How Important Is Social Media Marketing For Businesses In 2023?
September 18th, 2023 by Socially PowerfulLong gone are the days of TV based, high production advertisements filmed in studios. With the rise of social media a classic marketing campaign just doesn’t cut it anymore. Today, the importance of social media marketing prevails.
Whilst this may seem daunting to those brands who haven’t dipped their metaphorical toe in the social media pool, the importance of social media marketing cannot be understated in the digital age.
Let’s break down why social media marketing is so effective and why your brand needs to be engaging with it.
WHY SHOULD BUSINESSES CARE ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING?
Like many things, the pandemic had a huge impact on the marketing industry. There have been stark decreases in marketing budgets worldwide, with more than 400 North American and European CMOs still working at COVID budget levels. Taking a look at the numbers, on average marketing budgets have decreased from 9.5% of company revenue to 9.1% from 2022 to 2023.
The importance of social media marketing is growing exponentially in this new era of smaller budgets. With an effective campaign, brands are noticing that they can do more with less.
89% of marketers have claimed that social media is very important to their marketing strategy. On top of this, 82% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn and other platforms to build their brand community, with a whopping 80% of B2B social media leads coming from LinkedIn in 2017.
If these numbers don’t convince you of the importance of social media marketing, let’s take a look at the potential customers you could be reaching if you hopped on this train.
More than half the world’s population is active on social media. Of this, Facebook reaches 59%! Finally—and get ready for this one—13 people start using social media every second! That’s 13 more people you could be reaching every second if your brand had a social media marketing campaign.
Alright, now that we have covered the stats on the importance of social media marketing for business, let’s dive into all the ways social media marketing is so effective.
DEEP DIVE INTO THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Build Brand Trust
Authenticity builds trust.
The modern consumer is looking for a brand that feels authentic and genuine. Statistics show that a consumer is more likely to trust the opinion of family or friends rather than a brand. The way around this is to establish brand personality and encourage the consumer to view your brand as an authentic, human driven company worthy of their trust.
Via social media, you can highlight your brand values, showcase your relationship with your employees, and highlight positive consumer interactions.The more your clients view your brand as human driven and trustworthy, the more likely they are to engage with your product.
Know Your Audience
One of the many benefits of social media that shows the importance of social media marketing is its ability to generate data on your consumers. Social media provides you with demographic information on your customers, allowing you to quickly identify your real audience.
By knowing the type of people who are engaging with your content, you are able to perfectly tailor your strategy to your consumer; thus, boosting efficiency.
Maintain Interest
Once you have gained a new audience, how do you convince them to stick around? Part of the importance of social media marketing is that with just the name of a potential customer you can follow up their interest in your brand with emails, targeted posts, and more.
Each post, email, or video you share is a reminder to your audience that a) you exist, and b) you’re awesome!
Social Listening
Another magical benefit of social media marketing is being able to easily track what is being said about your brand. Comment sections, dislikes, and shares all allow you to see what consumers are saying about your brand; good or bad. Keeping an eye on this allows you to adjust your posts and stay in a positive light.
There is also room for community engagement. Liking comments and responding to tweets for example, creates a repertoire between you and your consumers that further adds to brand trust and authenticity.
Grow Your Audience
If people aren’t aware of your business, then it is impossible for them to become customers. Social media allows you to reach new people and new generations, thus growing your audience.
The key here is to create relevant content that cuts through the noise of all the other brands out there; hence, the importance of a social media marketing strategy. Surveys show that articles, images and videos on social media are extremely successful at engaging customers and drumming up brand awareness.
Thought Leadership
Surveys are frequently showing that the modern day consumer is far more likely to trust the opinions of brands, NGOs and public figures over governments. A great way to tap into this through social media, is to establish your brand as a thought leader.
Producing thought pieces that showcase your expertise in your industry promotes your brand as a thought leader, and thus improves consumer trust; further emphasising the importance of social media marketing.
Influencer Partnerships
A niche of social media that highlights the importance of social media marketing are influencer partnerships. By partnering with an influencer, you are allowing them to provide endorsements on your behalf.
As mentioned previously, people are far more likely to rely on the recommendation of a friend or family member. In this era of parasocial relationships, an influencer endorsement feels, to many people, like a trustworthy opinion from a friend.
On top of this, partnering with influencers with larger followings than yourself allows you to reach a far broader audience. Cool, right?
Improve Website Traffic
Increasing website traffic is further fantastic evidence of the importance of social media marketing. By including links in your bio, or even in posts, you are making it easy peasy for your followers to find out more about you.
This is also a sure fire way to get readers the second you publish on your site, rather than waiting for consumers to find your work on their own.
Our influencer marketing agency and social agency are located worldwide, with our agency network based in the USA, UK, UAE and China.
If you want to find industry insights, visit our influencer marketing and social media blogs here.
