According to Statista, there are about 34.47 million social media users in Canada as of 2022, a generous hike from 32.53 in 2021. By 2026, this number is expected to rise to 38 million users in the country.
Why are we presenting you with this bizarre information like a news bulletin, you ask? Numbers are factual. This is our attempt to highlight for you, whole lotta consumers that you’re missing out on if your business doesn't provide social media enough prominence as an indispensable tool in your marketing strategy.
Trying to contend with its predecessor [the digital era], the Post pandemic era of 2022 has kept up with the recent social media trends. This means that businesses need to be a part of trends in social commerce, the foremost of those being social marketing. Keeping in mind that Social Media Marketing [SMM] is a necessity today, let's try to explore the merit(s) in this digital marketing technique so you’re in on the goldmine that remains unexplored for your business.
#1 Keeping up with the generational vogue
Gen Z is currently the largest demographic. They spend an average of 3 hours on social media per day, social media is their go-to channel for engaging with information about products and services from businesses. It won't be wrong to call them digital natives, it is then the job of a business in the current economy to drive these digital natives to whatever is next. Let’s say Gen Z isn’t your target audience, even so understanding their influence on the digital universe which then translates to marketing would provide some competitive advantage in the current day and age.
#2 Enhanced customer service
Social media have facilitated a kind of environment in commerce that has made the company's response time to customer complaints almost negligible. It’s a given fact that when presented with the option, customers expect you to respond to their complaints and queries right away.
A Twitter Study in 2015 reported that customers of airlines are willing to pay extra dollars just because of the willingness of the airlines to cater to customer needs and quick response time.
This is not an isolated finding, this article on CBS News corroborates the fact that customers are more likely to bring business and profit to companies with considerable social media presence and a positive public portrayal.
#3 Improved Brand Loyalty
A loyal customer base is a primary goal for each business, good thing is, customer service and brand loyalty go hand in hand. And as mentioned in the previous point, social media is the best aid to customer service, once this is done, you’ve established to your customers that they are valuable to you as people and not just sources of revenue, they will begin to help you see through your brand vision in reciprocation which will make a huge difference for you in the competitive market.
#4 Driving Targeted Traffic
No matter what your target market is, a major part of your audience is already active on social platforms. According to The Global Statistics found that in 2022 that 76.90% of the Canadian population use Facebook, and Instagram is used by 58.20%, the percentage is 36.80% for Twitter, 34.50% for Pinterest, and 32.20% for TikTok, and 31.40% for LinkedIn.
Having access to this amount of audience helps boost traffic specifically if you're new to generating content and establishing authority among competitors on search engines.
#5 Keeping ahead of the Competition
If you think that not everyone has tried their hand at social media in your industry, think again! There is more than a 90% chance that your competition is already social and uses at least two social platforms for marketing, based on the information from Adweek.
It’s a rat’s race and trust us you do not want to be left behind and we think that’s a good enough reason, no?
#6 Doing It Right Might Make a Difference
We’ve already established that most brands already use social media as a marketing tool, but are they doing it right?
Businesses start strong but do not indulge in a regular supply of content and posts and ignore building a strong independent voice for their brand, posting in a phased manner with a definite strategy to establish individuality, and regularly connecting with customers can put you on the top.
Triumph over these lazy competitors with expert advice from a social media management agency, or better yet just listen to us.
#7 Increased Brand Awareness and Conversion Rate
If you own a business, you are always on the lookout for syndicating your content to improve brand visibility, using Social Media makes this a cakewalk.
Each post or copy that is intended for the audience contributes toward introducing the brand to a fresh network of individuals. This makes the reach of even the smallest of businesses humongous and the process from pitching to connecting, followed by engaging and eventually converting them into loyal customers easy.
#8 Amplified Recognition for Enhanced Profits
Whenever you are working with gathering promotion for a new launch, a social media presence for the said launch always helps. Want people to sign up for a webinar on how to go about using one of your services, turn to Facebook and Linkedin. Are you looking for donations for charitable aspects of your business, social media publicity and share boost will help you get fruitful donors for the cause. Basically what we are saying is whatever aspect of the business you need help with that involves marketing, social media will be there for you.
#9 Cost-Efficiency
Social media marketing is hands down the most cost-effective component of an advertising strategy. Almost every social networking platform has a free sign-up policy, this makes the competitive market a level playing field.
Moreover, any paid promotion services might cost you a lot less than conventional marketing tactics. This saved cost ensures a higher return on investment for promotion while keeping your budget in place so that more crucial business expenses can be splurged on without compromising your public image and engagement.
#10 Boost in Brand Authority
Communicating with the customers is key, social media takes this to the next level. When customers see a company posting on social media, specifically interacting and responding to its customers on platforms like quora, posting original content, they begin to trust the company, making it reliable, accountable, and thus credible. This makes it more likely for your customers to share your information and refer friends to your services.
Sharing relevant information and answering the customers regularly also increases the brand’s reach as it makes it more likely for the brand’s name to pop up when specific questions are searched on search engines or other social channels.
So technically you are providing helpful information without asking anyone to buy your products or services.
This makes you the coolest dude hanging around everyone being super resourceful without being needy or clingy and honestly which customer group can resist that? And voila! That's how you bag more site visits and purchases.
#11 Improvement through Audience Research
Audience research can be placed parallel to social listening because both involve gathering information from a group of individuals. It involves searching for the keywords that will be used by your target audience, specifically focusing on the products and services you provide. This information is easily accessible today through social media. Any business account can analyze its reach and insights for all of its content and posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
#12 Retargeting and Remarketing Through Social Media Ads
Retargeting is an excellent social media marketing tool. Let’s say only 2% of your customers purchase on their first visit to your website. Advertising can assist with expanding your reach to the remaining 98%.
This works with the help of “cookies”, which involve keeping a list of visitors to the site and placing anonymous ads in their browsers. Thus when these customers visit a social media site, the ads are displayed by a retargeting service. This facilitates your brand presence to customers even if they are spending time on social media beyond your website.
#13 Quoting Experts to Fester Boost in Reach
Quoting platforms with killer social media presence and tagging or notifying them about that post might be your gateway to jumpstart your social media game, once an industry leader is alerted by your post and shares your brand name on their social media you are looking at potentially reaching tens and thousands of customers with ample traffic to your website.
#14 Social Media cause a Hike in SEO Rankings
Search engine crawlers are always aware of the pages that are frequented often and which ones lack traffic, a foolproof content strategy goes a long way but driving traffic to the websites always helps, Social media can facilitate that by sharing trending content with a touch of their own and cause a hike in SEO rankings.
#15 A Kinship with a Community
The trick is to treat your social as a way to build connections, doing this will not only gather potential and loyal customers but will build bridges with industry leaders and influencers, making you part of a community, providing great high-end products for promoters and interesting topics for experts to share with followers. Increasing ROI and multiplying your exposure by ten folds. Turning leads into followers then customers and later brand promoters.
#16 Pioneering the Art of News jacking
With SMM, sometimes you get a mention that highlights your brand towards tremendous popularity or a certain pop culture reference or meme fits in with your services, having an active SMM team can help you seize such opportunities, basically just hop on a take while it's still hot and give the voice and beliefs fo your brand some recognition.
#17 Escalation in Sales
SMM is the best way to boost a company’s sales. Around 70% of businesses acquire customers through Facebook. It's a fact that if you are ever present consumers are more likely to buy from you when they are in need, but the influence on customers here runs through multiple points along the sales funnel, ranging from amplifying the reach through blogs, to responding to customer questions and complaints, and additionally incentivizing buyers with coupon codes and credit points.
#18 Recruiting a Brand New Customer Base
With SMM you can cater to customers even when they have no information about your brand but are looking for related services. Eg: On Twitter, if you find hashtags relating to your brand, use them to drive people to your website, where you can familiarize them with information about your brand and essentially sell it to them.
#19 Reputation Management
In the age of social media, consider that customers are already talking about you, whether you are quick to respond or not, let's say you get some bad press. If you are already active on Social, you can highlight the positives and refute the negatives if viable. With social media, the reigns of your brand image are in your hands and can work to your whim and profit.
#20 You Can Have Fun with It
Lastly, if this doesn’t convince you, we don’t know what will! Business and marketing seem like all work and no play right? It doesn’t have to be that way anymore, you can have fun with it all!! Host an Instagram live to show off your new product launch, share your inspiration behind it with your customers, host a Twitter chat about relevant market trends, and host pop culture polls to get the opinion of your audience, this sort of increment in interaction with them will fester real connection with the customers which is not only preferable for all the profits that brand loyalty brings but also the reward of the human element in all things commerce, so you and your team do not have to go on a robotic goose-chase of customers with mechanical promotion tactics.
What Do We Need Now?
We need to understand that search engines have now become the second most frequented channel of brand research, social media has replaced it and is now used widely for all sorts of marketing gimmicks. What does a business do then? Reimagine what their customer experience needs to look like if they want to compete with the digital trends and gain an edge with their marketing with a strong social media strategy that compliments their business attire.
Imagine working with a flip phone in the age of smartphones and thinking why am I considered old fashioned? It’s the same if you’re not considering social media marketing as a key aspect of your business campaign and still pondering why you’re behind your competitors. If the reason isn't apparent to you even after all that social media marketing pros above? Then all we can say to you is okay boomer!
But we believe in our helpful information and your valuable judgment, so we trust that you will invest in a good social media marketing strategy if you’ve not already done so and if you feel as clueless as we all did in the first month of the pandemic with all things covid, Continuum Software Solutions is the emergency service you should contact. Come check out the full gamut of services our social media marketing agency provides! We’ll upscale your current marketing strategy and make sure you see raised rankings and soaring traffic for all your products and services under our social media and its wings of manifold benefits.
Before we part ways on that unnecessarily poetic but true note, seriously, contact us! Our social media managing game is bomb and we’ll make sure your company’s is too! #SMM for the win!