How can social media help my business?
Do you want to know what your customers are saying about you? Would you like to know how they are reacting to your newly launched product? Would you like an army of advocates for your brand all gathered together in one place telling everyone about how great your product is? Then social media is for you. Social media is the new focus group for any business large or small.
Very simply, social media is an extremely valuable tool which allows business to communicate in real time with their customers. It is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways of advertising your goods, services and products 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Detailed below are a few more points on how social media can help you.
1. Expand your business
Social media removes all geographical borders associated with traditional marketing techniques as it provides you with a customer base across Ireland and the world and allows you to instantly connect with them. You might think that your website already does this. Yes, it does to a certain extent, but how will new customers know about you unless you tell them that you are there? A potential customer won’t go somewhere that they don’t know exists.
2. Advertising costs are reduced
Traditionally, when launching a marketing campaign, companies blindly place advertisements in print publications hoping that it would be seen by the right people with no assurances that the huge costs involved in this would reap any financial rewards. Social media management costs a fraction of traditional marketing methods and offers the advantages of being measurable.
3. Promotes outstanding customer service and support
The emergence of social media is changing consumer buyer behaviour as they expect instant feedback and support when needed. Social media, once managed correctly will allow businesses to connect directly with their customers as and when it is needed, instantly. Many customers will choose a product, even if it slightly more expensive than a competitor’s one, if they believe that the customer service being offered is of superior quality.
4. Understand what your customer is saying
Social media provides listening tools which allows you to actively listen to what your community is saying about you. Thinking you know what your consumers want and actually knowing what they want are two very different things. Actively listening to what they are saying can help in extending a product’s life, improving services offered or adjusting the price to the market. The unique ability of social media to act as a listening device, will contribute to making your business more successful.
5. Collect Analysis and Feedback
Information on how an existing or potential customer base feels about a product is extremely important. The ability to identify opportunities to improve an existing product, or to understand successful enhancements for future products, can pay dividends. Knowing what a community says they want, extracting what they really want (which is not always what they say they want), and understanding what they dislike or don’t want, can help increase adoption, extend an existing product’s life, or refine design and feature sets to make new products more successful.
Some statistics to illustrate the importance of social media:
