How effectively are you using Social Media for your brand?
Today the volumes of reach and brand interactions you can develop with effective social media marketing strategy is unparalleled. It’s not just a promotional media but is also being used across verticals to achieve business objectives, because of the massive reach (and specially growth rate of the reach) on different social media channels in last three years.
Social media has not only started dominating the traditional advertising, but has also shifted online advertising industry to a different level. Social media can make significant impact on your brand and overall marketing strategy, it’s a fact that more than 65% brands are not clear with their social media objective.
This piece of content will help you understand the key objectives that can be fulfilled through social media.
1. Brand building & thought leadership: Do you know that more than 72% of all Internet users are active on social media channels today? Undoubtedly there is no better place to build your brand more effectively than utilizing the most effective medium of communication today. (ref – goo.gl/6IMYo1)
2. Lead Generation & Sales – So you have made substantial social media presence for your brand by getting likes, re-tweets, comments and pins- but what next? Just like any other marketing activity for example- direct mailing, Advertising and PR – Social media can also be used for lead generation and sales. Aligning social content strategy with whole marketing strategy of the brand and encouraging your fans for conversation can help you make real money through social media.
3. Referral Traffic – Only in India, we have more then 243.2 million Internet users and 106 million active social media users. Brands are using social media to drive potential traffic by targeting people who are already looking for relevant information.
Sharing your online content at the right time keeping the user behaviour and marketing strategy of the brand in mind, you can connect with a huge number of relevant audience quickly and drive them to your landing page.
4. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) – Integrating social media with customer relationship management could be a perfect match for your marketing strategy. It enables your brand to listen to your audience like never before. It also helps you amplify the brand reach and enhance the traditional CRM approach by identifying new leads and fetching them effectively from your sales funnel.
5. Internal Communication – In order to improve knowledge sharing, teamwork, collaboration and adding values to the life of an employee- most of the companies are encouraging their employees to be active on social media. However this can be a long term game for a brand to develop their employees as a thought leader for the brand voice in the industry.
6. ORM (Online Reputation Management) – A study from the London School of Economics last year revealed that a 2% reduction in negative word of mouth boosts sales growth by 1%. Social Listening and addressing conversation at the right moment with the positive brand voice is the key element of ORM.
Do you know that –Dell has attributed a monetary value for their fans on digital media: their average customer is worth $210; their average online detractor costs them $57 and their average online promoter earns them $32. Interesting- isn’t?
CONCLUSION- Top search giant- Google re-defined their algorithms and integrated social media signals as a major factor to influence search results on most prominent keywords.
However twitter started the “#hashtag” feature, which actually changed the way of conversation on the web. The key takeaway is to develop a connect with your target audience, listen to the conversation and start engaging with them, this can do miracles to your brand J