Five Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Social Media Marketing Strategy Now More Than Ever

Five Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Social Media Marketing Strategy Now More Than Ever

Did you know that 1.13 billion people log on to Facebook every day? Or that YouTube reaches more 18- to 49- year-olds a month than any U.S. cable network? You may find it hard to believe, but these impressive numbers are often not enough to convince small businesses to enter the social space. But whether you want to take that leap or not, potential customers are already learning about your brand on social sites like Yelp and making the decision to do business with you based on what others say. This is why Blue Zoo Creative believes a sound social media strategy is critical to your success in 2016 and beyond.

Regardless of your niche, the social space offers tremendous opportunity to grow your audience and increase brand loyalty. Here are our top five reasons why your business needs a social media marketing strategy now more than ever.

1. Social media supports sales.

Social media allows your brand to reach a much larger audience and to “stay in front” of customers during the entire buying cycle. For example, according to MarketingTechBlog.com, more than 70% of businesses have acquired a customer through Facebook. When they need the product or service you provide, your followers are more likely to buy from you than a brand they don’t interact with regularly.

2. Social media allows brands to build real relationships.

Before the web existed (we know it’s hard to imagine), small businesses relied on word-of-mouth advertising to generate leads. Today, word-of-mouth is still an effective way to reach new customers, but those conversations now occur almost exclusively online.

Customers often use social media to cheer (or jeer) your brand. By actively listening to social channels, you can not only provide real-time customer service but also identify and empower your brand’s advocates, those raving fans who believe in what you do and want to share your mission with others.

A good social strategy can also help you recruit talent; partner with non-competitive brands and charitable organizations; and open lines of communication between you and journalists in various media.

3. Social Media boosts your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.

While social media signals may not play as much of a direct role in Google and BING rankings as they did in the past, publishing content across various social platforms is a great way to acquire backlinks (an important ranking factor) and send traffic to your website.

And do not forget that many social platforms are popular search engines in their own right. YouTube, for example, is the world’s second largest search engine behind Google with about a billion searches a day! Knowing how to optimize your profile to attract users on these platforms is essential to a good overall SEO strategy.

4. Social Advertising offers more precise targeting than other channels.

Social platforms like Facebook collect an extraordinary amount of information about their users. As a social advertiser, you can leverage this data to precisely target potential customers. Most search engine pay-per-click campaigns only allow targeting by location, but their social counterparts can serve ads based on age, interests, site activity, and more. Of course, more precise targeting leads to higher conversion rates.

5. Your competition may not be taking full advantage of what the social space offers.

According to Brandwatch.com, there are 40 million active small business pages on Facebook, but only two million of these pay for advertising. Consider this statistic alongside the fact that less than eight percent of all small businesses use Facebook to promote themselves, and you begin to see the potential of social media marketing.

When you are ready to tap into that potential, Blue Zoo Creative can help you craft a winning social strategy. Get Creative with us now.

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