Social Media Marketing– An Essential Investment Today

Even 5 years ago, social media marketing was restricted only to a few companies. It was still new and apprehensions revolved round its success. Today, businesses have realized how these online platforms can bring revenue.

Social Media Marketing– An Essential Investment Today

Importance of social media is no longer debated; rather, its implementation has become priority to almost 86% of the businesses. A survey states, 89% of marketers has been successful in exposing their services through social media marketing strategies.

From finding new customers to keeping track of the existing ones, everything is easy with this form of marketing. SMM is more advanced when compared to the traditional marketing methods because it gives you instant reports about the rate of success you have achieved, based on your investment.

Why strategy?  

A roadmap is always an obligatory factor for any form of endeavor. So, if you have decided to market using social media, strategy is a prerequisite. It is not necessary to start with Tweeting even if it is very popular or creating a LinkedIn profile would hardly matter, if you are still new in the genre.

Hence, you need to know how your goals can be reached through proper strategies because tactics can be implemented after you have identified the requirement of the company. Here are some of the parameters you need to think for building a good strategy.

• Why social media? Because your business needs exposure and SMM can develop awareness about your brand, thereby increasing sales and brand advocacy.

• What is your existing state? Your strategy will be based on the present status and popularity. If your business has strong presence in the market, the marketing technique would be different from the business that needs to start from the initial stage.

• Who are your target audience? It is important to study the age group that your business serves because the use of social media would vary accordingly. Their interest and social behavior pattern would determine whether social media is the right tool for promoting your services.

• What is your USP (unique selling proposition)? You need to find out one unique feature that speaks about your company. Use this to promote in the social media platform and make it a point to get a trademark or copyright on it as your brand identity.

What is the ideal channel?

If your company is based in Miami, social media marketing industry is very active and updated here. They would always suggest you the ideal channel, which suits your business.

The platform that is perfect for one business might not be the ideal one for you. If your want to promote through videos, YouTube is always a better choice and if you want to target a specific sector, Facebook and Twitter can be the ideal tools. But the nature of you business is equally important to decide the platform.

For instance, if your business is concerned with e-commerce, Facebook should be the first choice. Your selection of channel would determine the percentage of engagement and reach.

Social Media Trends

Here are some of the social media trends that Forbes, a renowned American business magazine, observed for the year 2014.

• Investing on social media used to be a luxury but looking at the existing trends, it is more of an investment today. Businesses are allocating budget for this form of marketing, apart from spending on the traditional methods of advertising. Nearly 92% of business owners are building marketing strategies.

• In 2014, nearly 60% of businesses would focus on using Google+ (shutdown services). The activities in this platform would increase, even though many are still struggling with its implementation because Google announced social signals are not part of their ranking algorithm.

• Though image centric platforms like Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat are not a serious competition for Facebook but these have been successful in drawing a loyal user-base. Hence, businesses can fall back upon these channels for their success. For B2B sectors, LinkedIn would be a major network in the coming years.

Social media marketing is a game changer and its importance would increase with time. The faster a business integrates this process the better would be its outcome. New market can be captured and your brand gets more recognition.