Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Online Business

Last Updated on September 9, 2022

Businesses traditionally find it challenging to enhance brand reach, drive traffic to the website, engage customers, and boost the bottom line without putting stress on their limited budgets. Digital marketing, especially social media marketing, can help marketers generate enormous exposure for their brands and help them to engage them productively for not only building a community of loyal customers but also for generating sales. So, social media marketing grabs their attention whenever users spend some time with their smartphone. It doesn’t need them to sit with a newspaper or in front of a television. 

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Performing marketing and advertising of your online business or brand on different social media platforms is known as social media marketing. Social media marketing is the new face of advertisement and promotion. Unlike traditional media, social media marketing has platforms. like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. 

As per recent data, there are more than 3.96 billion users of social media platforms worldwide. At the same time, every person spends around 147 minutes daily on social media.

So, it helps the business explore a customer base of millions and billions without any significant cost.

The list of the benefits of social media marketing is lengthy. However, to get a broad idea of the same, you can go through the following core benefits of social media marketing.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Online Business

1. Increased Brand Awareness 

Social media channels explore your brand to their ocean of users. With social media, you get to highlight your products and services. Present your sellings uniquely pictures and videos. Be frequent in this practice, and social media will take your brand into the palms of billions of people. 

Norwegian Air is one of the companies well suited for the example. The firm used Facebook and Instagram to inform potential customers of their specific flight routes. 

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2. Better Conversion Rates 

Online business is all about conversion rate. However, putting your store on newspaper or television might not convert the target audience into customers, but social media can. Social media shows your advertisement to potential buyers only. So, it has a much higher conversion rate. As per the social media examiner,

66% of the marketers have experienced lead generation by investing 6 hours per week in social media marketing. 

SocialMediaExaminer

3. Enhanced Customer Service 

The marketplace is full of competition. So, to be ahead of the curve, you must understand your customers’ needs and expectations. Social media marketing is one of the most excellent tools for the same. You will find every customer segment on these platforms talking about the products they like and don’t. Trends change on social media. Maintain a sync with the trend, and you are ready to rock. 

4. Efficient Customer Relationship 

Build a good relationship with your customer, and he will return to you. However, a good relationship requires two-way communication. Unlike traditional media channels, social media provides you with a smooth platform to communicate with your customers. Tell them about your new products, ask them for feedback, offer them an aftersales service.

Have a look at the following cases. Delta Hotels addresses the concern of their customers, made him feel valuable, and secured him for future deals as well. 

5. SMM is Cost Efficient 

Newspapers charge you for every word, and television charges you for every second. Social media is comparatively cost-efficient as compared to the former. If you upload the insights on your social media handle, it charges you nothing. If you have already made a fortune with your business, you can hire the team for the same as it is also much more cost-efficient than spending millions on traditional media. A social media marketing company will also cost you anything between $500-$1500.  

Apple started the “Shot on iPhone” campaign without any significant cost. This campaign currently has more than 25 million posts on Instagram playing a big role in free and chain marketing of the brand. 

6. Marketing on Social Media Allows Smart Targeting 

There is no sense in serving chicken curry to a vegetarian person. Same happens with old marketing tools. But social media, on the other hand, uses smart targeting. Your advertisement is presented only to potential buyers. The potential buyers here are identified by their past purchasing habits. Smart targeting multiplies the chances of converting the potential buyers into customers.

7. Connect to Audience with Social Listening

Using the same language as your audience is the best way to connect with them. Social listening helps track the communication trend roaming on the social media platforms. You can use the trend to communicate about your brand. It helps you and your target audience share a mutual bond. 

Look at the following Twitter profile where Swiggy has communicated about their product in the style of their customers. 

8. Provides Data for Improvement

Social media marketing is steps ahead to those of traditional marketing. Here, you can play with data to boost your performance. A range of data analytics tools is available in the market to integrate it with social media and have an insight into customers’ interests. Identify the keywords they search for a specific product and use them for your relevant product. 

Some of the best social media data analytics tools include BuzzSumo, Curalate, Keyhole, ShortStack, HubSpot, etc. 

9. Increase Sales with Buy Now Button on Social Media

If you want your customers to search for the product on an ecommerce platform, choose you as the provider, and buy the product, it is a long process. On the other hand, portraying the product on social media platforms and giving the “buy now” option makes it much easier for customers to buy the product. The chances that a customer will purchase the product multiplies automatically.  

10. Track Your Social Media Marketing Efforts & Analyze Results

Tracking the advertisement and marketing results are easiest in social media marketing. First of all, likes, comments, and shares are basic measures of the success and efficiency of marketing. Moreover, you will be notified whenever you get an order from social media marketing. Customers connecting to you are sharing their experiences on social media platforms are also a part of the results. 

What Is Social Listening? 

Social listening is basically the practice of tracking various social media platforms. It helps to gain insight about trending topics and conversations among the users and then use the same for the marketing of your product.  

Which Social Media Sites Are Best for Marketing?

Hundreds of small and big social media sites are available on the internet. However, marketing on most of them will bring you nothing. You need to make sure that you are putting in the efforts where you can expect some returns. We are hereby listing some of the biggest social media websites for marketing:  

1. Facebook

Facebook might be getting old now, but it is the parent of all social media platforms.

Around 60% of overall social media users have their Facebook account. With over 80 million pages and groups for marketing, the platform is the go-to place for social media marketing.

Facebook was responsible for a quarter of overall digital ad spending in 2020.  

2. Instagram 

With more than 2 billion active users, Instagram is the new hub for business and marketing.

44% of total Instagram users have made a product purchase on the platform, that too every week.

Instagram can be used to post advertisements full of visuals and content. The platform experiences more than 130 million monthly clicks on commercial posts.   

3. TikTok

TikTok is home to more than a billion monthly active users. You can use the platform for marketing your product via small and creative videos.

According to stats, users spend an average of 52 minutes every day on TikTok.

So, it can be a great marketplace to introduce your products to a broad audience. 

4. Twitter 

Let it be text, picture, or video you want to share about your product; Twitter has got your back. Just a tweet, and you make your brand accessible to more than a half-billion audience.

The US advertising revenue of Twitter crossed a huge sum of $647 million in the 3rd quarter of 2021.

So, it clearly illustrate that Twitter is a massive platform for marketing and advertising. 

5. Pinterest 

If you think pictures can best define your product and business, Pinterest should be your go-to place.

As per stats, shoppers on this platform have 85% larger shopping cart compared to the buyers on other platforms.

Moreover, 400+ million active users of Pinterest make it a huge marketplace to advertise your product. 

6. Reddit 

Being one of the biggest and most popular social media platforms in the USA, this platform lets you explore the American market.

50% of the users on the platform comes from the USA only. Any business can share text, images, graphics, and videos to connect their brand with the target audience.

One-quarter of the young generation (between 25-29) in the USA uses the platform making it one of the best places for the marketing of fashion brands.  

7. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a favorable marketing place for B2B businesses.

Relying on the statistics, around 50% of the marketers have preferred to advertise on LinkedIn in 2021.

The popularity of the platform seems not to be declining anytime soon. The ad revenue of LinkedIn has also exceeded the mark of $1 billion in the very same year. Connect to other businesses, follow the trends, post about your brand & products, and much more. 

8. Snapchat

On average, there are 332 daily active Snapchat users per day. Snapchat is used by more than 75% of millennials and Gen Z.

Every day, the average Snapchatter spends more than 30 minutes on Snapchat. So, this is one more social media platform that could help you sell products online.

Stats that Prove Social Media Marketing Works

• It might be hard to believe, but do you know that 93.3% of adults with internet access use social media? It Looks like social media is the Ace card of the internet. 
• If we calculate the average time spent by every social media user on platforms, it turns out to be around 2.5 hours (2 hours and 27 minutes to be specific) every day. We are sure it is a multiple of time spent by any person with newspapers or television.

• The global social commerce market size was estimated to have a worth of USD 584.9 billion in 2021. It is more than the GDP of a group of countries. 

• 85% of the firms claim short-form videos to be the most effective type of content on social media in 2021. TikTok has really established a trend. 
• If your Facebook handle has the right reach, your daily Facebook story can get the impression of 500 million users. However, you might first need to connect to half of the total Facebook uses for it. 

• To entertain the broadest audience, the best time to post on Twitter is Tuesday and Wednesday at 9 AM. The case can be the opposite on Sundays.
• The most popular platform among Gen Z and millennials, Instagram, has been reported to be the best platform for influencing marketing by 98% of the marketers. 

Wrapping Up

Social media is the new means of marketing in this age of technology. Moreover, the medium has turned out to be an advertising giant substituting traditional forms of marketing. With intelligent targeting power and a massive user base, the media platform is helping businesses to maintain interpersonal communication with their customers. Cost efficiency of social media marketing transfigures the usability for the promotion of brands and products. Big social media giants such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn have emerged as the podium to connect billions of potential customers in no time with little effort. The most considerable flex is social media doesn’t only take your message to your customer but also carries messages from customers to the business. This communication opens the doors for improvement.