to do with almost pinpoint precision.
Make no mistake – social media marketing can be challenging to master. If you want to protect your investment and maximise your ROI, call us today to discuss your business objectives with a social media marketing specialist!