What are the Benefits of Social Media Marketing Campaigns

There are two popular camps when it comes to how the phrase “social media marketing” is received. Many see it as the new black of marketing, a powerful concept that needs to be taken advantage of before it fades away, while others see it as nothing but a buzzword concept requiring a convoluted learning process that ends with zero tangent advantages.

Part of the reason for such a negative reputation is the way it so quickly appeared and infiltrated the marketing scene. And while there are plenty of hold outs calling it a passing fad, the hard numbers suggest that even if it is a fad, it’s a very lucrative one. According to a recent HubSpot publishing, as many as 92 percent of marketers stated that social media marketing campaigns were important for the business they represented, with 80 percent of that number saying that their social media efforts greatly increased traffic to the desired website. But despite the fact that it seems to be working, Social Media Examiner has found that 85 percent of marketers using social media campaigns don’t feel confident about how they incorporate social tools and which tools are appropriate for different types of campaigns.

What this demonstrates is that there is amazing potential for this type of marketing to increase audiences and boost sales, but a failure to understand how social media marketing works and where it benefits hurts its overall reputation. Let’s take a look at some of big benefits of utilizing social media marketing campaigns to help you understand why this is more than just a passing fad to be ignored:

• Easily improve your brand recognition.  Unless you’re a huge multinational like Nike, your advertising budget is likely fairly small and you have to be creative with how you use advertising dollars to boost your brand’s recognition. With social media networks, you can craft a unique brand voice and style with a small budget and a creative team. The prevalent use of social media networks enable you to showcase your content directly to your targeted audience. For instance, you might use a witty Twitter account to market to millennials. A few great Tweets and a couple product drops can easily earn you otherwise apathetic customers who might then spread your brand onto their networks, which is the beauty of the sharing community.
• Enjoy more conversion opportunities.  Each post you make on via a social media network is another opportunity to convert countless new customers. Of course, it does take some effort and mastering the right content for the appropriate network (which is where many marketers start getting confused). But once you begin, you’ll find yourself building a following in which your interactions will involve old customers, recent customers, new customers, and the friends and followers of all those customers or near limitless new prospect possibilities. Each image you tweet and video you share is an opportunity for a curious reaction by a potential follower, they may land on your website, subscribe to your blog, and eventually make the jump to becoming a successful paying/paid conversion.
• Exciting new insights on your customers.   With traditional advertising, like billboards and newspaper ads, there’s a sort of wall between the marketer and the target customer. While you can certainly test focus groups, it’s hard to get a true understanding of what different customers like about your advertising campaigns. It’s even harder to understand what they would want to see more of. But by effectively using social media marketing and campaigns you can gain unprecedented access to customer insights like what they’re interested, what type of brand messaging engages them and their purchasing behavior through active social media listening. For instance, you might follow a user’s comments to directly understand what people think of your product or service, and how they perceive your brand. You can also build segmented content syndication lists based on perceived audience interest and test out new advertising campaigns to test what type of content sparks the highest amount of interest. Additionally, almost every social media platform today includes special analytic tools so you can measure conversions and click rates to better understand what works and what doesn’t.

Still not sure if social media marketing is relevant? Consider the following statistics:

The Pew Internet Project found that:

• 23 percent of online adults use Twitter
• 26 percent of online adults use Instagram
• 28 percent of online adults use Pinterest
• 28 percent of online adults use LinkedIn
• And a whopping 71 percent of online adults use Facebook

Through what other avenue can you reach out to over 70 percent of the American adult population? To learn more about social media marketing and how you can use it to craft marketing campaigns to propel your business forward, contact us at Direct Images Interactive.