After exploring their website earlier that day, you are served an ad from your favorite restaurant on Facebook or Instagram. This retargeting example is one of the many advertising opportunities for businesses as social media marketing grows. Social media marketing has altered the way businesses connect with their audience, and it remains a successful strategy. More than 50% of marketers plan to increase their investments in social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok during 2022. 

As of October 2021, social media channels have a total of 3.96 billion active users, making social media marketing a critical element in the digital marketing landscape. Before branching out into social media marketing, it is essential first to develop content pillars, which act as a foundation for supporting the overall objectives of your content marketing strategy. Once you develop this building block, you can implement your social media campaign. From building brand awareness and enhancing your content marketing efforts, here are seven key benefits of social media marketing campaigns.

1. Aids in Community Building

Social media is a great relationship builder for followers who have a common interest in your product or service. You can use your social platforms to connect with them through your feed or direct messaging. Building a community means connecting with new and existing customers and giving your followers a place to contact you regarding a product or service. 

2. Cost-Effective and High ROI

Generally, a cost-effective way to advertise, social media is an accessible channel for marketing and is relatively inexpensive compared to paid search, programmatic advertising, and others. In fact, it continues to dominate the world of advertising, following paid search, as the second-largest marketing channel for digital ads. 

Exposure

There are 3.96 billion people that regularly use social media, which gives your brand a wide range of opportunities to reach a target audience. You can hone in on specific demographics and reach potential or current customers based on your strategy, whether that is brand awareness or retargeting to those who have visited your website in the past. 

Boosting Sales 

Social media marketing can boost sales for your business. It provides ad space to share clearance deals, special offers, or new products to a targeted audience. There are many different opportunities to drive sales based on which platform you choose.  

Instagram: This platform offers the ability to include links or shoppable tags on stories, which users can click to learn more about your product or service. 

TikTok: This video-based platform offers video ad options. Your ads can run between 5 and 60 seconds and include your brand name and ad display image.

Pinterest: Buyable pins are available to any business on Pinterest. It is an excellent opportunity for consumers to click on your pin and purchase your product with the tap of a button. Pinterest also provides rich pins, which provide more detail about a product.

Facebook: As the largest social advertising platform, Facebook has various ad options and testing opportunities to determine which ads perform the best. It also allows you to advertise to a custom audience and target them using consumer behavior, location, and demographics. Additionally, you can create a lookalike audience, which builds your audience with prospective customers who have similar interests and behavior to your current customers. 

LinkedIn: This platform for businesses offers the opportunity to target a specific audience and different ad formats, including carousel and dynamic ads. You can also advertise via messaging using LinkedIn’s Message Ads feature. 

3. Builds Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is one of the driving factors why 70% of marketers use social media for marketing. It provides exposure of your brand to millions of users.,  We successfully measure brand awareness campaigns for our clients by measuring the following key performance indicators and by studying lift in other channels such as search.

Impressions:  the total number of times social media browsers have been shown your content.

Engagement: this measurement shows how frequently users have engaged with your posts with reactions (e.g., likes), comments, shares, or link clicks.

Reach: this metric refers to the number of people who saw your content.

Website Traffic: UTM tracking codes can determine website traffic directly from your marketing efforts on social media.

Brand Mentions: as the term suggests, a brand mention is when someone name-drops your business on social media, which can be measured through tagging. 

4. Provides Insights Into Target Audience

Social media marketing can help you understand your audience. You can look through your followers and platform insights to see the demographics of those interested in your brand. Facebook and Instagram for Businesses also provide insights that break down these demographics into a dashboard for easy understanding. Pictured below, you will find examples of Instagram audience insights broken down into location, age, gender, and most active times.  Once you break down your target audience, you can use the data on other channels and hone in on an audience for paid advertising.  

5. Enhances Content Marketing Efforts

Social media can take your content marketing to the next level. With opportunities to share content you have been creating and company news and announcements you have been publishing, it is a great way to engage with your audience and bring them to your website.

Establishing yourself as an industry expert is also a valuable tool to share thought leadership on LinkedIn. Because this platform is for professionals, it allows you to showcase your expertise, connect with other industry leaders, and build your credibility.

6. Acts As a Method of Retargeting

The best place to meet potential buyers is where they are at — social media. Retargeting is another method of marketing that has gained popularity, specifically on social media. In fact, retargeted ads are 3x more likely to be clicked on, making it an effective tool to reach potential customers. A whopping 47% of shoppers say they would sacrifice their data to get the best deals on products or services. Because of retargeting, businesses see a 700% increase in website traffic.

This marketing strategy brings customers back into the sales funnel after they left prematurely before converting. As you build a one-size-fits-all messaging strategy in a traditional marketing funnel, retargeting provides a more personalized approach to bring these shoppers back in and convert them to customers. 

7. Opens the Door for Influencer Marketing Opportunities

Social media marketing opens the door to reaching new customers through various campaigns, including influencer marketing. It is one of the most effective ways to reach new customers. But what is influencer marketing and how can your business benefit from it? 

You cannot have influencer marketing without social media. An influencer will promote your product or services on their social channels. Whether it is unboxing a product or sharing its benefits, influencers have a following of people who trust them. In fact, 89% of businesses say their ROI for influencer marketing campaigns was comparable to or even better than other marketing channels. Influencers can range from macro to micro to mega influencers. The type of influencer you want to represent your brand depends on your budget, interest in your product or service, history with them, and which platform you use. 

Take Advantage of the Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is an excellent tool for any business. It offers a wide range of opportunities to spread the word about your products or services, enhances your content marketing efforts, and builds community.

Bullseye Strategy is a social media marketing agency with over a dozen years of experience. If you are ready to boost your brand’s visibility on social media, reach out today to schedule a consultation with our experienced team!