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What does a business need for growth? The answer is simple, successful marketing that leads to global product exposure, increase in traffic, engagement with existing customers, reaching new customers and well-appreciated image of company culture and excellence. To achieve all these in today’s digital world, the idyllic reach outsource is social media. Now, when social media plays such a significant role in emerging economies then how it can be a fad? Certainly not! Social media is here to stay and evolve better with time. In this post, let us discuss six reasons why social media is more than a fad and how organizations can leverage it for their growth and expansion.
Maximizes Product Visibility: These days consumers are congregating on social media expansively; therefore marketers have to take their products or services where the customers are! To find any information or solution, the first thing customers do is to interact with the people in their networks on the different social media accounts. At the same time if they come across the product or service online, then they make the purchase seeing the visuals and reading the content. Besides, they tend to be more receptive of visuals and content displayed on social media than the traditional methods that help in future sales too. Hence it is imperative to maximize product visibility to drive sales which are best achieved by social media.
Some people feel the popularity of social media networks would fade after a couple of years! Yes, it might happen, but when one social network loses the popularity, then another network comes up aggressively. As the target customers switch their social media accounts, marketers too have to move on and adapt to the changes.
It is a fact that irrespective of the change in the network’s popularity, social media holds the upper hand in marketing because viewership on television and traditional media is steadily decreasing and consumers spend more time on mobile than in the physical stores or markets. For example, in 2005 MySpace was popular while in 2019 Instagram is most in demand;, therefore, marketers are having appealing posts of their products on Instagram. Similarly, apps are gaining more acceptability for online shopping than the stores, so marketers are reaching the target customers with the products on online shopping apps. Hence, no matter whether social networks change, but social media would continue to be a great marketing tool for maximizing product visibility.
Stimulates Global Reach: Existing customers are the asset to the company, but at the same time it is also important to have new customers for business growth and expansion. The extension to the sales happens when the customers in new regions are identified and engaged by the company. And social media is packed with opportunities to reach new target customers in any region, city, state or country. Marketers must leverage on this as much as possible.
Additionally, the basic necessity of life earlier was food, clothes, and shelter but now it has warmly included digital screens as people all over the world are hooked up to their screens – namely smartphones, tablets or notebooks. To reach them in person in every nook and corner of the globe is just not possible, but with social media, it is very much possible. Furthermore, social media stimulates to build strong ties with would-be customers by engaging them in various discussions taking place around the brand. It is extremely valuable for any business to reach the target audience and have a direct connection with them. And the majority of the consumers respond instantaneously on social media platforms. Thus, to reach the global target audience social media is the ideal way out.
Facilitates to Gain Marketplace Intelligence: With the passage of time, social media has been sprouting profusely not only to reach the target audience but also help gain marketplace intelligence. The data collected from social media analytics is unorganized but it enables to understand the market, know consumer behavior and monitor competition to the core.
• Market Understanding: The data obtained from social media aids to spot early trends to drive product development, ascertain which product sells in a specific market, right kind of messaging to enhance exposure and sales of the product, etc. Utilizing this data to business intelligence marketers can comprehend the market well to identify the opportunities and threats prevailing at any given time.
• Consumer Behaviour: Social media offers deep insight into purchasing behavior and patterns of target consumer in an online environment such as what kind of products and services they buy, what they feel about the products and so on. In this way by plotting consumer data from social media, organizations can have a better interpretation of customers and prospects.
• Monitor Competition: Market is competitive where different brands are sprinting against one another to win the same customer hence through social media, organizations can find the edge in the competition by analyzing real-time data on the number of views on various posts, measuring campaign success, supervising engagement around product launches, etc. It enables marketers to optimize the on-going campaigns as well as develop more focused strategies to escalate the reach to the target audience.
Gaining marketplace intelligence through social media ensures the potential market share is tapped successfully and never lost to the competitors.
Powers Strategic Business Partnerships: Life is more meaningful with inter-dependence. Therefore it makes a lot of sense to have it in business too. Strategically working with other industry enables both the companies engaged in a partnership to reach the global market and attain enormous benefits. Social media plays a vital role to achieve best of the best from the strategic business partnership, a powerful competitive tool to have access to the new market, expanding the target customer base and take the lead in the competition.
In the world that is getting increasingly complex due to the emergence of new technologies and market uncertainties every day, it is ideal for facing it along with other business. And to do so, social media is the best platform to search for these new strategic business partnerships and run the co-marketing campaign in unison to reach a wide global audience.
• Search Companies for Strategic Business Partnership: Majority of times two companies enter into the collaborative agreement to attain the common goals by sharing the resources however at times there are more than two companies as well in such strategic business partnerships. To find such companies for the strategic business alliance is a lot difficult than said!
To facilitate this search of identifying the company whose services or product complements yours, it is best to use social media platforms catering B2B segment precisely such as LinkedIn. To stay focused on the search on social media, elucidate the objective and outline as what type of company you are looking for a strategic business partnership. Later use the keywords to have a more specific search.
• Co-branding Marketing Campaigns: Marketing promotion campaign driven by two or more companies that are not competitors but want to reach the same target audience is considered to be a silver bullet, and it turns ground-breaking when it is run on social media.
If done right, the end result increases in followers, views, likes, visits on the website and more engagement with the target audience. Co-branding marketing campaigns are one plus one equals eleven. This happens so because the co-branding marketing campaigns offer the content before the online audience with a difference that grabs their attention and generates conversations spontaneously.
Henceforth, to capitalize on brand prominence and presence amid target audience to drive sales, opt for strategic business partnership driven by social media from the start (searching the partners) till the end (co-branding marketing campaigns). Do not let this opportunity slip away!
Turns Customers into Brand Advocates: A happy customer is a key to success of any business and when they turn naturally into a loyal fan advocating other consumers about the company’s product and services then surely the growth is guaranteed. These days, as most of the time consumers are online, they share their experiences and opinions on social media. In case of some fall-out, the marketers can respond promptly to the customer’s concerns and resolve it in the least possible time. As a result, marketers would win customer loyalty, and product’s market positioning is strengthened.
Besides, if the customers are satisfied with the services or product quality, they are happy to like pages and leave positive comments. Sometimes the product or service video delivering some social message receives a tremendous response and goes viral. A viral video is a jackpot for the organizations as it creates a long-term position for the brand and it stays with the viewers for an extensive time period. Also, it is largely impactful for brand promotion as well as helpful in crafting a unique identity of the company amid the global audience. In a recent survey, 69% of marketers found social media extremely useful for building a loyal fan base.
Saves the Resources: Marketing expenditure is one of the major costs to the company and amongst all the alternatives available, the marketers find expenses incurred on social media to be least when compared to all other marketing channels. Why not? After all social media has narrowed down the world and changed the way people connect to one another. Thereby with fewer expenses and more sales, social media enables the organization to attain financial or other business goals. Consequently, marketers are giving prominence to social media in their marketing and sales budgets. Time and money are the two major resources of every organization with respect to marketing and sales. Both are saved immensely through social media. Let us elaborate it further.
A decade before, to reach the global audience for some engagement for products and services surely would have been skyrocketing expensive considering traveling and other expenses but now it is possible to reach the same target audience sitting in the office. Secondly, with the right messaging and visuals, organizations can fuel customer engagement around the globe at a minimum cost. Similarly, social media save a lot on time, and money spent to launch, run and monitor the marketing campaigns. How it became possible? We all know, the reply is social media.
Social media also saves the resources by enabling to better understand the customer and competitors as it drives listening, strategizing, engaging, and ultimately direct traffic back to organizations’ owned channels namely website and online store to the final action ‘sales conversion’. Collating it all, it is evident that social media saves a lot of resources of organizations to attract new customers, retaining old customers and generating more revenue for the businesses.
Final Thoughts: Social media is a tool that can be used creatively in multiple ways in favor of an organization. Tagging it as a fad will be a big mistake! More than 90% of marketers throughout the world have quoted social media as ‘most important’ for their organizational growth. It would not have happened if social media was short-lived or was declining on the growth graph. The count of active customers online and marketers leveraging social media is increasing every day so do not be left out thinking over ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’! Instead invest the efforts to explore the social media to the core, connect with your target audience and expand your business. All the Best!
