When you ask for marketing advice, many people will recommend you build a presence on social media. But is social media marketing worth it? Is social media marketing effective for small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs) like yours?
We’ll address that question, as well as tell you why you’ll want to do social media marketing and how you can get started with social media. To get additional marketing advice, for social and other platforms, join 200,000 marketers by subscribing to Revenue Weekly!
Is social media marketing worth it?
Yes. Social media marketing is an effective way for you to connect with leads interested in your business, deliver tailored content, and build relationships that nurture followers towards conversion.
This strategy is an excellent option for making a one-on-one connection with leads.
Why do social media marketing? 6 compelling reasons to use social
Social media marketing is one of the most effective tactics for helping your business grow online. So, why do social media marketing?
1. Reach your target audience
Social media marketing is effective because your customers are already on social media. Millions (and even billions) of people engage on these platforms daily. So, why not reach them where they’re spending their time?
Here are just a few stats that showcase social media usage:
- Over 65% of U.S. adults use Facebook
- 63% of people check Instagram daily
- 42% of Twitter users visit Twitter daily
- 47% of Pinterest users use Pinterest to find and shop for products
- Users watch 1 billion hours of YouTube content each day
- Over 645 million people use LinkedIn
As you can see, many people use these social platforms frequently, making them an excellent place for you to reach people interested in your business.
2. Increase your brand recognition
When you invest in social media marketing, you get to connect with people interested in your business. They follow you and see your posts in their social feed. As a result, you build brand recognition with them.
They get familiar with your business, products, and services. This familiarity enables them to get comfortable with your brand and feel confident in purchasing from you. When it comes time to convert, they will remember your business and choose your company as a result.
3. Get an impressive return
When it comes to marketing your business, you want to ensure you’re spending every dollar wisely and getting the most out of every dollar spent. Social media marketing is one of the most cost-effective strategies for helping your business grow online. It’s free to set up a profile on any social media platform.
Even if you outsource your social media strategy to a digital marketing company, you can find effective and affordable social media marketing services. When you use cost-effective strategies, like social media marketing, you can earn a higher return on investment (ROI) in the form of high-value leads and sales.
4. Provide a better customer experience
When it comes to helping your business grow online, you want to provide the best customer experience. Keeping your customers happy drives them back to your business and encourages them to choose your company. With social media, you provide a better customer experience.
Since you have a direct connection with your audience, you can provide customer service to them directly. Whether they have questions, concerns, or just want to share their opinion, you can respond directly. When you serve your customers better, you can turn more of these leads into conversions for your business.
5. Compete with direct competitors
So, why do social media marketing? Well, a simple answer is that your competition is doing it. If you’re not on social media, you’re already falling behind your competition.
Your competitors are already building connections through social media. You want to build your brand on social media to keep up — and compete — with your competitors.
6. Earn more valuable leads that convert
Social media marketing for small business creates an opportunity for you to reach the people most likely to convert. Since leads connect directly with your business, you can show them tailored content that gets them to consider choosing your company. As a result, you earn more conversions for your business and help your organization grow online.
How to get the most from your social media marketing
Now that you have the answer to, “Is social media marketing effective?” and “Why do social media marketing?” it’s time to dive into how you can make the most of your social media strategy.
Here are five tips for creating an effective social media marketing strategy:
Pick the right platform(s)
The first step to doing social media marketing right is to pick the best platforms for reaching your target audience. Not every network will yield the best results. You need to do some research and figure out which platforms will provide you with the best opportunity to reach interested leads.
So, how do you figure out the right platforms for your business? First, establish who you’re targeting. Who is most likely to buy your products or use your services?
You’ll want to determine critical information like:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Buying habits
- Occupation
- Interests
- Hobbies
When you have a comprehensive profile of your audience, you can look at the demographics of each social media network and see where your audience is most likely to spend their time. It can help you hone in on the best social platforms for connecting with interested leads.
Publish content often
When you ask, “Is social media marketing effective?” the answer is yes, but with some stipulations. One of the requirements is that, for social media marketing to work, you need to publish content often.
Your target audience sees content from their friends, family, and other businesses. If you aren’t posting content regularly, your audience will likely miss it in their feed. You’ll want to publish content often so you can reach your audience.
You can post a variety of content, from photos to videos, to get your audience to engage with your business. It’s also crucial that you figure out how often to post on each platform, too. Some platforms, like Twitter, are great for posting dozens of times a day, while other platforms, like Facebook, aren’t suitable for posting as many times as too many posts can quickly overwhelm your audience’s feed.
Generally, you’ll want to test how often you post and see what works for your audience. Your audience may like you to post less on Twitter or more on Facebook. Just keep testing different post amounts until you figure out how often you need to post to get your audience to engage with your business.
Schedule your posts in advance
Don’t waste time posting content each day.
You can be more efficient and effective with your social media strategy by scheduling your content posts in advance. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer are great for helping you pre-plan your social content. When planning your social content, you’ll only want to do it a month in advance.
If you plan too far ahead, you may deliver inaccurate information or share content that’s no longer relevant to your audience or business. When you plan and schedule your content posts in advance, you can get the overall picture of your social strategy and make sure it’s cohesive. A cohesive social strategy will drive better results for your business and enable you to get continued engagement on your content.
Try different content posts
When it comes to social media marketing for small business, you want to ensure you use a variety of content.
If your content feels the same all the time, your audience will get bored with your company and not want to engage. Taking a diverse approach to your content is easier on some platforms than others. Facebook, for example, offers a variety of content you can post, from photos to links to blog posts to polls.
Other platforms, like Instagram, are highly specific and only let you post pictures and videos. Even on these networks, you can still make your content diverse to keep it interesting for your audience. For example, the Udder Bar, an ice cream shop, shares posts of different kinds of ice cream they offer.
From milkshakes to ice cream sandwiches to brownie sundaes, you see a variety of content on their Instagram page. So, even though they’re all photos and videos, the posts showcase different products to keep their profile exciting and engaging. So, whether you change the content format or what you’re posting, be sure to keep your content diverse, so your audience stays engaged with your social profiles.
5. Engage with your community
One of the biggest perks with social media marketing is that you build direct connections with your audience. You can share content directly with them and get them to engage with your business. When these leads engage with your business, you must engage with them too.
So, if you post content and your audience comments on it, comment back and engage with them. Engaging with your audience enables you to build better relationships and increase brand familiarity with them. You’ll also find that some people may use your posts to reveal problems or issues with your company.
In this example, from Target, you can see that a user commented about a problem unrelated to the content. 
It’s always good to keep tabs on post engagement and comment when you can. You can resolve problems, encourage further engagement with your brand, and more.
Is social media marketing effective?
Yes, and you’ll want to start it now
Social media marketing is an effective strategy for reaching new leads for your business and getting them to engage with your company. If you haven’t launched your social media strategy yet, don’t hesitate any longer! WebFX is a top-notch social media marketing company that can help you build your presence online.
With a team of over 500 experts, we can help you create a campaign that drives results. In the past five years alone, we’ve driven over $3 billion in sales and over 7.8 million leads for our clients. Want to dive into creating your social media strategy?
Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our social media marketing plans!
