Social Media Marketing: Why is it Important, and How to Measure its Effectiveness

Today, the world is connected through social media networks such as Facebook and Instagram. These platforms are omnipresent, allowing companies to communicate directly with their target consumers by leveraging social media marketing strategies. Whether it is for a tiny boutique or a large MNC, no marketer can afford to ignore social media marketing as a valid tool to engage with existing customers and attract new ones. Let’s understand the benefits of this digital marketing approach and how to make the most of it.

How Social Media Marketing Benefits Businesses

Social media marketing (SMM) is the process of promoting goods or services on social media. Furthermore, it is also about engaging with customers online, increasing brand awareness, and more. Here are some of the benefits of SMM that marketers should consider while crafting their strategies:

1. Focus on Increasing Brand Awareness

People believe in what they see, and social media marketing helps customers learn more about a business by boosting its online visibility.

2. Generate Quality Leads and Boost Conversions

Generating leads and boosting conversions on social media is easier than on any other platform. This is because companies generally engage with audiences who follow their social media accounts. Here are some simple and effective ways to boost leads and conversions:

• Online contests and polls
• Hosting live videos
• Quick Q&A section online

3. Help Gather Deep Insights into the Target Audience

Understanding the target audience is a crucial step for a marketer while formulating a marketing campaign. This activity aims to understand the factors that influence purchase decisions. SMM helps marketers gather this information easily.

Every online platform has an analytics tab that provides deep insights into social media posts. Marketers can use analytics to understand what their followers or target audience like and dislike.

4. Show Authenticity

In today’s market, authenticity is a make-or-break factor in a brand’s success. In fact, experts believe that authenticity is what inspires modern-day customers. According to them, consumers decide which product to buy based on whether a business’ claims are authentic. Simply put, consumers are not interested in buying a product that involves unethical business practices and exploits the environment.

Social media marketing helps understand their target customers’ values and beliefs and create a campaign accordingly.

5. Grow Affordably

Social media marketing offers different low-cost advertising strategies. This means companies can achieve their marketing goals on a small budget. However, to succeed in SMM, businesses need appropriate digital marketing tactics and strategies.

Additionally, remember that social media marketing and social media advertising are distinct approaches. While SMM focuses on organically reaching the target audience, social media advertising emphasizes paid ads to attract new customers.

How to Measure the Success of Social Media Campaigns

Companies using social media to promote their products or services must measure their performance. It helps them understand what’s working and what’s not. For example, here are some key metrics that companies can use to track a campaign’s performance:

• Reach: The number of people who have seen an ad
• Engagement: The number of likes, comments, shares, and clicks an ad gets
• Follower growth: How many new followers a company’s social media handle gains over time
• Conversions: The number of people who take a desired action, such as filling out a form or purchasing, among others
• Referral traffic: The amount of traffic that comes to a company’s website from social media
• Brand sentiment: The overall sentiment and perception of a brand on social media

Marketers can measure these metrics using social media analytics tools like Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and Google Analytics.

Meanwhile, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to measure the effectiveness of an SMM campaign:

Step 1. Identify and List Goals

Every business activity has an ultimate goal. Therefore, the first step in measuring the effectiveness of an SMM campaign is to determine the campaign’s initial goal. This is an important step because it helps determine the reason behind undertaking a marketing activity.

Step 2. Set Metrics to Measure the Goals

The next step is to define actual measurable metrics. For example, you can use social media metrics such as reach, engagement, conversions, and brand sentiment.

Step 3. Measure

In this step, companies measure the results or effectiveness of a marketing campaign by using previously-defined social media metrics. In many cases, marketers can use the social media platforms’ in-built analytical tools to measure the effectiveness of a campaign.

Step 4. Monitor and Communicate

The fourth step is to report the results of the marketing campaign to important business entities such as stakeholders, employees, and customers.

Step 5. Adjust and Repeat

The last step ensures making changes to the marketing campaign to increase its effectiveness. Moreover, they figure out how to improve and make changes to the campaign to leverage it to gain more customers.

What are the Most Effective Social Media Marketing Processes?

Businesses across different industries opt for social media marketing. Therefore, to stay ahead of the competition, it’s essential to be well-versed in different social media marketing processes. Here are five popular and effective processes that companies of any size or industry can adopt:

1. Decide Your Metrics

Choose metrics that match your marketing objective. This helps in selecting the right performance metrics and accurately determining the effectiveness of a campaign.

2. Engage With Your Audience

Marketers prefer SMM over traditional marketing because it allows them to connect and interact with their audience. Therefore, successful companies prioritize engaging with their audience.

3. Monitor and Adapt

Marketers generally track and monitor their SMM efforts from time to time. It helps them fix issues that can affect the performance of a marketing campaign. Moreover, it allows them to make changes to the campaign on the go.

4. Track Competitor’s Activities

Businesses don’t operate in isolation. For example, they usually have competitors offering the same product with similar features to the same target audience. Therefore, tracking their marketing activities offer an understanding of what potential customers expect from businesses in the industry.

5. Use Modern Tools Like Chatbots

Companies can use AI-enabled tools like Chatbots to enhance customer service and engagement. These chatbots can provide answers to common customer queries without any human intervention. Businesses can also integrate them with Facebook Messenger to send automated messages to users.

Improve Digital Marketing Skills and Knowledge With Emeritus

Marketers interested in upskilling or reskilling can take Emeritus digital marketing courses. In these courses, professionals can learn about digital marketing best practices and how to get more returns from their campaigns. Additionally, these courses will teach marketers how to optimize their social media marketing campaigns and enhance customer engagement in today’s dynamic business environment.