Part 1 – Promoting Your Brand with Social Media Marketing

Not quite got to grips with social media marketing yet? Struggling to connect your online marketing with your promotional events? You’re not alone and so in the first of this three-part series, we take a look at social media marketing and its benefits.

Social media as a marketing avenue for your business is hard to ignore. Let’s start with a few statistics;

• In 2017, the average daily usage time of social media worldwide was estimated to be 135 minutes. That’s over two hours of scrolling and swiping on our favourite social media platforms.
• 4 in 5 adults in the UK own a smartphone
• Instagram has 1 billion active users every month, whilst Facebook attracts 1.74 billion active users (even recent issues of data mining doesn’t seem to be dulling Facebook’s glow)
• Buffer, the social media scheduling tool, calculated that companies spend anything from $200 a day to $350 on social media ads, roughly £150 to £265 a day

What are these four facts telling us? The picture is clear: social media is a powerful tool, with many customers finding their way to a brand through posts, captions, stories, and graphics.

But for some brands, starting and maintaining a social media presence is something they are yet to fully embrace, unsure as to what benefits social media marketing will bring to their business.

Social media marketing is…

… creating content to promote your brand, products or services across various social media platforms, whether that is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others. It is essential to tailor content for each specific platform to boost conversion rates, increase brand awareness and promote follower engagement.

The benefits of social media marketing

There are many reasons why your brand on social media will bring many benefits;

#1 Increase brand awareness

There are an estimated 3.5 billion users globally on social media, a figure that is set to rise. Tapping into this ready audience of your potential customers and fans means you can push your brand in front of people. Basically, this is boosting brand awareness, something that your business will benefit from.

#2 Boost lead generation and sales

Promoting your brand and products on social media is a simple, yet effective way of improving lead generation and sales. When people follow you, they are declaring an interest in your brand and products thus, by promoting them in various ways, leads and sales can be boosted.

#3 Build customer relationships

In some ways, the digital era disconnected brands and customers but now, brands who successfully use social media do so because they emphasise building customer connections and relationships.

You can ask questions, measure customer pain points, find out what people think about your brand and what you are offering – and what you could offer in the future.

Social media is a just as much a listening tool as it is a marketing tool so don’t approach social media by assuming it is all sell, sell, sell.

#4 Keep an eye on your competitors

Social media is a great way of keeping an eye on your competitors, what they are doing, products they are promoting, content they are sharing and so on. You could follow suit or you can buck the trend and stand out with something different.

What now?

If you are convinced that your brand use of social media is under-utilised, join us for part two of this three-part series in which we take a look at why a social media strategy is essential for success.

Tip: You can also utilise social media influencers to help promote your brand or company, find out more on social media influencers by clicking here.