Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Service Businesses
Whether you personally use social media is up to you. However, if you are a service business or franchise, you should be using social media marketing in your digital marketing campaigns. Check out our blog about social media for franchises here. With so many different platforms, there is certainly at least one that will for you to reach your ideal audience. Service business owners and franchises are taking advantage of this powerful trend that does have a learning curve to it.
What are marketers saying about social media marketing?
Hubspot has found that 92% of marketers in 2014 have claimed that social media marketing is of great importance in their campaigns. They have received an increase of 80% of traffic to their websites strictly through social media marketing. Social Media Examiner has acknowledged the importance of social media. As more and more marketers are jumping on the social media marketing bandwagon, they are forgetting one important question. How do you use it properly? Social media marketing requires effective tools to be a valuable investment. The problem begins with a lack of understanding of how to optimally use social media.
Let's have a closer look at how social media services can help your service business or franchise!
Increased Brand Recognition
With so many people on a variety of different platforms, by being on the right channel will get you increased brand recognition. People will be discovering your business and what products and/or services you offer. This is perhaps the biggest advantage in using social media. Social media marketing acts as channels for your brand voice and content. Past customers can follow you, like and share your posts. This engagement is likely to be seen by their friends which will earn you a further reach. Past customers can keep in touch with your brand and prospective customers can discover who you are. For example, a frequent Twitter user can hear about your company for the first time after stumbling on a post on their newsfeed. By maintaining a prominent and positive image on social media, prospective customers are likely to be more frequently exposed to your content. Use this to your advantage.
Improve Brand Loyalty
Social media marketing is a way to keep in touch with frequent customers. A study published by Convince&Convert have discovered that 53% of Americans who follow brands on social are more loyal to them. As such being on social media is proving to be influential in converting consumers to being brand loyal.
Opportunities To Convert
With every post you make onto your social media account, you are prompting people to do an action. This can be converting general followers to customers or past customers to buy a product. When you have a steady number of followers, it gives you more opportunities to convert. Regardless if you're posting words, an image, audio clip, or a video, it gives your followers a chance to engage with your post. While not every interaction results in a conversion, it increases your chances. Do not be discouraged that your click-through rates are low. The sheer number of opportunities you have on social media are infinite. While each post may not meet certain standards, it adds another opportunity in the long run.
Increased Conversion Rates
Brands have known to become humanized by interacting on social media channels. Benefits of social media marketing include your company is seen as an individual rather than a corporation or enterprise. This is important because people like doing business with other people rather than companies. Therefore, the person managing your company's social media account has never been more important. This person is the face of your company and is burdened with a lot of responsibility. They must know how to differentiate constructive criticism from raw hate. He or she has to deal with angry and happy customers. As such, great communication is a characteristic that is essential for this role. By choosing the right individual, your company will see higher conversion rates, one out of the many benefits of social media marketing.
Decreased Marketing Costs
Benefits of social media marketing include a low investment. With the right tools, you can also save a lot of time. It has been found that 84% of marketers found as little as six hours of effort per week was enough to get an increase in traffic. Tools such as HootSuite allows you to post onto multiple platforms at once. This prevents you from posting multiple times on different platforms that you may be active on. HootSuite also allows you to post as far as into the future you want. Therefore, if you have the time, you can plan out what to post for the entire month or months. Advertising through Facebook and Twitter can also be relatively cheap, depending on your goals.
Communicating regularly with your followers is a sign of good faith. With social media such an integral part of our lives, people are extremely likely to brag or complain about your product online. When they post your brand name, they can tag you, use common hashtags associated with your brand, and much more to show that they like or dislike you. The more conversions people have about you on social media, the ore valuable and authoritative your brand becomes. Also, by interacting with major influences on channels will increase your reach dramatically.
Increased Inbound Traffic
Without being on social media, your traffic becomes restricted to those already familiar with your brand or those searching for keywords you are ranking for. Being on social media leads to a new path leading back to your website, and every new account is yet another branch. Every piece of content you push out presents another opportunity for a new visitor. As such, it's important to be pushing out quality content.
Richer Customer Experiences
Benefits of social media marketing are essentially its communication. With every customer interaction comes an opportunity to demonstrate your outstanding customer service level. This is a great way to enrich relationships with your customers. It also gives you immediate access to unhappy customers. By addressing their issues, apologizing publically, and taking action, you are demonstrating your company professionalism. But don't forget the happy customers. You can easily recommend them additional products or simply thank them. Every experience, good or bad, is a personal one that shows your company cares about their customers.
Improved Customer Insights
What are your customers saying? The biggest benefit from social media marketing is communication. Being active on the right platforms will give you valuable information what your customers are currently interested in, what they are saying, how they behave, and much more. For example, you can segment your content syndication based on what generated the most likes, shares, etc. You'll find what trends are hot and figure ways to use that to your advantage. Or, you may discover that people are liking images more than written word. How can you pair these two together to increase your click through rate?
These benefits of social media are not rewards that will appear overnight. They require time and effort before you see their true value. Business owners often turn away from social media because it is an investment that requires time, effort, and without immediate rewards. However, keep in mind that your competition is already involved. They are already communicating with your customers and are heavily leveraging social media in their campaigns. If for some reason, your competition is not involved, it's even more of a reason to get started. Get a rapid head start in the game! This ties into the second biggest benefit of social media.
The sooner you begin, the sooner the benefits come. Again, benefits of social media are not going to miraculously appear overnight. But the sooner you start, the sooner you can be getting those important followers to your page. Lastly, you do not have anything to lose by getting involved. Spend a few minutes creating your profiles and starting posting can be very minimal. Having an online presence can be extremely beneficial to your business in the long run.
Now, don't jump to the biggest and most popular social media channel and start creating an account. It is still crucial to understand the different platforms and how you can leverage them to your advantage. The benefits of social media marketing mentioned above are all long-term rewards on the appropriate platforms for your business.
