Social media marketing is a widely conducted form of marketing that takes place on social media platforms. This marketing strategy can vary from formal advertising campaigns to informal casual customer engagement. Below we discuss more Social Media Marketing World.
Social media marketing is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes to reach prospective clients and existing clientele. Your customers have daily interaction with multiple brands through social media, and if this interaction and communication don’t happen regularly through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, it can be equivalent to losing out on the clientele. Simple marketing tweaks and branding on social media can bring remarkable success to your business, creating loyal brand advocates driving sales, and generating manifold revenues.
What does one understand by Social Media Marketing?
The popularity of social media has diversified and ensured that social media marketing transcends and evolves into a broad category of marketing. Anytime a business uses social media to reach out to its target audience, it could be considered a form of social media marketing. This form of virtual outreach could take place on any social media platforms prevalent today like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or anything else.
Social media marketing seems to be varied due to the varied demanding nature of marketing. A typical Marketing outreach can take multifaceted forms and many different shapes—it can be in the form of outright advertisements to more subtle ways of building a simple connection or a relationship with potential customers. Likewise, Social media marketing can be straightforward ads for branding products or services, or it can be a means for a business to develop Client relationships.
Modus Operandi of Social Media Marketing?
- This is how Social media marketing helps businesses in a big way;
- Exponentially increase referrals or sales leads
- Build word-of-mouth reputation
- Provide a means of feedback and customer service.
- Drive traffic to a business website/blog
- Develop new products or services
- Broadcast amongst people special events, sales, and other newsworthy events
The Most Popular Social Media Platforms
Social media is a relatively new technology assuring that its platforms and popularity are constantly in a hustle. However, it is possible to gauge the rising popularity of these platforms using a stable point-in-time measurement logic.
According to a research survey in 2019, YouTube was the most popular platform used by over 73% of U.S. adults. Some of the statics for other prominent platforms were also included in this survey, details of the same have been mentioned below;
- Facebook: 69%
- Instagram: 37%
- Pinterest: 28%
- LinkedIn: 27%
- Snapchat: 24%
- Twitter: 22%
- WhatsApp: 20%
- Reddit: 11%
All Social media platforms may not be suitable for all business
For beginners, it’s advisable that you shouldn’t feel the need to use all of the social media platforms all in one go. Even if there was the potential and money power to develop an in-house social media team or hire a marketing firm to engage actively on all the social media, it wouldn’t necessarily be a good idea because of the differences in the mentality of end-users.
The choice of the best social media platform for a business largely depends on an astute business strategy. The same strategy can’t be implied over all platforms as Certain strategies work better only on certain platforms due to demographic differences between the platforms and other reasons.
Also read : Advantage of Internet Marketing
Pros and Cons of Social Network Marketing
Pros:
- Cheap
- Direct engagement with customers
- Able to learn more about customers
Cons:
- Time-intensive
- Increases risk of vicious malafide campaigns and hacks
Pros Explained
- Cheap: This form of Online marketing using social media is inexpensive compared to traditional and conventional forms of marketing. These platforms cost nothing and are absolutely cost-free to create accounts and post on most (if not all) platforms. Those free posts have the potential to reach a wider audience and cascade the message to other clans of the social media community. We even have several paid advertising options to relay this message, Facebook, for example, offers solutions like targeting these ads to members residing within a specific geographic radius.
- Direct engagement with customers: Social networks give a different kind of flexibility to the business to engage the target audience into willful thinking and develop interactive relationships with customers. Instead of putting out a message, waiting and hoping for the audience to see it, you can engage directly with people—commenting on their posts and initiating brand-oriented conversations.
- Able to learn more about customers: This frequent informal engagement with the customers actually opens a newer avenue of learning more about customer behavior, preferences, loyalties, shopping patterns. It becomes like a manual of customer mindset that can be used to initiate and develop the entire marketing procedures for business development.
Cons Explained
- Time and workforce intensive: One of the issues with social media marketing from a business perspective is that it is time-consuming. These marketing campaigns are not simple one-shot affairs; they have to be constantly nurtured over a period of time. This model would suit big businesses that have the time, money, and man forced to invest in running these campaigns. For a small business, this is like a distant dream or rather next to impossible.
- Increases risk of vicious malafide campaigns and hacks: The presence of a close community social knit nature of social media is a warning to businesses about the rising PR risks. False propaganda or malafide campaign run by disgruntled customers, ex-employees, or competitors can cause reputational damage to the business. A Hacking attempt or making online graffiti on the webpage can spread misinformation or sow chaos. Any of the above situations can cause catastrophic reputational damage.
In conclusion, There are over 200 social media websites, and businesses should build their presence on one of those platforms and establish their presence where the audience is. Social media marketing is here to be around for a long time equipped with a killer influencer marketing strategy.
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