When you are not on social media these days, you would probably miss out on a lot. News get to spread like wildfire before it even hit the prints. Lucky for you, you can even see a couple of user shared videos and a bunch of behind the scene photos posted before it was even confirmed by the media. Information will always be there in social media, whether we like it there or not.
True enough, we have become more informed consumers now than before. Before purchasing, we look for the company’s official Facebook account and see what clients have to say about it. And then when you see your cousin, Anna, flaunting that Gap jeans on one of her Instagram posts, you noticed it does look good on her, and it probably will for you too. There lies behind the social media, the power to influence.
As a business owner, you might have experienced yourself how the social media changed the game in the marketing world, particularly online. There is content marketing with SEO, internet marketing with SEO, email and even B2B marketing, but despite of how robust the ways are selling online, there is always enough room for another strategy. Hello, social media!
Impact of Social Media to a Business
To secure a good place in the digital market, you must first achieve a dynamic online presence. This will open more doors for your business to penetrate a billion-user-populated place called the internet. And this is only achievable if you make yourself present in as many channels there is.
Google now processes about 40,000 search queries per second, according to the Internet Live Stats, which carries about 89.3% of the total internet searches. These are the figures that you need to swim through in order to gain that substantial online presence you need for your business to thrive in the digital world, and in front of your target customers.
To achieve the online presence that your business needs, you have to apply SEO to your website and make it go up the rankings in search engine results page. Part of the search engine optimization as a marketing strategy is supplying relevant and valuable content. To drive sales, you can use the email to send targeted messages to your prospects, and include links to your content to engage them better. And lastly, you use the social media to promote everything in as many platforms as possible. It ties up your other digital marketing strategies, to create a complete customer journey that starts from brand awareness, constant update opt-in (email newsletters), social media engagement, purchase, and then into being a loyal customer.
Businesses that utilize the social media for marketing, gain a lot of advantages when it comes to keeping a close interaction with its customers, establishing brand image, profit-making, and acquiring loyal customers. Being on the same boat with your customers will let you understand them better, in order to serve them better too. You can also turn popularity into sales in social media. Beyond its simplicity, its power to influence is very crucial, because when you are not honest with your business intentions, your customers can easily spread it online. This is where building a positive online reputation is important, in order to fight negative reviews. Techcrunch said that Facebook is nurturing about 40 millions active small business pages in 2015, with only 2 million do advertise.
Reasons to Partner With a Social Media Marketing Firm
As your business grows, you may need to entrust some of its critical aspects to the experts in the field. Whether out of need or of preference, choosing to partner with social media marketing firms will let you achieve the advantages of having a professional do the work. Here are the benefits of having a social media marketing firm to partner with:
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You will save time training your team
Social media marketing, especially when applied to a larger setting, requires you to form a focused team to do it properly. Recruitment up to the training proper entails a lot of time on your part, and by having a social media marketing agency to handle it will not only save you time but help you select the right candidates. Their expertise in the field lets them know the qualities of the people that will best fit for your industry and needs.
When it comes to training, the top social media marketing firms have already developed a program for it. This way, you can be assured that your team will apply only the best and most updated practices in the social media marketing field.
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You don’t need to personally manage your team
Most social media marketing companies can run all of your social media marketing engagements even without hiring another team dedicated to you, which is another source of expense. These are called “hosted solutions”, which let their own team manage your social media marketing campaigns using their own people and their own tools. You also don’t need to devote much time checking on the behind the scenes of your social media marketing campaigns. You can simply squeeze-in time in-between your regular routine to check the number of your followers as they grow.
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You will have more cost efficient savings
Getting third party services does cost you money, but the payoff usually outweighs the investment. With social media marketing services, you can have significant savings by not having to invest heavily in traditional yet expensive marketing strategies like TV commercials, radio ads and print ads. Despite not fully utilizing these channels, you can use social media marketing to increase brand awareness and sales that you need.
Another cost savings you get is not having to pay for social media marketing tools. Business tools tend to be expensive, especially for small businesses that don’t have much resources to use. By getting the services of these companies, you can now take advantage of the benefits that these social media marketing tools can give like automation, business intelligence, reporting, analytics and so much more. This can save you both time and resources, so you can use them instead to fund other aspects of your business.
And of course, you save from not having to pay for extra workforce – salaries, benefits, taxes, etc.
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You can easily integrate their services with your own marketing department
Social media marketing is a valuable arm that will function best if put alongside your other marketing strategies like content, email and organic search. Since a social media marketing company uses automated tools, it can easily integrate with the software you already use. This way, you can let it positively influence your other marketing strategies.
With your marketing strategies integrated with each other, you can also utilize the same data, and let it align with your objectives to aim for mutual goals effectively. And you can also wholly measure your social media marketing effectiveness and performance considering all the strategies that you have deployed.
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You leverage with having an on-board team of experts with you
Marketing competition is getting tougher each day, and business owners like you might have felt the pressure in continually keeping up with it. Unwise decisions can cost you money, time and worst, your reputation and credibility. Partnering with social media marketing providers can help you go out there in the battlefield with the right tools in hand, and the right people to back you up.
Professionals, especially those with specialization, expertise and high level of experience are hard to spot these days; either they are already employed, or they cost too much. By getting the services of social media marketing providers, you can gain access to expert advices from an expert team that have substantial exposure and experience with different types of marketing scenarios. There are also providers that operate in a specific industry, which is also an advantage if yours is a bit technical or has special requirements.
How to Choose the Right Social Media Marketing Firm
Make sure that you take due diligence in choosing the right provider that will maximize your investment. Here are some tips for you to know the best fit partner for your social media marketing campaign:
- Come up with a checklist of the features of the social media marketing campaign program that you don’t want to compromise.
- The most expensive ones doesn’t automatically mean they are the best, and so as the cheapest is the most inferior. Set a realistic budget and learn how to negotiate.
- Interview your prospects to know more about their values, skills, and experience.
- Check with their past clients to know their performance and level of professionalism. Don’t believe everything they claim about themselves.
- When talking with your prospects, ask for an ROI estimate. This will determine how realistic they are when dealing with something that has an ever changing nature.
- Set a criteria for the qualities of the provider that you can deal with and tolerate. Do you want a partner that always goes a step higher than expected? Do you expect your provider to make all the decisions without your input? Do you want a competitive and aggressive provider? It would be more cost efficient if you get a partner that has a potential to have a long term partnership with you.
The market for social media marketing companies are robust with options that can fit any type of budget and requirements. Select the best for your company by checking out reviews of social media marketing firms from CrowdReviews.com.
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