With the rise of social media usage in today’s world, the importance of social media marketing has reached a level higher than ever before.
With people spending an average of 2 hours and 3 minutes per day on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, the marketing community’s landscape is sure to change, even in the foreseeable future. This is why your business needs to embrace social media marketing and develop a digital marketing plan.
8 Reasons to Embrace Digital Marketing in 2021
Social media marketing is advertising or reaching the masses through popular social networking platforms available on the internet. Any business can establish a broad organic reach by creating a free account, which makes social media marketing one of the most practical and most effective forms of marketing today.
What are the advantages of social media marketing to a business? Why is it becoming a necessity among businesses of all sizes? Let’s dive into 8 of the top reasons to have a digital marketing plan.
1. Social Media Marketing is Practical and Financially Feasible
Establishing a social media presence is free.
What makes digital marketing so popular among small businesses is that anyone can start a Facebook page or an Instagram account on their own and start publishing content immediately. You can also pay the platform to boost your posts that would increase your reach to your selected target audiences.
2. Potential Audience Reach of Digital Marketing
Facebook has billions of users around the world and thousands of data points on each one of them. Instagram, on the other hand, has a higher amount of usage time in the United States. With most people spending more time on social media, using these platforms as a marketing channel allows your small business to reach more potential customers and create brand awareness.
Having this kind of organic reach enables a business to fully equip itself with a good customer base capable of being informed about company events and deals without investing in paid advertising.
While organic reach may be at all-time lows, there is new information that shows using hashtags on Facebook may be a way to gain free organic reach. Similar to the way researching trending hashtags on Instagram can expose your brand or business to new customers.
3. Audience Clustering
Facebook and Instagram have AI capabilities to search for audiences with relevant interests in your product or service.
Suppose a user searches for mortgage loans on their web browser. In that case, Facebook can capture this data and allow you to target them as a user interested in mortgages. Since Facebook owns Instagram, this feature is available across both platforms.
While some may find this concerning in regards to their security and privacy, it is a useful tool for business owners. When investing in a digital marketing campaign, one would hope to target an audience interested in the product or service to increase spending efficiency.
4. High-Level Interaction with Customers
People treat social media accounts personally. They express a part of themselves on these platforms as if it represents their actual life. In turn, they often voice out their consumer concerns on social media platforms as well.
This allows the business to interact with its audience regarding these concerns. Users treating social media accounts as highly personal makes it easier to understand their experiences with your brand. Upon voicing their concerns, the related account/page could help them resolve their issues and increase customer confidence in the long run. Marketing does include customer service, after all.
5. Great Source of Information
Social media platforms provide a place where people voice out their concerns or feedback. Using this as a tool to gather information, customer suggestions, and feedback is a practical way to learn about current trends and market needs.
Following and joining Facebook Groups or Instagram Hashtags related to your industry can generate marketing and product ideas helping to expand existing services based on specific customer-driven data.
6. Social Media Marketing Partnership Opportunities
With the rise of the industry of influencers in the market, the potential to reach a higher number of audiences has risen rapidly. These influencers have a considerable audience reach and trust because of their popularity. Building these partnerships with them would allow your business to flourish. It can also help cluster the market since a company can partner with influencers who have grown their following around your industry.
Recent data from 2020 has shown there is more trust in micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are those who have a hyper-specific following of under 25k. Bonus, it is also more affordable to work with them!
7. Social Proof
When receiving positive feedback from customers, your TV, radio, and other media-related advertising campaigns do not benefit from them. With the increased interaction from social networking sites, it has become increasingly easier to share positive customer feedback with your audiences. As these positive reviews are received, you can easily share them with your audience for a positive impact.
Sharing your customer’s experiences is called social proof and is most important in converting a prospect into a customer.
Let’s use Amazon reviews as an example. Have you ever read reviews before completing a purchase? The same concept applies to your social media marketing efforts. Don’t be afraid to ask loyal customers for a review!
8. Affordability of Social Media Advertising
Cost per mille(CPM) is how much investment you will need to reach 1,000 people. The average CPM for Facebook advertising in 2020 fluctuated around $8.83. Where else can you reach 1,000 potential new customers with targeted interests in your product for just under $9? Nowhere!
Building out from there, the average cost per click was around $1, depending on your campaign objective. Reach campaigns (showing your ad to as many people as possible) will always be cheaper than Lead or Website Traffic campaigns.
Conclusion
Moving into 2021, having a social media presence and marketing plan is now necessary for businesses to keep up with the current economy and their competition.
The globalized business model is moving quite fast, which is why faster solutions need to keep coming up. With the rise of the information age, social media marketing has become one of today’s most used advertising platforms.
Elevated Audience can help increase your social media presence in 2021 through Social Media Management and Digital Marketing. Click the link below to get a free consultation where we can discuss your objectives and goals for 2021!
