If you’re a business entrepreneur or owner, you need to weigh the positives and negatives of using social media platforms to boost your brand, services, and marketing potential. In order to make this decision, you need to test different ways to prove the value of social media for your specific business.
Cost
Social media is one of the most economical ways to market your product. Sometimes, businesses still focus on “traditional” marketing methods, despite them costing more and potentially taking longer to achieve results. Social media, on the other hand, is an ever-expanding universe of possibilities to reach your target audience!
Social media can achieve a lower cost per thousand views or impressions than other types of advertising like print, TV, or radio. In addition to the lower cost per viewer, the level of targeting is much more precise. You’re able to reach a more diverse target audience and many more people by using social media apps and platforms, than if you solely relied on a traditional method, like print.
Social Media Ads
Facebook and Twitter Ads Manager both provide a daily reach for their campaigns, which you can then utilize for your specific brand to calculate a personalized cost per thousand impressions.
The same can be applied to TikTok – you can use the TikTok analytics to determine your brand’s estimated daily results, including reach, link clicks, and your audience size. This allows you to analyze your current marketing tactics and see if utilizing social media platforms is best for your brand’s goal, reach, and campaign.
Brand Reputation
While your business may not regularly use social media at present, it’s very likely that your customers are active on social media. With so many platforms available nowadays, it’s highly probable that your customers are discussing your products or services online – and you won’t know what’s being said if you’re not up to date with current social media platforms!
Social Channels
Resolve Poor Reviews
Understand Your Customers
Appeal to the Younger Generation
Brand Awareness
If your competitors are active on social media and responding to comments, posting new content, and giving updates about their business, they may be taking potential customers away from your brand. If you don’t have an online presence, then people are more likely to go with what they know – or what they can more easily find.
Social Media Ads
Take a look at what your competitors are doing on their social media profiles. See if they are running any paid ads on apps like Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook.
For younger audiences, are they up to date with the current hashtag challenges on TikTok, using humor and viral trends to attract a younger target market?
Leads
Chances are many people are visiting your site from social media or from a link that a friend shared with them. If you don’t have an active content marketing strategy running with brand-related content and articles, rarely will someone happen to come upon your site from a Google or Bing search. Content marketing can often be more labor-intensive than maintaining active social media channels.
Use Google Analytics to see where your traffic comes from. Take a look at the ‘Channels’ section and look out for ‘Social’ in your Google Analytics page. This allows you to see a breakdown of each network and which site is sending you traffic from your social media efforts.
Education
We know you’re old school, but where else can you find a huge auditorium (AKA Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc…) filled with potential customers, listening to your brand’s voice throughout the day? You might not even use social media yourself, but that’s no reason to write it off for your business! After all, with all of the latest info and stats about social media usage in terms of marketing for brands and businesses, the only thing it can do for you is help you increase traffic, customers, and connections. Sounds pretty good, yes?
