Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Co.: A huge number of people use these social networks every day. Your company therefore has the opportunity to reach a large number of potential customers directly. A presence in the most important social networks is therefore essential, so don’t be satisfied with just a homepage.
Considerable range possible
One advantage of social networks is that you can address a large number of consumers with comparatively little effort. Of course, this requires smart social media marketing. If you invest enough time and money in your activities on Facebook and other platforms, you will increasingly expand your group of fans or followers. Once you’ve won them, they usually stay true to your website. That reduces the effort in marketing.
As soon as you post, you are sure to attract a certain basic number of users. By sharing and likes, the reach can also increase considerably. With other marketing channels, you will have a much harder time reaching a large group of consumers. For example, you have to laboriously position your website high in the search engine rankings with professional search engine optimization, only then can you look forward to attractive visitor numbers. If, on the other hand, you act optimally on Facebook and Co. and land a viral hit, you can achieve success with one of the first postings.
Attractive cost-benefit ratio
As a company, you can use many of the functions of social networks for free, which saves you significant expenses. A low financial outlay is offset by a considerable added value if you conduct proper social media marketing. For all other marketing instruments you have to plan higher costs: newspaper advertisements and brochures deserve mention as an example. You have high costs. At the same time, you cannot be sure to what extent these expenses will pay off.
Advertise in a targeted manner
You have the opportunity to advertise for a fee on Facebook and other platforms. With this type of marketing, you spend money, but you advertise target-group-specifically. Especially on Facebook, which collects a lot of data, you can limit the advertisements in a variety of ways to desired target groups. You can determine the target groups of people according to their age, place of residence or leisure activities, among other things. This increases the probability that only those who are actually interested will see the advertisements. You advertise more efficiently than with other advertising channels such as mailbox distribution. The chance increases that every euro invested leads to a reasonable increase in your sales.
Users participate in marketing
Another advantage is that users can advertise your company for free. This is at least true if you distribute or like articles. You can use it to reach people who are not yet familiar with your offer. At best, a viral effect is created in which your content achieves an extraordinarily extensive reach. This success doesn’t come by itself, you have to come up with interesting and creative posts stand out positively. It is best to publish a lot of well-designed photos and videos, pure text postings usually do not achieve excessive reach. For example, if you want to publish a saying, integrate it into a graphic. Such postings get more attention and are shared more often. The most important thing is the content: whether funny, worth knowing or controversial, users need an incentive for further dissemination.
Interaction with users
Many marketing instruments are very one-sided: You communicate something to the recipients. It looks different with Web 2.0. Here you come into direct contact with the users. For example, you can comment on your contributions, give ratings and discuss them with other users. This can have positive effects if you do your social media marketing services rightly.
This includes:
- You can react to customer questions and give the impression of competent and quick customer support. This impression is not only given to the questioners, but also to everyone else who is reading.
- You can get feedback on new products, services or advertising material. If they don’t go down well with the target group, you can make adjustments immediately.
- You can implement many different marketing campaigns: You can easily implement sweepstakes, creative competitions, surveys and numerous other ideas on Facebook and Co.
You can achieve all of these advantages, for example, through your own community with a Facebook group.
Social media and your homepage
Many users get to a homepage via Google and other search engines, so search engine optimization is important. More and more users are also finding your website via social networks. If you link a homepage article on your social media presence, the number of hits on your homepage usually increases sharply. Thanks to the social networks, you can improve the relevance of your classic website. In addition, the search engines rate the social media presence in their search engine rankings.
Social recruiting: attracting skilled workers
With a professional social media presence, you increase your sales. You can also use it for social recruiting, i.e. targeted recruiting for skilled workers, an attractive option given the current shortage of skilled workers. The possibilities are different. Smaller companies integrate social recruiting into their actual appearance, larger companies design special career pages. In both cases, you complement your usual recruiting in a meaningful and inexpensive way.
Social media for companies – numerous advantages
Social networks have a variety of advantages for your company. You will only benefit from these if you have sufficient expertise and spend enough time on it. Not everyone is successful with a social media presence, interaction with users also harbors dangers. The best known example is a shit storm. With a professional approach you reduce these risks and exploit the positive potential.