10 Reasons Why Social Media Is Your Startup Marketing Plan’s Greatest Weapon
By now, the power of social media is well known within the business world. The ability to connect directly to an audience in such a personal way has been an incredible advancement for companies of all sizes, whether they work on a local, national, or even international basis. Social media platforms provide a window into the consumer’s life, showing the needs, wants, praises, and complaints that before could only be gleaned through stodgy and expensive survey campaigns. Not to mention the helpful details that can be mined through demographic and ad insights alone.
Looking at the statistics regarding social media as it stands today, we can see just how influential these platforms genuinely are:
- 85% of consumers within the United States are regular social media users, with 58% of those using social media to connect to brands. (MarketingSherpa)
- 71% of consumers who are satisfied with social media-based customer support or who have a positive social media experience with a brand will recommend that brand to others. They will also spend on average 21% more. (Ambassador)
- 57% of consumers say that seeing positive reviews of a business online strongly influences them to choose that brand. (DMN)
- One in three consumers actively seeks out brands on social media. (Global Web Index)
The Importance of Social Media for Startup Marketing
As a startup, particularly if you are limited in your capital or described as a bootstrap company, you have a unique challenge awaiting you. No matter how good your product, it won’t go anywhere without the ability to reach the intended audience, it was made for. That is just stepping one. If you can’t convince that audience once you’ve connected with them that your brand can stack up against the big guys or the other startups already established in the industry, you won’t move the needle.
Social media is a practical, affordable and powerful tool that will give you everything you need to push your brand into the spotlight. As you achieve growth milestones, it also gives you a platform to further hone your engagement and continue that upward trajectory.
Here are the ten reasons why social media is your startup marketing plan’s greatest weapon.
1 – Increasing Your Exposure
Exposure is not in, and of itself, the goal of social media use, as it isn’t how many followers you have but what you do with them. However, this is the first step in making a successful social media marketing campaign. You want to build the numbers to get your brand’s message out into the social sphere.
2 – Increasing Your Traffic
Generating traffic is the top reason for most marketers to utilize social media. Thankfully this is a primary function of every platform. Regular social media use posted to redirect people to your website is a guaranteed traffic driver.
3 – Establishing Brand Recognition
Half of being successful as a startup is being noticed. Brand recognition ensures that your reputation is preceding you. It shows that you are sticking out in your audience’s mind rather than getting lost in the sea of faces in the online marketplace.
4 – Generating Leads
Lead generation is one of the most tedious and challenging aspects of promotion for any marketer. The constant grind can be wearing, but social media makes it easier. You have a pool of potential leads just waiting for you to reach out.
5 – Upping Your Search Ranking
Google prioritizes social searches on their engine, particularly Twitter. You can use that to your advantage by working to make your social profiles as SEO-friendly as your website and posting regularly to bring your social profiles to the top of search results.
6 – Gaining Insight Into the Marketplace
When using social research, you can begin to develop better insights into the marketplace at any given moment. Seeing the purchasing habits of your audience is one benefit, though watching the competition can be equally as effective in helping you better develop your own brand strategies.
7 – Building Business-Boosting Relationships
B2C isn’t the only direction you can take your social efforts. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, and many other platforms give you a launching point for establishing new relationships and partnerships that can benefit your startup.
8 – Improving Sales Figures
Direct sales have been an iffy use for social media since Facebook tried to create storefronts on business pages. But even if in-page checkouts fail to bring exciting results, social media is an excellent tool for driving conversions by pushing consumers to your site.
9 – Reducing Marketing Costs
Startups have to budget with great care, and there are a lot of balls to juggle. Social media is a cheap (in many ways free) marketing tool, with decent advertising options that can work within your business’s means.
10 – Gaining Brand Loyalty
Perhaps the most essential part of a startup marketing plan is building brand loyalty. You want to bring your audience back again and again, which is easy if you engage them properly.
Are you looking to improve your social media marketing and digital marketing strategies? The experts at Lucé Media are ready to help your business move into the next phase. We do content marketing in McKinney, TX, Frisco, TX, Plano, TX, and Allen, TX. Here are the ten reasons why social media is your startup marketing plan’s greatest weapon.