1. Massive reach

Social media continues to grow: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat,... all have more users every year. Today's youngsters are tomorrow's customers and they've become very attached to social media as a means of communication. The next generation will therefore spend even more time on social media than they do today. Even now, consumers are becoming increasingly accustomed to social media as a marketing channel. That's why, for example, more and more retail webshops are using instagram shopping campaigns to reach their audience. 

2. Laser-focused targeting

Social media marketing offers countless options to tweak your audience targeting. Facebook and LinkedIn have a wealth of data about their users, such as demographics, job title, education, interests, etc. With these targeting options you can focus your advertising on a very select audience, reducing ad spent and maximizing conversions. 

3. Lightning-fast brand awareness

There is currently no better channel for brand awareness than social media. Start-ups or companies in rebranding can quickly get their message in front of a large crowd on social media and receive feedback immediately. For good results, however, you need rock-solid content that is up to date, relevant and useful. Getting results with content results will be a matter of trial and error but this way you discover what kind of content is popular with your audience. It takes time and effort, but when your content is massively shared, you will certainly reap the benefits.

4. Build more trust

Without confidence in your company, consumers will not make a purchase. A good way to build trust is by showing authority and commitment. Putting the right information on your social media channels and regularly sending out relevant posts about your company, team, service, product, ...  will tell visitors that you are an authority in your field and that you strongly believe in your brand. This inspires confidence in visitors of your company page. This is important because people who do not yet know your brand well will often take a look at this page to evaluate your brand.

5. Build rapport with your target audience

Social media are an ideal channel to communicate with your target audience or customers. As a company, if you communicate openly and honestly and if you solve your customers' problems on social media, you build a bond with them. Moreover, you show the whole world that your customers are important to you. This creates more trust in your company.

6. Show personality

Through social media content you can give your brand a personality. Many well-known brands and influencers adopt a distinct tone of voice in their content. This kind of personal touch can help you to gain fans. 

7. Offer more touch points in the customer journey

A customer journey is the amount of different touchpoints your customer uses before they convert on your site. Social media channels are ideal to reach people but also to convert them. For example, a user can see an interesting post or advertisement about your company in their feed and decide to visit your company page. On this page you can give all the information the visitor needs to become a customer. You can also use social chatbots to help the visitor and draw them into your marketing tunnel. In the next years it will only get easier to convert customers directly on social media without them having to visit your website.

8. Cost efficient campaigns

The days when every marketing campaign was a costly project are over. This is partly thanks to social media. Why? You can pay to boost your content but good content is shared anyway without paying anything. If you do choose to advertise through the social channels, you always have full control over your budget, target group and duration of your marketing campaigns.

9. Measurable results

The results of your social media efforts are very easy to measure. Basing your campaign on KPIs drives more conversion. Social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn offer a lot of dashboards on their platform to analyze the interactions with your content. You also have tools like Hootsuite, Buffer and Loomly that enable you to pour all the data of your social media channels into one central dashboard. However, you don't need tons of tools to get an idea of your social media performance. Google Analytics will already give you a lot of information about the role of social media in your traffic, conversions and revenue.

10. Remarketing: the best marketing

Not only can you get detailed information about the results of your social media efforts, you can also use data about your site visitors' behaviour to create different audiences to target again on social media. 

Based on any kind of actions visitors did on your website (you'll have to measure these, of course), you can show targeted ads to them on social media. A visitor who has performed a valuable action such as adding items to a shopping cart without ordering can easily be engaged again via targeted advertising on social media. Visitors who return to your website via retargeting also have a much higher conversion rate.

11. User generated content

Social proof is a universally effective sales argument. Consumers have always been influenced by what others do. The popularity of social media only reinforces this. Some customers spontaneously post social media content in which they positively promote companies. Just think of young girls who share photos of misspelled names on Starbucks coffee cups. For companies, this kind of  user generated content is marketing gold. It shows that someone has experienced a funny and amusing moment thanks to Starbucks. People will share this because they think it's funny but at the same time they will be promoting Starbucks because everyone will also remember the little logo on the cup. That's why user generated content should be part of every social media strategy.

Because of its massive reach, super targeted advertising and the countless possibilities to create a connection with your target audience, social media have become a permanent part of the marketing plan of any ambitious company. With these tips you can start building your own social media strategy to build brand awareness, attract traffic and grow your business!

Do you need help with social media for your company? Feel free to contact us! We work out a tailor-made social media strategy that will build your fanbase, drive traffic and increase conversions.

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