Investing In Social Media Marketing: What You Need To Know

Today’s fastest approach to developing your business is through social media marketing.

It’s the ideal method to reach new audiences, grow your brand, and attract new consumers, and it’s rife with selling possibilities to increase money.

So, what makes social media marketing stand out?

First of all, the incredible, engaged audience that social media presents us.

24 hours a day, 7 days a week, millions of Australians are using social media.

There are now about 25 million Australians according to the Australian Bureau of Population Clock Statistics.

There are now 16 million active Australians on Facebook, Facebook’s recent data shows. Therefore about 64% of the total population in Australia is an active user of Facebook.

No matter which way you slice it, that’s a massive audience – and that’s just on Facebook.

Having a vibrant social media page is a great way to get in front of new customers, entice people to your website and create genuine engagement between existing and potential clients and customers.

Used efficiently and with the right blend of organic and paid posts, social media provides you an around-the-clock advertising board for your company.

The great news is that social media marketing has a low barrier of entry in terms of both technical skills required and cost.

For many, social media marketing remains something of a mystery.

You can see it. You know that it has worked for other people.

Yet the unknowns continue to prevent you from taking the plunge.

And that’s fair enough.

Social media marketing is not for everyone.

Before we get into the five reasons why it’s worth investing in social media, perhaps it is best to set a couple of ground rules to help remove some of the mystery surrounding social media marketing and help you better understand if it’s right for you and your business.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is a digital marketing approach that engages consumers through platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and others.

It can be used for virtually anything, whether you sell a physical product or professional services and there is a range of various tactics that businesses and marketers use to market their business on social media.

Those tactics are almost endless, from hiring influencers to gush about your business and products to building online communities or groups and using it as a platform for your customer care operations.

Some tactics cost nothing to implement and only require the investment of time. Other tactics, such as advertising on these platforms, require capital investment and technical knowledge, as well as the time investment.

What type of companies and small businesses are investing in social media marketing?

Chances are, your direct competitors are investing in social media marketing.

Because it is relatively cheap to advertise on social media, especially when compared to traditional media advertising, everyone from the biggest players in your space through the local Mum-and-Dad businesses are advertising on social media platforms.

In 2019, over three-quarters of small companies made a social media investment.

According to Statista, over 92 per cent of marketers at larger firms will utilise social media marketing as part of their entire plan in 2021. According to these figures, it appears that the larger your company becomes, the more important social media marketing becomes.

With such a high proportion of small businesses making an investment – time or monetary – in social media marketing, it is a fair assumption that your competitors are already marketing in this space.

You may be wondering if social media marketing is worthwhile for a smaller business.

Maybe you run one of these businesses.

The simple answer is that it is quite likely that social media marketing is a worthwhile investment, but the nature of how your business conducts its social media marketing strategy will often be defined by a couple of important factors:

Type of business
Your ideal customers
Average spend your clients or customers have at your business
Your available time
Your marketing budget

Why are they investing in social media marketing?

The stats make it pretty easy to understand why social media marketing is such a popular marketing channel for Australian businesses big and small.

Pros and Cons of social media marketing

We’ll get into more detail on why investing in social media marketing is a good idea very soon, but first, there are a few things to consider.

Pros of social media marketing:

It aids in the development and enhancement of your brand’s individuality.

Your brand becomes more relatable as a result of social media.

Customers may have a back-and-forth discussion with firms through social media, unlike a television commercial.

Social media marketing may help you develop your brand personality when you connect with customers and broadcast messages if you create a brand voice guide.

You will receive prompt feedback.

Gathering consumer input and uncovering relevant insights is a long process, as anybody who has done in-depth market research will attest. However, you may use social media to publish polls or open-ended questions to get rapid replies.

Interact with other brands in a unique way.

Social media provides your company with several innovative chances to engage with other industry brands in ways that were previously unavailable.

One recent (early 2021) prominent example is Heinz topping Weetabix with their beans, which generated quite a commotion on Twitter.

Cons of social media marketing:

Social media marketing isn’t an easy or quick win.

Because you’ll need to reply to each customer’s inquiries, praises, and concerns, social media marketing may take up a significant amount of time.

It isn’t a get-rich-quick scam, either. Before you start seeing a big return on investment, you’ll need to put in a lot of time and work.

Just some of the different tasks you’ll need to tick off to be successful at social media marketing include:

Strategy (What’s the plan)
Content Creation (Creating the content that will help you execute the plan – posts, links, photos, videos, articles etc.)
Management (Actually scheduling and posting all the content you create)
Engagement (Responding to people who like, share and comment on your content)
Advertisements
Advertisement Review and Optimisation

Some of these tasks may be more relevant than others, depending on your overarching strategy.

Your brand’s tone might become inconsistent or hard to follow.

As stated above, social media marketing is never going to be a quick win. It takes time and energy to get right.

Bringing in some help to assist with the many facets of social media marketing, will help free you up to focus on your actual business, but it can also lead to your brand’s tone of voice becoming disjointed as different people put their own spin on things.

You can combat this by setting up a brand voice guide for your social media marketers to avoid your brand voice getting fractured (due to their varied styles and tones).

RESOURCE: DOWNLOAD OUR FREE BRAND VOICE GUIDELINE TEMPLATE HERE

Social media marketing isn’t without risks.

Marketing on social media may be a double-edged sword. You can reach customers much more readily, but by exposing channels of communication to the public, your business exposes itself to criticism and reputational damage.

Why invest in social media marketing? Four reasons to get started…

Despite the fact that social media marketing is time-consuming and involves some risk, there are several reasons why it will be a great investment. If you’re still not convinced, have a look at our list of the top five reasons to invest in a social media marketing plan.

Advertising at a low cost

In 2019, the average cost of a 30-second commercial during US television programming was over $105,000. If you’re a tiny business, you’re probably not going to be able to afford to advertise on television. Social media, on the other hand, is far less expensive.

Social media may be used in a variety of ways to promote your business. Running Facebook advertisements can be one of the more engaging (and cost-effective) methods to do it.

Boost brand recognition

Simply put, how can a consumer buy from you if they are unaware of your existence? The capacity to generate brand awareness and familiarity is critical for online and offline business growth.

Brand awareness refers to how well a consumer knows and recalls your company’s name in comparison to other brands or generic equivalents in the same or related category.

You may benefit from brand recognition by:

Increasing your consumers’ faith in you.
Developing word-of-mouth (or electronic word-of-mouth) marketing organically.
Increasing the value of your brand

You may reach your brand recognition goals by utilising social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn in various ways. Launching a giveaway contest or generating high-quality content that your audience may share with others are two strategies for increasing your social media presence (and hence brand recognition).

Increase brand loyalty

One of the most important advantages of social media is its capacity to develop and build brand loyalty. What exactly do we mean when we say “customer loyalty”? Customers that are loyal to you are less inclined to purchase with your rivals and are more likely to remain with you through good times and bad. Furthermore, social networking sites play an important role in converting pleased consumers into loyal ones, therefore enhancing customer value.

Many of the benefits of brand loyalty are comparable to those of brand awareness: loyal consumers will share positive word-of-mouth and, as a result, will have a higher level of confidence in you. (As an extra benefit, positive word-of-mouth has double the impact on new client acquisition as it does on retention.) Brand loyalty, on the other hand, has a few distinct advantages:

Customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and shop only with your brand

It helps your company save money on marketing by increasing customer retention (whereas word-of-mouth helps with the acquisition).

When changes or growth pains arise, loyal consumers are more inclined to remain with you.

You may develop brand loyalty in a variety of ways. Popular tactics that regularly yield fantastic results include offering rewards programmes to your followers, developing loyalty-focused marketing campaigns, and creating targeted communications with your consumers via SMS or Messenger marketing.

Find new clients

What can you do if your brand recognition isn’t as strong as you’d like it to be, and you don’t have a lot of devoted consumers to help you spread the word about your fantastic company? Easy! Utilize the power of social media to increase your reach in a strategic way.

You could pay for a TV commercial to reach thousands of people using traditional marketing. But, really, how many of them are actually interested in your products? You may promote relevant material to your audience and have two-way dialogues with potential consumers using targeted social media postings and content marketing.

Running a competition is a popular way to attract new consumers on social media. It’s worth noting that a competition doesn’t have to be a giveaway; design contests are a fantastic option, and victors don’t have to get a reward.

Monitoring areas like Reddit forums and Facebook groups, or using a service like Mention to conduct “social listening,” is another strategic method to get to know your audience and interact with them. To identify conversations where you may provide value, keep an eye out for keywords or phrases, your brand name, or even rivals’ names.

As you can see, true social media marketing goes beyond talking about vanity metrics like follower count or indiscriminately pushing content without regard for who it would be most relevant to. It’s also about connecting with your audience on a human level and bringing value to their lives.

Because of its cost-effective advertising, seamless eCommerce capabilities, and ability to provide your brand a means to interact with your consumers with a more personal touch, investing in social media marketing may help you expand your business.

Contact Content Hype to start a conversation about your social media marketing strategy.

Content Hype can assist with strategy formulation, or content creation if you already have a strategy, as well as social media management.