Social media is one of the most important channels for any business or marketing team.
With billions of users distributed across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), and TikTok, social media offers excellent opportunities to increase your company’s reach, build relationships with consumers, and differentiate yourself from competitors.
While developing an effective social media strategy takes both time and expertise, the results of a strong social presence can be astronomical.
In this post, you’ll learn the 10 biggest benefits of social media marketing to businesses, large and small, from any industry.
10 Top Social Media Marketing Benefits
- Increased Brand Recognition and Awareness
- Engage with Customers in Real-Time
- Offer Faster Customer Service
- Build Trustworthiness With Social Proof
- Get More Visits To Your Website
- Get More Eyeballs To Your Content
- Build a Community around Your Brand
- Understand Your Audience Better
- Targeted Advertising
- Increase Conversions With Retargeting Campaigns
1. Increased Brand Recognition and Awareness
Building brand awareness and brand recognition is one of the most important goals for any company using social media marketing.
Currently, there are more than 4.89 billion social media users worldwide, representing about half of the planet’s population.
This means publishing content on the right channels (the ones that resonate with your target audience) improves your chance of connecting with endless potential leads.
Social media platforms give companies an opportunity to capture the trust of their target audience with consistent messaging and imagery.
However, it’s also an excellent way to build deeper relationships with consumers through authentic content.
According to Sprout Social, 74% of consumers now say that purchasing products and services from companies that share their values is more important to them than ever.
Through social media, you can rapidly draw attention to your brand vision and ideals.
For instance, Patagonia doesn’t just highlight its products on its Instagram page. It draws attention to its sustainable initiatives and charitable programs too.
2. Engage with Customers in Real-Time
The “social” aspect of social media is more important to the growth of your company than you might realize.
Most marketing and advertising strategies focus on one-way conversations. They present information to consumers (via written content, audio, or video), but consumers don’t have a direct way to respond to a brand’s message.
With social media, on the other hand, the focus is on two-way interactions. Virtually every social channel gives customers an opportunity to respond to what they see from brands with messages, comments, or reactions (likes and shares).
Engaging with customers in real time gives businesses an opportunity to collect immediate feedback on their products and services.
It also offers companies a unique opportunity to showcase their personality and develop their credibility.
For instance, Nike regularly responds to messages from consumers on its X (Twitter) account, demonstrating a commitment to supporting athletes in all of their forms:
3. Offer Faster Customer Service
Two-thirds of customers say the speed of service they can expect from a company is just as important as the price of a product.
Modern consumers have higher expectations from brands than ever before, and any business that doesn’t respond quickly and effectively to the needs of its target audience risks losing customers.
Fortunately, social media gives companies an opportunity to offer 24/7 guidance and support to every customer.
Direct messaging apps on social media channels like Instagram and Facebook offer a quick and easy way to communicate with customers.
However, companies can also build on their support strategy with intuitive AI and automation tools.
These bots can deliver constant self-service support with minimal investment from companies.
This is crucial now that around half of social media users expect companies to respond to their questions within 3 hours.
Chatbots designed for social media can address out-of-hours inquiries instantly, driving customers to valuable knowledgebase articles or FAQs.
They can even send messages to human agents and give customers an option to request a call-back at a later stage.
4. Build Trustworthiness With Social Proof
Trust is incredibly difficult to earn in today’s digital world. Although consumers are becoming more comfortable with the world of online brand interactions, countless negative press releases have made them wary of brands with a limited social presence.
Around 72% of consumers now say that relevant content, delivered at the right time, increases their trust in a company.
Social media can help companies to distribute that content consistently, improving their relationships with their audience.
Social media channels like Instagram and TikTok also offer companies a unique opportunity to collect user-generated content, which can contribute to the social proof elements in websites, email marketing, and content marketing campaigns.
According to studies, 85% of people say user-generated content is more influential than any other form of branded content.
UCG can even improve the impact of your other advertising campaigns. For instance, the Parachute company used UCG in retargeting ads to generate a 35% higher click-through rate for a 60% lower cost per click than other ads.
5. Get More Visits To Your Website
While huge numbers of social followers can help to improve your brand image, most companies investing in social media marketing want their ads and campaigns to drive customers elsewhere – to their websites and product pages.
Posts on social media channels, combined with links and clickable images, are an excellent way to improve website traffic.
One study found that around 80% of social media users click through to a website from a social media post.
Some social channels, like Instagram, even allow eCommerce and retail brands to set up social media stores, which direct customers straight to purchasable products.
A strong social media presence can also improve your organic traffic by enhancing your SEO ranking.
Although social media doesn’t influence search engine performance directly, it does improve brand exposure, increase the visibility of your brand, and enhance your reputation.
One study found that there’s a significant link between social shares and SEO performance.
This could mean Google examines your likes and comments on social media to help determine the authority and expertise of your brand.
6. Get More Eyeballs To Your Content
Content marketing is one of the most valuable forms of digital marketing, contributing to everything from thought leadership to SEO performance.
However, creating amazing content is just the first step. You also need to draw attention to your posts.
Social media makes it easy to distribute content to your target audience. You can link to organic content on every platform, promote videos from YouTube, and even share snippets from your latest blog posts in your social strategy.
Since customers can also share your posts, your chances of reaching a broader audience are greater on social media too.
Around 49% of social media users say they share on social media to inform, entertain, or impress others.
If your posts deliver excellent value, your customers will help you to promote them, free of charge, through word-of-mouth advertising.
Social media posts can even rank on Google, making it easier for customers to find your business when searching for keywords.
7. Build a Community around Your Brand
The online community has become increasingly important in recent years, particularly as consumers look for ways to develop stronger relationships with brands.
Around 76% of internet users now participate in an online community. Notably, this number has also grown significantly since the pandemic.
Social media gives companies a unique way to engage their audience with a variety of different types of content, from videos and text-based posts to polls and surveys.
Your online community can help you keep your finger on the pulse of customer concerns and preferences while also helping to build stronger relationships with your audience.
What’s more, communities give you access to a wide variety of advocates who may be willing to help promote your brand.
The key to building an effective community through social media is posting content that inspires conversations.
Ask your customers questions about their experiences with your products or the trends in your industry.
Respond to their comments and share valuable insights and information.
For instance, the PC Game Pass brand posts content encouraging people to share their anticipation about upcoming releases and events:
8. Understand Your Audience Better
A deeper knowledge of your audience is essential in today’s marketing world.
71% of customers say they want companies to share personalized content relevant to their needs.
To accomplish this, business leaders need to gather as much information as possible about their consumer’s goals, pain points, and behaviors.
Fortunately, social media offers plenty of ways for companies to start gathering more data about their customers.
Social listening tools can provide a behind-the-scenes look at the topics and trends relevant to your industry.
Monitoring tools can help you to understand your customer’s perception of your brand and how they feel you compare to your competitors.
You can also gather useful insights from audience engagement metrics on channels like Instagram and Facebook.
These insights can tell you everything you need to know about customer demographics, locations, and even the type of content they engage with most.
Plus, many social media channels allow customers to run polls and ask customers questions, which can help you tailor your content and even new products to consumer needs.
9. Targeted Advertising
Social media marketing can be an excellent way to improve your brand reach and get your content in front of new audiences.
However, it’s also an excellent tool for creating more targeted and focused campaigns.
Many of the top social media platforms, such as Facebook (Meta) and Instagram, offer access to comprehensive targeting tools.
You can position your ads in front of customers based on their hobbies, demographic data, interests, and location.
This ensures you can reach the audience most likely to want your products and services, boosting the ROI of your social media campaigns.
Around 49% of consumers say they find the perfect product for their needs as a result of targeted ads.
Companies can leverage different social media channels to target specific audiences. For instance, LinkedIn is ideal for B2B interactions, while TikTok and Instagram are fantastic for reaching younger consumers.
Plus, with paid advertising campaigns, you can create multiple variations of your ads for different groups, changing the language, content, offer, and even the visuals to suit the target audience you want to reach.
10. Increase Conversions With Retargeting Campaigns
One of the biggest benefits of social media marketing is it can help drive sales and conversions for your business.
Around 76% of consumers say they’ve purchased a product they saw on a brand’s social media post.
However, social media isn’t just a great way to increase initial sales. It can also improve your chances of converting a customer who previously interacted with your company.
Around 92% of consumers visit a company’s website for the first time to find information or do something besides making a purchase.
With retargeting ads, you can draw those consumers back to your website after they’ve already clicked away.
Meta’s advertising platform makes it easy to create retargeting campaigns focused on consumers who are already aware of your products.
There are even tools that can allow you to create dynamic ads, which automatically show the last product your customer looked at when browsing your website.
Retargeting can significantly increase your chances of conversions and reduce cart abandonment rates.
In fact, some studies show that retargeting can increase your conversion rates by up to 150%, and they have a better CTR than standard display ads.
The Enduring Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing remains one of the most powerful tools in the digital landscape. Even at a time when artificial intelligence and automation are taking over the world, social media gives companies an opportunity to form deeper connections with customers.
With the right social media marketing strategy, you can not only reach more potential consumers, but you can also improve your brand image and reputation.
Social media gives you the power to build credibility, retain top-of-mind recognition with your target audience, and boost your chances of sales.
To learn more about social media marketing, read the following guides:
Leave a Reply