In many marketing campaigns, most of the target recipients are possibilities at best. They may or may not be interested in your offering now, and some may never be interested. You can’t be sure they’ll take advantage of the offer or even bother to review it. This is not the case with most of your social media followers, which is a big reason why social media is important for business. By marketing to users who are already fans of your company, you know that you are reaching a qualified demographic. The fact that they follow you on Facebook, Twitter, or other social platform sites means that they already want to know more

2. Grow your brand's reputation

Traditional marketing helps companies promote their products and services without having to reveal their flaws. Social media doesn’t offer this protection, because consumers are all too happy to post their complaints about product performance, poor customer service, and other issues that can hurt a business.

This may seem like a disadvantage, but social media also provides your business the opportunity to respond to negative reviews and overcome negative publicity. To do this, you’ll need a mix of proactive outreach, constant monitoring, and effective crisis management.

3. Build a community

In most traditional (and even some online) marketing initiatives, your company is solely responsible for spreading your message. Your flyers may be passed around, and someone might occasionally forward an email newsletter, but these things don’t happen often enough to have an impact on your campaigns. With social media marketing, sharing is encouraged, which can have a huge impact on your business.

Social media is important because it makes it easy for your followers to share your promotions and content. And even if they don’t directly share your posts, they can speak positively about you and direct traffic to your social accounts or website. This is extremely valuable, as most consumers tend to trust recommendations from friends and family much more than from companies themselves.

To promote this kind of discussion, you can use social media to build a community around your business. Encourage customers to leave reviews (both positive and negative), interact with your posts, and have conversations with other customers. By facilitating discussion, you can build positive relationships with both current and potential customers.

4. Use advanced targeting options easily

If these benefits seem nice enough, but you’re wondering if social media marketing is cost-effective, the answer is yes. Think about how much information social platforms have on their users. They know each person’s age, location, gender, interests, and friends—among many other details. Considering that you can target your ads to users based specifically on those things, social media marketing can be extremely effective.

With platforms like Facebook and Twitter, you can choose to only show your ads to the most qualified demographics. This means that you only pay for ads that are extremely targeted, and don’t have to waste money on having your ads displayed to users who are likely, not interested at all. This is an extremely cost-effective method and another reason that demonstrates the importance of social media.

As an example, take a pediatric dentist practice that wants to use dental social media marketing to attract new patients. Since the practice specializes in pediatric dental care, they would use target parents in the local area. They may even add other filters, like income, to enhance their target.