With 75% of people over the age of 13 across the globe reportedly using social media, adding social media marketing to your overall marketing strategy should be a no-brainer. Yet, up to 25% of British SME owners say that they don’t use social media marketing in any way.

If you are part of that 1/3 UK businesses that aren’t using advertising on social networks, you could be not reaping a lot of amazing benefits. We’ll provide the benefits. From brand recognition and awareness to increased sales and better communication with your customers , and increasing visits to your website These are the best 13 benefits of social media marketing for your business.

1. Brand Awareness and Recognition

One of the greatest benefits for social networks is the fact that it offers you connection to 4.62 billion people across the world. It takes only 5-7 impressions before someone begins to recall your brand. The more often they encounter your logo and messages the more they create an emotional connection between your branding and the product.

Making it easy for people to share, comment or like your posts on social media puts your content in front of a whole new set of potential customers as well as partners. The more exposure your brand has the more easily identifiable it becomes, leading to increased brand recognition.

2. Brand Authority and Becoming a thought leader

Social media marketing does more than let people know about your company, it could also help you build your reputation as an authority in your field. The more quality content you offer to your fans, the more you establish yourself as an authority in your field particularly when other well-known brands in your area engage with your posts.

As the authority of your band grows as you gain authority, people are more likely to contact you with inquiries about issues relevant to your field of specialization. This is often described as becoming a thought-leader. It’s not something that can be achieved overnight, but as you invest time and effort into implementing an effective social media strategy You will likely be able to see your social media’s influence expand.

3. Tell Your Brand’s Story

Social media provides you with a direct line of communication with your existing and potential customers and prospective and current business partners and suppliers, it is the perfect platform to share your brand’s story. If it’s news that is important like expansions of new products, brand new employees, or simply telling people about the history of your company and its values – there’s no better way to share the persona of your brand and what you believe in and what you’re committed to.

Telling your story humanises your brand and allows you to create a stronger, more emotional connection with your followers. When your followers on social media get to know the brand more, they will also be more likely to get involved in it and engage with your updates.

4. Brand Loyalty

A strong emotional connection and constant customer satisfaction result in brand loyalty. According to research, 56% buyers feel loyal to brands that seem to understand their wants, needs and values. When your relationship to your target audience grows it will create a loyal fans for your company. This is considered to be a one of the top benefits of using social media for marketing as per 61% marketing experts.

Building a loyal following adds benefits to your business since customers are willing to spend more money on a product or service that is offered by an organization they feel they can believe in. For instance, people who participate in loyalty programmes spend 12-18 percent more on their preferred brands than first-time purchasers.

5. Customer Engagement

Facebook is by far the sole method, other than face-to-face customer interactions in your physical location which allows you to get instant and two-way exchange of information with your existing and prospective customers. This is the reason it comes as no surprise that 80% of marketers use social media marketing to improve their customer engagement.

If you know your target audience well, you can use a variety of methods to boost the level of engagement with your customers. This can be done by posting during certain times of the day, using a specific platform or by sharing a particular kind of content (text images, text, videos).

6. Better Customer Services

Offering better customer service is one of the list of social media benefits your company will enjoy. In terms of customer services, email or enquiry forms do not are sufficient. 40% of consumers would abandon a brand that doesn’t provide live customer support 1 in 5 customers never returning.

When you use your social media accounts, you can respond to client queries in real-time through comments and private messages. However, if you are going to take customer service inquiries on social media, then you need to be available and respond promptly. Research has found that over half of all customers would be tempted to contact a company for assistance via social media. Of those, 2/3 of them expect to hear from a representative and half expect a response within three hours.

7. Better Customer Satisfaction

Achieving your social media marketing plan right will lead to higher customer satisfaction. It’s an opportunity to publicly show that you are concerned about your customers’ thoughts and opinions and that your business is prepared to spend your time to respond to these and swiftly address any issues that may be arising.

Satisfaction of customers in the digital area is just as important as when you’re in person. 71% of people who experience a positive experience in interacting with a company online are likely be more likely to refer it to friends and family. Another advantage of social media marketing that’s definitely worth banking on.

8. Reputation Management

If we are talking about communicating with your target audience as well as being responsive and providing the best overall experience we must not overlook the significance of social media as a tool for managing reputation. Particularly when you consider that 54 percent of social media users examine a brand’s web presence prior to purchasing products or services.

A negative review can cause more harm than you think 57% of shoppers reporting that they could be dissuaded from making a purchase due to negative reviews about a company’s online. Being proactive in your responses to comments can make a huge difference in the process of converting potential customers.

9. More Sales & Conversions

Every business wants to make profits and social marketing on the internet can be utilized to your advantage when it comes to doing exactly that. According to 60 percent of marketers that they’ve surveyed, the top positive effects they’ve experienced has been an increased sales as a direct result due to their social media efforts. Also, 78% of those who worked with clients through social media were reportedly better than those who did not.

The bottom line is that making the effort to interact with your client base and maintain long-lasting relationships between your brand and its loyal customers result in higher conversion rates, that makes it a worthy expenditure of your time.

10. Website Traffic

Excellent social media content can be easily shared, which means that the content you share is read by your current followers but also their social media community. In turn, many more people will come across your publication and if those contain links to your site and your website, you could see an increase in visitors to your site as a direct consequence of your social media posts. A healthy increase in traffic to websites is considered to be a major benefit of using social media for marketing from 79% of marketers.

However, a peak in traffic stemming from a single social media post does not create an effect that lasts. In order to see a substantial improvement to your website’s overall rank (or that is to become more likely to show up in the top search results on search engines when people are searching for related items to your business), you will need to maintain your social media presence regularly during a minimum of 6 months to one year.

11. Lead Generation

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram in addition to YouTube and TikTok are all channels that you can connect with new clients and business partners. This is a benefit of social media marketing that you must take full advantage on. 66% of marketers report that they have seen the benefits of lead generation from advertising on social networks.

The reason lead generation via social media is that it requires little to no commitment from prospective customers. The only thing they have to do is click one of your posts in your latest Facebook advertisement to find out more about your service or product review your prices and get the details they require, they have nothing to lose. There is no input of data or complex actions on their part, so your audience of potential customers is sure to expand.

12. Data-Driven Insights

With a powerful built-in data-gathering feature and analytics, as well as numerous external tools social media provides you with plenty of information that can be applied… if you know what to look out for, that is.

For example, you can utilize social media to keep an watch on your competitors, see what they are doing, what content the users are consuming and gather market information that will help you formulate and improve your own business strategy.

Additionally, you can learn a whole lot about your audience – from who your customers are and what they’re looking for, to the kind of content they are most interested in and what causes conversions. It is then possible to use this information to design targeted campaigns for advertising that will result in higher conversion rates and a higher return on your investment. You could even utilize Facebook as a remarketing tool to reach out to customers who have purchased your product or service.

13. Cost-Efficiency

Social media marketing offers an affordable way of connecting with your target audience, establishing your brand name and increasing profit. There are a variety of methods of achieving this. For example, repurposing content is an excellent strategy. You can post the same document with small changes across different social media platforms in order to reach different groups. It also allows users to share information from your website to a an even larger audience.

You want to give your content a boost? The good news is that social media advertising is highly targeted to reach the people who are most likely to engage with your brand and purchase therefore you can put your money on campaigns that actually succeed.

In addition, you won’t need to invest a fortune in the development of a chatbot that is smart on your site if it is possible to establish a trustworthy customer service team in charge of monitoring your social media platforms, as your lines of communications across every social media platform is created and ready for use.

To sum up the point, there are numerous social media marketing advantages you can take advantage of If you make the effort to improve your company’s social media presence, and the 13 points we’ve discussed only do a little bit of the job of understanding what social media can do for your business. Your competition is probably already on social media If you’ve not yet started getting started, it’s probably time to get stuck in, make your voice heard and connect with your clients online.

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