FIVE REASONS WHY SOCIAL MEDIA WILL WORK FOR YOUR BUSINESS

11 August 2022

Gone are the days of flicking through the Yellow Pages to find a business that will solve your problems. With just a few clicks online, consumers can now discover pretty much everything they need to know about a business before making a purchase decision. Not only that, consumers are discovering new businesses, which they have never previously heard of, simply by being exposed to them on social media. 

The bottom line is: every business will benefit from having a social media presence, no matter the industry. Here are five key reasons why social media will work for your business…

Building Brand Awareness

There are two aspects to brand awareness: the number of people who know that your brand exists and the level of familiarity with your brand. When consumers need to make a purchasing decision, they are more likely to choose to purchase from a familiar brand. Social media is one of the best tools for building brand awareness. Building a consistent online presence through posting valuable content and interacting with consumers helps make your business more likely to get chosen over the competition. With more than half of the world now using social media (58.4%), the opportunity for your brand to be exposed to consumers is enormous. 

Conveying Your Brand Personality 

You should think of your brand as having human-like characteristics; maybe it is seen as trustworthy, or humorous, or sophisticated. Businesses should always aim to create a strong brand personality, ideally aligned to that of their target audience. Once your target audience understands your brand personality, and if your audience can see similarities to their own values and beliefs, they are more likely to connect emotionally with your brand. Just like you can be attracted to people according to their personality traits, people can be attracted to brands for the same reason.  If the attraction is strong enough, they can be encouraged to purchase.

Generating Leads 

So you’ve managed successfully to reach your target audience and more and more people are becoming familiar with your brand… what now? Lead generation! This is where you turn awareness into sales. Leads are the collection of information (e.g. name, email address or phone number) from individuals who are interested in what you sell. Generating these leads can be done in multiple ways on social media.

Call-to-actions - adding actionable text and links into posts and on your profile. E.g. “sign up to our newsletter”, “make a booking” or “become a member”.

Incentives - using promotions and offers as a way to encourage consumers to purchase, e.g. “sign up to our newsletter to receive 15% off your first order”. Even if the consumer doesn’t make a purchase straight away, you’ve successfully gained a lead through them signing up.

Reviews - sharing positive customer reviews can strengthen brand credibility and increase trust in the brand, hopefully leading to people getting in touch with you.

Once these leads are obtained, the sales team can then work their magic on securing the sales.

Building Brand Loyalty

Social media allows businesses to engage reactively in two-way communication with customers and prospects. This communication can take the form of responding to direct messages, replying to comments left under posts, and potentially even sharing user-generated content. This personalised interaction can help create feelings of emotional attachment and loyalty, which can encourage a continued preference for your brand.

Tracking Your Competition

Social media is very useful for keeping up to date with your competitors. Carrying out an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses could help you define potential threats and identify opportunities for your business to shine. Take a look at which social media platforms they’re on, what content they post and what works well / doesn’t work well from their results. You may realise there are some gaps in your social media strategy which need filling.

Every business can benefit from social media if the right strategy is implemented. The key is to set specific social media objectives that align with your overall business objectives and to tailor activities to reach precise goals. If you’re struggling to outline your specific social media objectives, get in touch with us here to find out how we can help you.