If you are a business entrepreneur or owner, then you need to weigh the positives and negatives of using social media platforms to boost your brand, services, or your 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 least expensive ways to market your product. Since it is relatively new, businesses still sometimes try to focus on the “traditional” methods, despite costing more and potentially taking longer.
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 viewers, the level of targeting available is much higher. You are able to reach a more diverse target audience and many more people by using social media apps and platforms, than you would 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 can allow 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 currently, it is very likely that the majority of your customers are. With so many platforms available nowadays, it is highly likely that your customers are discussing your products or your services online – and you won’t know what is being said if you are 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, then people are more likely to go to your competitors than the year to go to you. If you do not have an online presence then people are more likely to go with what they know – or what they can easily find out about.
Take a look at what your competitors are doing on their social media. See if they are running any paid ads on apps like Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. Are they up to date with the current hashtag challenges on TikTok, using humor and viral sensations to attract the younger target market?
Leads
Chances are, people are visiting your site from social media or from a link that a friend has shared with them. Very rarely does someone happen to come upon a website by just searching a name on Google, and clicking on that one business site. Usually, you go through social media channels to get to what you are looking for.
Take a look at the ‘Channels’ section of Acquisition and look out for ‘Social’ in your Google Analytics page. This allows you to see a breakdown of each network and who has sent traffic your way, and how often they send it.
Education
You now have ample evidence that proves your business will benefit from social media, but you may still be reluctant to try it out – we get it, you’re kind of old school. Maybe you don’t even use social media yourself, but that is no reason that you should 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 gain more traffic, gain more customers, and make more connections.