Social Media Marketing
As with all marketing, effective social media marketing is about selling. The only thing that makes it different is in how that sale is achieved. It’s done by building relationships, building trust and building demand. The key word in everything Shareable does is ‘Authenticity’. Our messaging and engagement comes seeks to build trust with our client’s audience via credible, authoritative messaging.
As social media marketers, our goals aren’t just to gain likes, fans, and retweets for the companies and brands we’re working for. These are not ends, but the means to an end (the sale). As such, effective social media marketing is far more than an online popularity contest, and the better business owners understand that, the better they can use it for their companies.
All too often we hear from new clients who have started the process of creating channels for their companies, but who have essentially run out of time to maintain these channels and brand relationships.
At Shareable we specialise in managing brand-consumer relationships via social media. We take the time to identify the best channels for each company based on what they make/sell/do and then we seek to get a granular understanding of their consumer base.
With this understanding, we build an audience of potential customers for our clients. With careful curation of brand storylines, we turn this audience into a loyal and engaged customer base.
Not to blow our own trumpet, but…
Let’s take a deeper look
Increased Brand Awareness
One of the main benefits of social media marketing is the easiest to recognise: Social media is an excellent way to introduce people to a brand. Social media channels are used by more than 45% of the total world population, and given the way content spreads virally to others, social media is the perfect channel to promote a brand to potential customers. Still not sure if a social media presence is right for you? What if we told you that there are 2.3 Billion active social media users out there…
In the future, social media will become even more important than TV ads for introducing new products to consumers. Similarly, research from eMarketer has shown that 33 percent of consumers cite social networks as the way they discover new brands, products, and services.
Brand Legitimisation
Another way social media marketing helps with customer acquisition is by establishing a brand as legitimate. When Internet consumers discover a business or retailer they want to use but know little about, they often check their social media page to learn more about it. Many small businesses have static websites that change little, if at all, after being initially set up by the designer. Social media pages, on the other hand, should be constantly updated with new posts, comments, etc. A website establishes that a brand exists, but a social media page establishes that the brand is active. Similarly, the number of fans shows how popular a brand is and Facebook reviews can reassure buyers by showing them that other consumers like a business.
Increased Sales
In the end, social media marketing needs to help increase sales and revenue. That’s why it’s called social media marketing and not simply social media public relations. To be fair, improving brand awareness and legitimising a brand should, by themselves, help increase sales. But there are ways to use social media to directly steer consumers toward the sales funnel. For fans of the business, business owners can write posts that link to products, sales, etc. We can also use promoted content and advertisements to sell products to target audiences who haven’t become fans of a brand yet.
The ability to target particular audiences is one of the greatest benefits of social media marketing. Social networks know a lot about consumer interests and demographics, so even though there are hundreds of millions of fans, we can accurately target the right people with the right message.