Digital marketing in social media: a vital world for sales
Posted by Andres Aguerrevere on
The art of selling on the internet have been around us for around a decade; moreover, the way it is done nowadays is absolutely different from the way it was performed back in its origin, it is even different from how it used to be a couple of years ago.
The marketing performed in digital media, especially on the internet, changes extremely rapid. In a matter of marketers follow the rhythm of techniques and trends. Those trends constantly define and redesign the market giving to marketers the hard duty of being in an ever-changing environment where the only way to succeed and survive is to evolve and adapt.
The term Digital Marketing circles all the marketing activities are done online with the goal of expanding the awareness, generating more traffic and engagement and increasing the number of sales.
In these days, the marketing team is considered a must part of every organization, not only the large ones but the small too; no matter the size of the company, the implementation of trendy innovative marketing techniques is vital.
Moreover, there is a myriad of different strategies applied in marketing nowadays, from search engines, websites, social media, email, content marketing, live streaming, and mobile apps.
Yet every time a marketer blinks, a new trend appears this is why keeping updated is so important; just as Jacky Lovato said for a MediaVision post: “If you don’t keep it up, you will get left behind”.
Adding new areas
As stated before, this constantly evolving area is always searching for new methods and places where to advertise and get in touch with the audience. Marketers need to carefully study potential customers in order to get to know them and design the campaigns and strategies based on the market.
Given the fact that nearly nine-in-ten Americans are online, based on the results of a survey made by Pew Research Center. It also discovered that roughly 77% of the citizens own a mobile device, and the main apps used are social networks.
This results support the idea of how important are the social media in the marketing process; a couple of years ago, the number of ads and publicity spread in platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube were barely anything compared with the quantity available in the actuality.
Social Media: is there a better place?
So, the thing is: customers are always online, their phones or mobile devices are close to the person almost 24/7 and the main apps used for customers are mostly social networks; it creates the perfect place to sell, advertising in media allows marketers to get a concurred place to get to a myriad of potential customers.
Moreover, it is important to know the real role of social media in digital marketing; when a brand gets into a media platform they create a space to interact directly with clients, it creates engagement as the company is seen friendlier and closer to customers.
Some of the benefits of using social platforms to advertise are:
- The real target market is defined: people who will follow the brand are the target market, the ones who will probably buy from you or currently are clients of the brand. In these networks, people are real and direct; it allows the marketers to truly know the likes and thoughts of the potential customers and design campaigns based on those features.
- Feedback is immediate: it happens in both ways; the brand is able to see the reaction customers have from a released campaign or product while clients can contact the brand and receive a response very quick which leads to more engagement.
- More sales for less money: the balance among the quantity you spend to advertise online and the income from sales made through social media are very beneficial. Creating a Facebook page, for example, is completely affordable and it gives to the brand the opportunity to advertise for millions of users.
- Brand recognition and royalty: using social media frequently make the brand more familiar and easy to be recognized by users, it also generates engagement which leads to higher loyalty from customers to the brand
- Easy learning: nowadays, there are many programs and algorithms designed to learn from clients; applying them in social media is pretty acute as in the user shares valuable personal information.
Those are just a few of the numerous benefits social media brings to brands, based on Arpit Singh, a digital marketing consultant; in his opinion “A digitally active brand can easily scale up, with a proper variety of well-defined rules within its proper and holistic variety of defined set of rules, reach”.
However, each social network work different and they are used for different types of people; a marketing campaign can work amazingly in one platform and rapidly fail in other. Not because they are all social media it means they can receive the same type of ads or methods.
In here, there is a short compilation made with the main social media platforms and their relationship with digital marketing; how they work, how important they are, benefits they bring to businesses and much more.
Alexander Clark for Smart Insights in The Most Popular social networks worldwide states Facebook as the first one; even though it is not the only yet by far the main with a huge difference from the followings.
Based on Facebook Statistics, there are around two billion users on Facebook every month, and 1 of every 5 minutes spent on the Internet in the US is used on Facebook or Instagram (Property of Facebook).
Given the fact Facebook has a huge amount of users; it makes it a smart place to begin promoting a business or brand. Moreover, options in Facebook are plenty: it is possible to create a page for your brand, or direct advertising through ads, the newest adding to the ways of selling in Facebook is a chatbot included in the messenger app.
Among the myriad of benefits marketers and brands can achieve by advertising through Facebook are:
- Customized audience: thanks to the Facebook tool called Facebook Custom Audience tools, marketers are free to select the desired target they want to advertise for; Facebook has formats to create an ad, there is possible to select ranges such as age, gender, email, IDs, location, etc.
- Huge visibility for low prices: as a consequence of the giant number of active users Facebook has, advertising in here enables marketers to ensure the ad will get to thousands of people very quickly. Also, prices are considerably cheap in comparison with other platforms and search engines.
- Easy to meter: for marketers, analyzing the effectiveness of a Facebook Campaign is easy, feedback is quick as customers can interact immediately with the ad or brand page.
- Many options: in Facebook, it is possible to advertise and create engagement in several ways; from simply creating a page for the brand or product to a formal ad, a chatbot to interact with customers through the messenger app, creating live content as streaming and so on.
Undoubtedly, Facebook has positioned itself as one of the best places to sell with a wide distance from other networks; since users seem not to get bored of this social media, this marketing trend will not disappear in the nearly future.
Walter Moore at NetPeak says that “Instagram is a handy tool for businesses that rely on the common public to sell off their products and services”. Advertising on Instagram is useful for almost any type of brands, small and giant ones.
The method used to advertise in here is based on inbound marketing; the use of content in order to get people’s attention and awareness to the brand. As Instagram is all about pictures and videos, the quality of them will determine the success of a brand.
Moore stated that using photos along with posts increases the chances of interaction with comments and likes by about 40% as compared to the text-only posts. Some of the inbound strategies used on Instagram are:
- Visual content: pictures, videos, and streaming. Instagram enables the brand to constantly offer content value to customers, creating loyalty to the brand.
- Mobile-Friendly: according to Comscore Future in Focus Paper, around 66% of the time users spend on social media is made through a mobile device. Instagram has a well-developed platform that works smoothly on phones, which makes it more likable to be used frequently.
- Instant feedback: brands and marketer can easily see the reaction their campaigns have and interact with people through this media; it helps to create engagement and loyalty from customers.
- Many tools are available: from simple but effective hashtags to paid sponsoring and postings; a recent trend is the use of micro-influencers using the products a brand sell in their daily life, as they are seen as role models, customers tend to buy the product to be in trend too.
YouTube
With the incredible rush content marketing has nowadays, YouTube has gained a key place in the list of networks where to advertise. Different from a couple of years ago, information does not come only in written style, most of the times search on internet end up with a video.
Years before, every time a user has a doubt came to Google for an answer; nowadays, how to videos, tutorials, storytelling and more are the way people solve their questions. Moreover, YouTube is such a good place where marketers have to work.
With more than a million of active users, the chance that a big amount of people watch your content is huge; in this platform, the brand has a giant opportunity to establish a close relationship with their customers and attract even more clients in the process.
There are many different styles in YouTube yet some of them are on trend and seem to stay for a long time, the use of this platform is very beneficial for businesses as, in there, marketers are able to add value that goes further than the product itself.
Moreover, the creation of content does that customers spend more time connected with the brand in comparison with time they will by watching an ad on the television, for example.
Once a potential customer get engaged with a video, he is like to come back to watch the next one, creating loyalty with the brand.
No matter where you are planning to invest your marketing budget, there are some inbound strategies that will work for your success.
- Good content is a vital part.
- Being actively posting.
- Creating your own style.
- Following others back.
- Thank everything (good and bad).
- Fast feedback is extremely important.
Knowing and applying these inbound techniques will boost any brand which is trying to get into this diverse world of digital marketing. Moreover, Internet is so important nowadays that being into it is just unavoidable.