Every business values social media, but not every business has a social marketing strategy or invests in campaigns that deliver a return on investment (ROI). As social media platforms actively suppress organic reach, investing in social media marketing is a must to reach a targeted audience, generate leads and sales, compete for brand awareness, and achieve your marketing aims.

A key asset

Social media is a key asset for businesses in every market sector, but it has changed and evolved. Just a few years ago it was relatively easy to attract followers, as businesses benefitted from a free communications resource to build a fanbase and communicate what they wanted, when they wanted. Today however, the platform’s algorithms actively suppress organic reach. All the time and resource you now dedicate to creating content with the aim of reaching, inspiring and influencing your fans, is organically served to around just 10% of your followers, and engagement typically ranges from 3%-5%.

As a result, you need to invest in social media if you want it to pay dividends and achieve a positive ROI. That said, the great news is that it’s still much less expensive than traditional advertising and marketing methods.

Why social media marketing must be central to your strategy

Social media plays a crucial role in many ways including brand building, customer engagement and revenue generation. By investing in social marketing, you can amplify your content to targeted audiences that are key to achieving your aims, whether it’s selling products, advertising promotions, building your fanbase or generating leads and enquiries.
Social media advertising is cost-effective compared to more traditional forms of advertising and it ensures you reach a wider relevant audience that goes beyond what’s achievable via organic means. With so many campaign types across the different platforms, strategy is key. Understanding where your customers are and ensuring you’re targeting the right people at the right time is crucial to getting results.

5 top tips to social marketing success

Social media and social media marketing are time and skills intensive and they require imagination, creativity and strategic skills. Here are 5 key reasons why social media marketing is essential.

1. Reach audiences specific to your brand and business

Social media has the potential to access billions of users worldwide but, importantly, you can reach specific audiences that matter to your business, brand or campaign message. The ability to share content quickly and widely also means you can support both short and long term objectives. For example, building your brand profile and earning trust may take time, while short term sales promotions and product launches can be activated in the now. Remember that social media is ‘social’ by definition. You should use your presence to nurture social connections by focussing on added-value content and promotional content to the approximate ratio of 80:20. Then use social marketing tools to serve standalone campaigns that support the marketing function. Why? Because social media is not a search engine, it’s where people go for leisure, pleasure and entertainment. Social marketing should run alongside your overall strategy to connect, socialise and add-value to fans as a way of nurturing your community for the long term benefit of your brand.

2. Launch highly targeted campaigns

Social platforms have sophisticated tools that enable your businesses to target audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviours, and location. This precision ensures that your marketing efforts are directed towards people that are most likely to be interested in the products or services you offer. This increases the efficiency and effectiveness of your social marketing campaigns, and they can be activated quickly and precisely.

3. Cost effectiveness

Social marketing is significantly cheaper than traditional advertising like TV, radio, or print. You already know that your audience spends time on social media and marketing campaigns can be launched with a relatively modest budget. While social marketing is essential for businesses of every size, it does present particular advantages for smaller brands and businesses. Affordability and your ability to control advertising investment allows you to compete with larger corporations without substantial financial outlay. Plus, with free tools and analytics, campaign performance can me measured and strategies adjusted based on the results.

4. Real-time interaction

Real-time interaction with customers is a unique feature of social media marketing. Not all social marketing campaigns have to be focussed on sales, as you can run campaigns to build brand awareness, promote your values and culture, highlight your ethics and approach to sustainability, or offer access to free and added-value resources, such as education and tutorials. Social marketing serves multiple functions allowing your business to engage with your audience through comments, messages, live videos, polls and competitions. This fosters a sense of community and builds stronger relationships, while immediate feedback provides valuable insights into customer preferences and their reaction to what you’re putting out there. These responses enable you to tailor your offerings to meet their expectations.

5. Accelerate your potential

Social marketing gives you the opportunity to reach, inspire, educate and inform relevant people and welcome them into your community. If you’re posting great content and hoping for miracles, looking for an immediate reaction or a sales uplift, or hoping to see your fan numbers accelerate, the likelihood is this could take years to achieve. If you have a few thousand fans in a market with hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of potential businesses and consumers, the only way to reach them is via social marketing.

So, what are you waiting for? Social media marketing is relatively inexpensive, immediate and results driven. It’s also measurable and you can use the results to evolve and perfect your strategy.

Ready to boost your business?

Feel Marketing is a Surrey-based marketing agency that specialises in social media marketing.
Contact us now to see how social media marketing can boost your business performance.

Contact us on 01372 635 638, email us or complete and submit the form below.

Why it Feel’s right

As with all our services, our social media clients have the added assurances:
1. Experience: We’re a UK agency with over 24 years experience. We specialise in social media management and social media marketing
2. Integrity: We do not outsource our services either in the UK or overseas - all services and clients are managed by our UK team
3. Transparency: We provide evidence based outcomes that are clearly reported and evaluated
4. Value: Our management fees are competitive and fair

Why social media marketing matters