An average person spends around half an hour to 2.5 hours on social media every single day. They watch videos, comment, tweet, like, and share stories that inspired them. Social media channels have more than 4 billion active users who visit them every day, making them an attractive option for marketers, business owners, and brand promoters.
Used effectively and with a strategic plan, social media can
- Build enormous brand awareness among the audience
- Create a loyal band of converting customers
- Serve as a tool to get valuable customer feedback for free
- Increase sales tremendously
- Create product ideas and designs based on customer requirement
- Help in understanding the customer needs better
- Help in building lasting customer relationships through various giveaways, competitions, etc.
- Serve as an effective, low-cost advertising platform that has a global reach
- Serve as a practical tool to understand the current trends and competitor marketing agendas
- Provide valuable metrics to measure your performance and increase sales
Social Media Success Example
Television ads give more than 200% ROI when the ad gets aired on specific programs like Superbowl, famous sitcoms, etc. But the products advertised are general and do not target customer demographics specifically.
Social media sites, on the other hand, do a great job of providing demographics-based metrics. Each social media influencer has a particular audience persona. They target people of a certain age, earning potentiality and beliefs based on their interests.
It becomes easy for marketers to advertise products to these, mainly targeted customers, as they create products catering to their specific necessities. For example, Lilly Singh, popularly known as Superwoman on YouTube, is a famous influencer with over 14 million subscribers. Ads showing dark foundation shades get aired before and after her video.
Foundation shades for dark to medium tanned skin are hard to find offline. Targeting a large demographic of people in need of the product through an influencer representing them and creating content specifically from their viewpoint earns excellent profits. Video ads displayed before Lilly Singh videos are a great example of using social media to grow a business.
Her skits and videos are similar to the Superbowl and famous sitcoms. But they have certain additional advantages that traditional billboard advertising, newspaper advertising, and television advertising doesn’t have:
- The viewers can watch it anytime from the comfort of their home using their mobile. There is no particular airing time.
- They can like or dislike the content immediately. Traditional media like television did not provide the chance to give immediate feedback or collect the real-time success rate. This feature of social media is handy while tracking the success of an ad campaign.
- If viewers like the program, they share it with several others they know, making it viral. The advertisements associated with the particular program or the products promoted in the program also reach all the shared viewers. Making content go viral is one of the most attractive features of social media.
How to promote effectively using social media?
Promoting a business effectively through social media involves three essential steps.
Right Platform: Have a defined social media strategy that is clear on what you need to do: build brand awareness, or increase sales, or increase customer retention. Choosing the right platform based on the strategic goal will help.
For example, Instagram stories are used to showcase how the product solved a customer problem. Twitter is used as a means for customer service, engaging with the customers inquiring there. Facebook, Pinterest content, and YouTube ads can drive the customers to the official website to buy the product.
Right Influencer: Brands can choose to market through the right influencer analyzing the audience persona of the influencer’s followers. If they have the right target audience interested in buying the brand’s products, sponsored content will be beneficial to increase sales.
Choosing the right influencer is the most crucial step in influencer marketing. Use Nuwber to verify the influencer’s identity before contacting them to avoid ending up with unwanted intermediaries who just use the influencer’s name. You can also contact agencies that employ experts to match specific brand requirements with the right influencers to get maximum success and conversion rate.
Right Content: Using versatile content that captures the audience and increases their interest in the brand is ultimately essential.
- Social media managers usually design 50% of the content to drive customers to the official website or landing pages. This step converts viewers into buyers or paying customers.
- 25% of the content is usually related to promoting other related products or making the brand visible in all the related niches. 5% of the content gets targeted towards advertising company culture, loyalty programs, giveaways, corporate social responsibility, etc.
- 20% content is direct advertising. The emails of the people visiting the website or the company’s social media profile are collected. They receive promotional emails, newsletters, free services, discount coupons, etc.
Following this tried and tested content marketing thumb rule guarantees minimal success and profitable returns on the ROI. However, certain brand managers and marketing experts seek to mix and match content promotion in various ways.
Social media has highly dwindled the traditional way of sponsoring products directly and through straightforward advertisements. Instead, it is now using various subtle mind tricks, addressing the customers directly. They make viewers buy the product because the brand is genuine, valuable, or supports a social cause.
The social media posts make the audience believe they contribute to a better world by buying a specific brand’s products. Businesses should take advantage of this emotional appeal and use it effectively in their product promotion.
Social media is the new age platform for advertising any business or product. Failing to have an influential presence on social media will hinder a brand’s ability to connect with its customers directly. Social media helps to increase sales and create brand awareness enormously. The brands should choose the right platform, influencer, and content to showcase themselves as the new-age companies selling products with a cause.