Harnessing the Power of Social Media for Optimal Business Impact
Social media has not only become a way of life it has become the way to establish a brand and run a business. The power of social media has far reaching implications that directly impact your bottom line.
Are you currently maximizing your social platforms to effectively create brand recognition, engage with current and potential clients, driving both traffic and sales on your website? The golden rule of social media is connection.
How can your company utilize its social awareness to create a connection between your brand and your audience?
Build Trust through Authenticity – In 2022 Sprout Social reported 74% of consumers placed more importance on social alignment of values as a motivating factor in their purchasing decisions than in 2021. What does this mean? More than ever consumers are choosing to make their spending habits resonate with social causes and ideals that have personal relevance to them. Authenticity matters. Social media platforms can highlight your company’s true values. Spotlighting your product, staff, and organization allows viewers to connect in a more mindful way.
Direct Socialization with Your Audience – Unlike other forms of communication, social platforms allow your audience to interact with your product, company, and staff. This virtual social interaction allows your customer base to interface with you personally in real time. Through the sharing of posts, comments, blogs, contests, and reviews you can “meet” your viewers at any location at any time.
Time Equals Sales – The average person spends approximately 2.5 hours a day on social media. Platforms have become a new form of television and radio advertisement. Leads from these avenues can effectively target your ideal customer base. These days it’s as easy as the click of a few buttons to prioritize the user base that sees your advertising campaigns.
Cost Effective Marketing Options – Organic social media posts are extremely cost effective, as they cost $0; yet a post that goes viral may generate income for years. Buying advertising or paying to boost posts is simple and allows you to set the budget and the length the ad runs. This simple tool can attract the attention of an entire new audience. It is important to remember that the best advertisements are short and direct in their language and initiate an action (ie. Call Us today at ___).
Connect to the Circle of Influence – one of the unique features of utilizing social platforms is how easy it is to connect to the circle of influence. Sharing your ideas and products allows you to form partnerships with other companies and influencers to promote your own products and/or services. Influencer marketing in 2023 is projected to be a 16.4-billion-dollar industry.
Instant Customer Service – the average consumer checks social media to initiate customer service and expects a response within 3 hours. As a matter of convenience or possibly because the process feels more personal and relaxed, customer service provided through these channels is a great benefit. A possible negative impact to modern day public communication is the public complaint; however, the power of a positive professional reply has earned many businesses new clients. Without an active company profile, the public complaint misses the opportunity for resolution, tainting a potential customer pool. With an active presence, not only can the complaint possibly be resolved, the proactive response also provides an excellent example of what customers can experience when working with your company.
Visible Values Lead to Aligned Customer – as your company expresses itself through shared posts, likes, comments, and reviews your company values become more visible. As time progresses your company develops a virtual personality; this allows your company to build genuine friendship connections. Genuine connections lead to loyal clients.
Learn Your Customer Culture: When customers follow you, your company is presented with the opportunity to gain incredibly insightful information on your client base. Individual pages are clear signals to personality, values, interests, hobbies, all areas that are key indicators of needs and spending habits. Utilizing platforms allows your company the opportunity to notice trends among your viewers and apply that knowledge to your products/services. Ex. You notice 40% of clients are posting viral videos of cotton candy flavored candy-coated grapes. When brainstorming new ideas for your summer line of candles, you might consider a cotton candy scent due to the popularity of the viral candy grapes.
Keep an Eye on Competitor Strategies: Researching companies that offer similar products or services is as simple as visiting their pages. Keeping an eye on competitors’ strategies and trends provides objective educational insight into what is and isn’t working for others.
Direct Viewer Traffic: Social media views should directly translate to increased website traffic. A carefully curated set of posts should make transitioning to your site seamless and intuitive. The overarching goal is to direct view traffic to your site and hopefully through to a concluded sale.
Recover Missed Opportunities: Research shows that over 18 billion dollars are lost annually due to abandoned virtual shopping cards. Through your website analytics you are able collect data on your most frequently abandoned cart items. With this information you can create a set of targeted advertisements bringing awareness to these products to boost sales.
Increase Your Presence: The more media outlets you use the easier it is for search engines to discover and authenticate your business. The more attention you bring to your brand through varied posts the more material available to search engines. This increased traffic allows customers to feel confident in your company being reputable and a trusted source.
Curated Leads: Since platforms allow for such personal customization of likes and interests, the leads generated are solid. Gone are the days of cold calls, now even if a viewer has yet to make a purchase their “liking” or “following” is a sign that they are actively requesting to view your advertisement (aka. Your posts) plus it alerts their audience of their interest in your company.
These are just a few examples of the power of social media, the ways that it can be used are countless. If you would like to fully grasp your company’s social media power contact Ward Design Group today at 904-540-9933.
