March 8, 2021

Why Social Media Marketing is Important for Your Business

Reading Time: 9 minutes

Every business should understand why social media marketing is important and how it can promote a business online. A business needs to understand the positive impact social media marketing can provide once it has been integrated into the social media marketing strategies.

Why should a business bother with social media marketing? Firstly, social media has become and will continue to take over our daily lives and routines, so the real question is, who wouldn’t want their business to be at the fingertips of their consumers? Promoting your business on social media platforms will determine a boost in consumers, audience as well as potential sales, and that applies to all businesses, big or small.

Many businesses aim to increase their consumer revenue, and with the correct marketing strategy, a business can recognise how social media marketing increases sales. It’s not as complicated as it may seem, to put it simply, social media marketing can increase website traffic, raise brand awareness, and improve communication and interaction rates with consumers. If a business can achieve those goals through its marketing strategies, then the goal of an increase in sales is more than likely attainable.

So, how can a business use social media marketing? Before we dive into the ‘how’, let’s make sure we have a plan. Before implementing social media marketing into your business’s marketing strategies, you should set some goals for what you want to achieve. It can be overwhelming and exciting, however, once the excitement passes, it’s likely that you’ll discover that your social media marketing approaches may lack a blueprint, which will essentially lead to possible waste of precious time.

To avoid that happening, consider questioning what the business’s social media marketing aims are.

What does the business hope to achieve through this marketing strategy?
Who does the business want to target?
Where can the targeted audience of the business be found? (On what platform?)
How can the business’s social media marketing approach impact the targeted audience?
What type of audience does the business target? (Visual/Verbal/Aural, etc.)

What Are the Social Media Marketing Advantages That A Business Can Benefit From?

Firstly, having the power of redirecting your targeted audience from a social media platform to your business’s platform is one of the most beneficial advantages social media marketing can provide. By being able to redirect an audience it proves that your business’s social media marketing strategies have proven to be successful, as you’ve captured their interest. Once a consumer’s interest is gotten, based on your market research and business’s website accessibility, you’ll be able to increase potential sales. You can download our website quality checklist to guarantee that your website is at its best quality for your consumers to freely access and navigate their way around.

Another advantage that a business can benefit from social media marketing is promoting your product or content. Social media can make anything go viral, so if a business can advertise or promote their product on social media, the chances of going viral are very high, and therefore, a higher consumer and sales revenue can be drawn.

How Can Social Media Marketing Benefit A Small Business?

The impact that social media marketing can have on small businesses can massively benefit all aspects of a business. By simply having your business promoted on a social media platform, you’re allowing a new branch to grow within your marketing approach. The majority of the world is endlessly scrolling through social media platforms daily, and if targeted correctly, your business can be found on their feed.

Other than boosting brand awareness, and increasing traffic for your business, social media marketing can encourage conversations among your targeted audiences as well as between the business and the audience. This will allow for your business to understand their audience as well as consider their feedback to further improve their online presence.

According to Digital Doughnut 91% of businesses that use social media marketing claim that brand visibility has increased and improved their user experience. This is based on the conversion of a casual browser into a consumer through the use of customer engagement.

How Social Media Marketing Affects Business?

Life without the internet is unknown to the majority of the UK, so your targeted audience is very likely to be found on social media. The internet is known to be the quickest platform to develop, it took 4 years to reach 50 million users, meanwhile, television and radio took well over 13 years. Your business’s online presence needs to be able to drive a consumer in the direction of your platform. However, this doesn’t mean spamming your targeted audience with content, rather, it’s about getting their attention with quality content as only 14% of consumers trust advertisement. So, to get their attention, your business needs to promote the idea of trust and legitimacy through your ads.

Social media marketing isn’t as complicated as it may seem if done right, so here are a few tips for social media marketing:

Boost Your Business’s Online Presence

By integrating social media marketing within your marketing strategies, your business’s SEO will increase. As your business continues to upload content online, whether that be on the business platform on through social media platforms, the increase in both will boost your business’s ranking.

Build Your Brand Awareness

By showcasing your business on social media platforms, you’ll be pulling in wider consumer revenue, as many more potential consumers will see your brand on their feed and acknowledge it. It is more likely for a consumer to check out your business rather than a competitor if they recognise it. So, get posting online!

Target Your Audience

Having your business on a social media platform is great, but you need to know where and to who you’re promoting your business. Based on your market research, you should be able to categorise who your targeted audience is and where they’d be found on the online platforms. Don’t fall into the trap of uploading the same content onto all social media platforms, as the same content may work for one platform and not the other. Make sure your business’s ads are constructed for the right demographic to achieve a higher consumer rate.

Build A Bond

Your targeted audience are not robots or numbers in a system, they’re humans with different qualities, likes, and dislikes. So, for your business to grow, you should consider those qualities and cater to them to build a B2C conversation. The better the understanding between the two, the better the bond, which will then lead to an increase in trust and legitimacy as well as a positive brand association for your business.

When Is the Best Time to Post on Social Media?

There has been an ongoing conversation within the marketing industry for a while, covering the best times to upload onto social media within the UK. The research and analysis that has gone into figuring out the best time for an upload have been discussed down to the day of the week, hour of the day, and even the minute of the hour. Thanks to the ever-evolving social analytics, businesses are now more aware of what time their targeted audience is active on their social media platforms.

Knowing when to post on social media can increase the success of your business as it will keep your business active and ahead of competitors. Each social media platform differs when figuring out the peak engagement times, however, based on 2020 social media analytics SproutSocial has gathered the best peak times to upload onto different mainstream platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. To summarise, Wednesdays and Fridays are predicted as the best days within the week to upload on most social media platforms, meanwhile, Sunday remains the worst day to upload based on analytics.

Each business will have its niche, so based on what that business is promoting, the days and timings for when to upload may differ, PepperSocial emphasises the importance of knowing your audience, to find your audience your business needs to be able to predict what your targeted audience would be doing and which social media platform they can be found on.

Social media marketing in UK

To understand which platform is best suitable for your business, you must understand that social media trends are constantly changing, and new social platforms are being used frequently. A business must consider the geography of their targeted audience, as well as other factors such as age, gender, financial bracket, etc. Social Media has quoted that during 2020, Facebook had the highest UK users (35,130,000), followed by major social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.

However, based on what your business is, and what you’re aiming to promote, the social media platform you choose to use is important. For example, if a business is based within the travel industry, it would be smart to advertise on more visual platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, or Pinterest. This kind of social media usage would be advised as the initial thing a travel business would be selling to its consumers would be locations to visit. Therefore, by showing their potential consumers those visuals, they’re implementing an idea of what a browser can get by converting into a consumer.

With over 60% of the UK population having access to social media, a business needs to recognise how social media marketing statistics can assist with understanding the platforms a business should utilise.

Here are some social media marketing statistics that all UK businesses should be aware of:

In 2020, there was an estimated amount of 45 million active social media users in the UK
UK social media users spends approximately 1 hour and 49 minutes on social media daily.
54% of social browsers use social media to research products

By understanding these basic statistics, small businesses can take advantage of this information by working their social media marketing strategies around them. For example, knowing how long a user is active on a social media platform, allows a business to work out how much of that user’s time they’ll be able to capture and therefore, estimate how they should advertise and promote.

To stay updated within the industry, it’s always in the business’s best interest to remain updated with marketing statistics. Many online platforms provide these statistics, such as:

Roughly 45% of global internet users now say that they turn to social networks when looking for information about products or services that they’re thinking of buying.

Who Regulates Social Media in the UK?

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), is an independent body that regulates advertisements across the UK. ASA targets misleading and offensive advertisements online to protect the consumers. For example, any advertisements that seem harmful, or encourage illegitimate nonmedical treatments without medical supervision. When ASA recognises that a business has broken any UK social media policies, they usually require the business to either withdraw their advertisement or make an amendment. If for any reason a business chooses to ignore the ASA, then any sanctions will be carried out through the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP). If CAP recognises that a business has misused its advertisement authorities, then they are capable of withholding any advertisement services, which include but are not limited to online marketing space and trading privileges.

How Much Does Social Media Marketing Cost UK?

Social media marketing experts will tell you that one exact amount doesn’t exist, because every business is different, and every business will require different social media marketing packages that will exclusively fit their standards and benefit them.

For a business to figure out an estimated amount of what their social media marketing cost should be, a budget needs to be identified. An advised budget for a smaller start-up business is an allocated percentage between 12% to 25% of the business’s gross revenue. A method that many businesses use when calculating their budget is the sales funnel method. This method allows a business to have an understanding of how to allocate cost-effective funds towards each marketing strategy.

Many businesses opt-in for a social media manager as they are the experts within the field, however, they also come with a cost. So, how much does social media management cost in the UK? Social media management UK prices can vary between £100 per month, to £10,000 per month. These costs usually depend on what your business is looking for and how much time your business wants to invest in social media marketing.

There are also options such as social media packages that can be found online. Raw Lift Digital currently offers starter packages for smaller businesses, where we provide a full range of solutions and equip you with the right tools and files to apply across both digital as well as printed marketing.

A common question that start-up businesses ponder on is ‘how much does social media advertising cost?’ Depending on the platform you wish to advertise on, the price will vary. When advertising on social media, your business needs to understand social media pricing and how it works.

There are many different billing options based on what your business aims to achieve from the advertisement. The most common and well-known options for social media advertising are:

Cost-per-click (CPC)
Cost-per-view (CPV)
Cost per like (CPL)
Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM)

When choosing which social media advertising option your business should go for, the marketing budget should be considered. Always remember, your marketing campaigns are optimised to save you money not to ineffectively spend it