Social Media Marketing: Part 2
Continuing our discussion about the benefits of social media advertising, we’ll discuss social media management and more!
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
About 73% of people actually follow brands because they are interested in purchasing the products or services that they offer. And 70% of Gen Xers will purchase the products of the brands that they follow social media. About 50% of Millenials check the brands social media before purchasing, but they may not necessarily follow it.
There’s more to social media management that just advertising. You want to have a presence, so that when people visit you to check out your product, they can actually learn about you and what you represent. When you are creating a social media presence, you want to attempt to do the following:
- Building a brand
- Expanding your audience, getting more followers
- Educating potential customers
- Directing traffic to your website or store
Here are some of the benefits that have an effective social media presence is smart for your business:
It legitimizes your business
Customers these days are very wary. People have been targeted by companies looking to make a quick dollar and then leave their customers in the red with bad services and inferior products. Potential customers want to know that they can trust you, and that what they see is what they get.
If you are interactive on social media and responsive to your followers, you will reap the benefits. You are letting people know that there are people who actually care about their customers behind the brand, that you are good at what you do and what you offer them is the real deal. If someone is completely unfamiliar with your brand or business, an active social media legitimizes you almost immediately.
Cuts the cost of advertising
Being active and visible on your platform can help increase your followers. Engage with people outside of making them pay for clicks and give yourself a real presence. Need help acquiring more followers? There are plenty of business that can help you boost your follower growth.
With social media its about having a distinct presence and an understanding of how your follower base uses whatever platform you choose to use. Most users don’t like being bombarded by overt advertisements. Customer engagement through social media can become a great way to advertise, without the big advertising budget.
Use Google Analytics to see how effective your “free” advertising is in terms of the traffic you get from the posts on your social media profiles. You will likely always have a need for ads, but social media management helps expand your reach and stretch your marketing budget as far as it can go.
It meets customers where they are
Not all customers are ready to buy as soon as they encounter a product they might be interested in. Depending on their income, education and a slew of other factors, your target audience will have differing ideas of what an ‘impulse buy’ is.
With social media, you are able to introduce people to your message and brand. If you’ve made that introduction, you’ll be at the top of their mind when they’re ready to make a purchase. Once you’ve educated them on what you offer, you will be an obvious choice when they’re considering where to spend their money next time.
Depending on the scale of the purchase, the buying process can begin weeks or months before any money is actually spent. If you are cultivating meaningful relationships with customers from day one, you are putting yourself in the number one spot when they are ready to make a final decision. And depending on what products and services you offer, they could be loyal customers for years to come.
Its the top of a funnel
Your potential reach is endless when it comes to social media, but it still takes more than a great online presence to close a sale. At the top of the social media “funnel” is the pool of millions of potential clients. As you share your voice, gain views, followers, fans and subscribers you start to get the people who have a direct need for what you’re offering. This will lead to pitches, proposals, and more person-to-person contact, phone sales, online and in person sales.
Getting to engage on a personal level with possible clients is a great start, but eventually you will have to lead them to a place where they are ready to spend money on what you’re offering.
WHO SHOULD USE SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT?
If you have high acquisition costs, it would definitely be beneficial to you to consider how social media management works with advertising. It takes consistency to manage an effective social media account. If you don’t have an employee that can devote the time it takes to maintain your online presence, consider hiring a social media management company. They are specialized in making you see a return on the investment of using online marketing.
Pay Per Click/Search Advertising
With a solid SEO strategy, you can be at the top of search results. In order to do this you will need to utilize pay per click, or PPC.
50% of most website traffic begins on a search engine. Once people get to the stage of seeking a product or service out via search engine, they are likely ready to buy and are looking for something specific. The majority of online marketing is PPC-based. When used, your ads appear in search engines like Yahoo, Bing or Google. The most popular platform for search advertising is Google ads, also known as Google Adwords.
How does it work?
With the exception of Pinterest, social media platforms usually target potential customers by checking boxes for interests or traits that their target audience might have. With Google AdWords, about 3-6 keywords are used. You tell Google the max you’re willing to bid for a specific keyword. Then, when someone uses that chosen word in a keyword search, Google will look at the all the bids. It’ll show the ads based on the highest bid.
They will only charge you enough to beat the bid below you. So in general, the more competitive the keyword is, the more you’ll pay. However, there’s a catch. Quality score.
More to come in part three of this series! Stay tuned.