Marketing is of great importance amid the proliferation of commercial and industrial businesses. It enables a business to reach the largest segment of consumers and achieve profits. The emergence of social networking sites enables entrepreneurs to market their products or services at the lowest possible cost.
Social Media
Social media sites are networks where millions of people share common interests, allowing users to share files, photos, videos, create blogs, send messages and engage in instant conversations.
Figures by Go-Gulf.com indicate the growing use of social media networks among Arab communities. More than 40% of the Arab population is connected to the Internet, of which 88% use different social media networks.
A study released by “Yes to Digital,” a website specialized in digital content, revealed that 90% of small businesses use or plan to use social media to reach consumers and transform potential consumers into buyers. Those entrepreneurs understand the importance of communicating with the public and collecting feedback on their products and services. More than half of these small businesses have increased their expenditures on these sites compared to the previous year.
Social media is also key channel to win new customers. 94% of small businesses use social media for marketing purposes while 61% of these businesses say social media helps them find new customers.
The seven advantages of marketing through social media:
- Instant interaction with customers
Social media networks are characterized by instant communication. For example, if a customer complains of a bad service or notices a defect in the product, your company’s team will immediately communicate with them to resolve this problem. When the problem is solved, the company ensures customer satisfaction and earns a good reputation.
- Direct engagement with the public
Social media networks provide a platform for direct dialogue between the client and the company. The company can identify customers’ problems, communicate with them, and understand their needs. Consumers tend to express their views across these sites rather than through personal interaction by phoning the company or visiting the store.
- Strengthening the relationship with the consumer
Communicating with customers results in improved customer service and the rapid development of a relationship between the company and its customers.
- Increase in sales
Social media marketing entices consumers to buy your products or constantly request your services, by offering them discounts, special offers, purchase coupons, which would increase the company’s sales.
- Improved ranking on search engines
The most powerful way to attract visitors to your website is social media. Sharing the link to your website increases your ranking on search engines.
- Know your target customers
Collecting data on potential customers such as age and gender among other information will help you better meet your customers’ needs, which translates into higher revenue.
- Low cost
Launching advertising campaigns through social media networks may be free of charge or will cost you little compared to traditional marketing channels (newspapers, magazines, etc.) that require high budgets which many companies cannot afford.
Important tips on how to use social media
- Identify your market segment
First, you need to identify the segment you intend to target in a bid to identify the best social network to use.
For example, if you are targeting consumers in the Gulf region, Twitter is the best social media network to reach your market segment. But If you are targeting consumers in Egypt, you are better communicating with them via Facebook and Youtube. You will find that each segment has special features that you need to identify to reach your audience.
- Designing a communication strategy
After having identified your market segment and which language to use to communicate with your target audience, you should develop a plan on how to complete this task while taking into account the characteristics of each site. Each site has its own features, terms and conditions. For example, Twitter will force you to post tweets less than 140 characters, Unlike Facebook, which allows longer messages. It is also key to understand the importance of using images and videos on Facebook while posting fewer links.
Thus, your plan should cover all social media networks that you will be using to communicate with your target audience and should outline steps to respond to customers and address their problems within a specific time.
- Use tools to help you manage social media networks sites
There are many tools that can help you perform tasks on social media with high professionalism, so that you can manage your pages easily, and respond to messages from your customers.
https://hootsuite.com/
- Schedule your posts
Upload specific posts, and make sure you post at times when customers are often browsing social media networks. Keeping your content up and running at times when your potential customers are online increases your engagement rates in a positive and effective way.
- Listen to your customers
Do not engage in automated posts and shares without collecting feedback from the other end. You need to know what your customers are saying about your company by following their comments through social media, responding to them, solving their problems and revising information about your company and services. Using brand tracking tools to learn what your customers say about you online will facilitate this task. Such tools include https://en.mention.net/, a key tool that helps you collect feedback and interact with your customers, which would benefit your company and boost your profits.
- Take care of your customers
Offer your customers what they need so they can benefit from your services, and always adopt a proactive approach to learn about customer interests. Through this approach, you will impress customers and ensure customer satisfaction.
- Be visible
Diversify your content on social media networks. Sometimes you can secure an audience with a creative script that appeals to your target audience, or you can share a photo, video, or infographic. A video or a photo could be worth a thousand words. Infographics are another creative way to deliver information to customers. So make sure to always deliver creative and unique content on social media.
- Analysis and measurement
You should always evaluate the results of your campaigns and whether you achieved your goals to determine if you need to adjust your plan. You can track your results by collecting stats on social media or learning about your competitors using this tool http://sproutsocial.com/
- Start over
The marketing process does not end with analysis and measurement. You should introduce amendments to your plans based on the outcome of your campaigns. Redesign you plans to suit your new goals or existing objectives to ensure effective communication with customers through social media.
