Social media is everywhere these days, and if you think that you can operate a successful business without it, you’re sorely mistaken. Although some see it as yet another passing fad, here today and gone tomorrow, that isn’t the case at all, for in fact, social media has revolutionised both advertising and marketing in a big way.
Traditional marketing techniques, like newspaper, radio and television ads, although still used by many major businesses, are increasingly giving way to social media marketing and other forms of inbound marketing, a term that you can expect to hear a lot more of because it isn’t another passing fad, but here to stay.
Inbound Marketing and Social Media
Social media marketing is a prominent form of inbound marketing and it’s proving very effective. But what is inbound marketing, and why is it displacing traditional marketing methods in such a rapid and revolutionary way?
Inbound marketing refers to activities that bring people in rather than the business going out to attract the attention of the consumers it’s trying to appeal to. Moreover, it seeks to ‘earn’ their attention, generally with the creation and distribution of engaging content that draws consumers in.
This has a number of benefits to offer businesses of all sizes, and you don’t have to have a great deal of time to dedicate to it either. However, consistency and quality are naturally very important.
Branding
You don’t have to be a recognised digital futurist like Chris Riddell to understand the importance of branding in the 21st Century, an era that has rightly been described as brand-centric, and the branding opportunities that social media marketing presents are nothing shy of extraordinary.
The opportunities for bigger and better branding that social media presents include:
- Increased brand awareness
- Enhanced brand loyalty
- Greater brand authority
Your brand says so much about your business that you can’t pass by the opportunity to use social media to promote it. Pass an opportunity like this by and see what it does for your business. It suffices to say that your competitors will leave you behind.
Conversions
With social media, every post on Facebook, every tweet on Twitter, and every picture on Instagram is an opportunity to convert a stranger into a customer. And the best part is that it’s practically free.
Naturally every digital interaction doesn’t translate into a conversion, but that’s not the case every time someone sees an ad on television or in the newspaper either. And those ads cost a lot more than a social media post does.
Social media marketing is well-known for:
- Providing businesses with more opportunities to convert customers
- Delivering higher conversion rates with less outgoing expenditure
- Increasing inbound traffic due to a much wider variety of mediums
Additionally, social media marketing has proven so popular because it’s much more cost-effective than traditional marketing methods, and it also provides businesses with the opportunity to deliver fantastic customer experiences. Now that’s something no business can afford to overlook.
