Social media is unavoidable these days; it’s at the centre of marketing campaigns no matter what business you’re in, whether you’re a big TV show or a small local business. It can be an extremely effective tool for advertising and driving revenue to your business along with traditional techniques like SEO which raise the profile of your business within the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
The pros:
Social media can work alongside SEO in enhancing your online revenue as it can be tracked, tweaked, changed and followed, which means that you can be constantly evolving your strategy and trying out new things that work and return on your investment.
The conversion rates are usually higher for social media sales too, as repeat sales are common because of the community feel it provides. Social media encourages people to ‘like’, ‘follow’ and add brands to ‘circles’, etc. This means that they will be keeping up to date with your latest brand news as well as engaging with you in their spare time.
The cons:
Obviously, like SEO, social media marketing relies on the customer being online and a member of at least one social networking site.
Be where the action is:
However, despite being in the middle of a recession, it has been predicted that there will be a £40 billion increase in online shopping this year alone. It’s official; online shopping is booming, even though traditional marketing has suffered in recent years. Cheaper broadband costs and faster connection speeds are credited by Uswitch with helping fuel the online shopping boom. The figures are based on spending and sales volume figures taken from the Office for National Statistics' retail spend data.
Social media gives them a sense of ownership or loyalty to customers for your brand and repeat sales are therefore more common; because rather than in traditional marketing where brands rely on customers dropping in, they can interact with them when they are just online and relaxing during their leisure time on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr, for example.
There are lots of success stories relating to different brands who have balanced entertaining engagement with their traditional techniques – just a little fun with customers makes them feel valued and like they’re interested in communicating with them and not just pushing their products.
This engagement is exactly what helps brands to become more popular than their competitors, because they’re getting where the action is with their customers: on social media. It is also on their own terms, which makes them feel more at ease with choosing to engage with your brand, in their own time, and this is a very powerful marketing scenario.
Find out more on how BT can help your business using search engine optimisation (SEO).
