How Social Media Changed Marketing

Back in the days, television ads, newspapers, leaflets, and radio was all the business could rely upon to market their products and services. 

Social media took over the world like a storm and nearly everyone has access to the internet.

With the highest majority of the population spending time online, businesses found the golden opportunity for marketing. And what better way than following where the consumer is?

At present, it’s impossible to imagine marketing without social media just like Earth without water. 

So how exactly has this massive change occurred?

The Growth of Social Media and it’s Users

With 3.48 billion active social media users around the world and an average of 135 minutes spent online by users, every business, be it small or large, should consider having an online presence or getting into e-commerce.

Social platforms are on the rise and so are the number of its users. The most used social platforms are Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many others. 

Businesses have personified themselves by giving their brand a friendly voice and unmatchable customer services that allow building a relationship with the customers at a human level. 

Gone are the days of generic advertising of what they are offering and why you should buy it. 

With the help of social media, businesses can now connect with their customers like a friend who understands their needs and suggests useful products.  

Why Social Media Is An Essential Marketing Tool for Businesses

The power of social media is immense in a world where it has become an essential part of our daily lives and businesses are not afraid to explore the advantages that this technological wonder provides them. 

Recently, businesses have increased their social media marketing budget. 

Expenses on print-ad and television ads have been shifted to digital advertising. 

And the expenses in this growing sector will increase over the coming years as consumers turn away from traditional means of information media and entertainment.

Apart from advertising purposes, businesses now use social media for plenty of other uses. 

One of the most crucial things that businesses benefit from social media is the mind-boggling power of data.

1. The Relationship Between Marketing and Data

With the discovery of the power of data, businesses now have achieved what has remained impossible for them to imagine even in their wildest dreams. 

Through social media ads, data is abundantly available. Rather than just making guesses of what your customers would like or why they would want to buy a product, businesses could easily get analytics of what their customers are looking for, what caused them to make the final purchase, how their ads have been successful or not and so on.

Their tailored ads could target specific age groups, location and appeal to a much larger audience.

A business could gather every detail of its customers, be it their incomes, buying habits, preferences, dislikes, wants and what not.

This genuine approach to marketing allows businesses to target their audiences much specifically and sell products or services that their customers would want.

2. Using Social Media to Meet Marketing Objectives

Social media is an excellent platform for businesses of all types to increase brand awareness among targeted audiences.
Having an online presence means an easier and quicker way to be known in the competitive business market. 

Once the business grows in popularity through smart advertising, luring in new customers becomes easy. 

Running campaigns and targeted ads speed up the process and allow a new group of customers to discover the brand.

The next important thing a business could do is keep the current and new customers engaged through trending content and catered posts that allow to gradually build a relationship with the consumers.

Research has shown that customers are more likely to be loyal to a brand if the brand supports a cause that they believe in.

Along with hashtag campaigns, giveaways and contests, businesses take help from influencers and create brand ambassadors who further increase the chances of winning the marketing game.

3. Access to The Global Market

A small store is no longer just known to the locals of that specific area or region. Through the aid of social media, a small business can be known to people of different parts of the world without having to spend large sums of money. 

Their advertising would know no boundaries of local or international aspects. This is a privilege that is now available to every business that once was possible for only the most successful and top businesses.

4. The Rise in E-commerce

Consumer’s heavy dependence on social media has caused them to turn to eCommerce facilities that are widely available online.

Now customers can just swipe through products and purchase their regular groceries while in bed. 

The convenience of online shopping has changed the way consumers view businesses. A business could both operate in physical stores as well as online. 

Through margins of worldwide shipping, businesses now have a larger stream of the customer base that they could not have achieved otherwise.

5. Reliable Customer Services

Customer service has always been an important part of a business that helped the customers remain in touch with the business in times of product or service related queries or needs. 

Having a customer service that is quick to respond and tries to solve the issues at a satisfying level is what makes customers repurchase and be loyal to the brand. 

Consumers heavily rely on social media to get customer services within minutes at any time of the day. 

Customer services have not been this easy in the past. They would have to write long emails, try to reach the customer helplines or submit forms that they might never hear back from. 

All of the trouble has been taken away and has been replaced with an easy solution of just chatting over Facebook or leaving a tweet.

The Drawbacks of Using Social Media for Marketing

Just like every other aspect of a business, this too doesn’t come as the flawless and perfect answer to all marketing problems.

Sure, social media may seem like the easiest and reliable option for marketing but businesses need to consider some of the drawbacks that it carries;

1. So many businesses have an online presence that it is quite a struggle to stand out from the growing crowd. The competition is large and many small businesses may not even survive in the pool. Consumers have so many new options that appealing to them is a much harder task than it was ever before.

2. To keep the audience engaged in the business, the marketing team must be able to deliver good quality content within a restricted time. This becomes a challenge for the business to always come up with something relevant or interesting.

3. In the technical terms of business, measuring the revenue generated from social media success is not easy. 

4. Negativity spreads like wildfire over the social platforms and that’s something businesses can not control. 

Negative reviews, bad customer service or low standard products could mean everyone would be able to know about it that could lead to losses or even business failure.

Some Final Words

Social media has caused a revolutionary change for businesses by offering unbelievable opportunities to market their products and services to a much larger audience and build a strong brand reputation. 

Companies devote an entire department to exploit the wonders of social media marketing. Businesses are able to meet their targets and change their strategies to meet the consumer needs more specifically.

Keeping in mind the increasing number of people turning to online, digital marketing trend is nowhere near ceasing. The future may hold even more lucrative scopes for businesses to thrive in the marketing sector. 

Social media has changed the definition of marketing forever.