8 Ways Marketers Can Leverage Social Media to Meet Business Objectives

 As marketers, we understand the importance of incorporating social media into our marketing mix. In fact, 74% of global marketers continue to invest in social media marketing. 

If you haven’t yet considered expanding your existing social media strategy, you may be missing out on valuable channels for advertising. In this post, we’ll give brief explanations of the importance of social media for business, as well as outline eight ways that marketers can leverage social media to meet business goals. 

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Why is social media important for business?

If you’re new to social media in general, there are social media certification courses you can take to learn a bit more about attracting and building brand loyalty. These courses will guide you through the process of building an effective social media marketing strategy that you’ll use to leverage the power of social media to transform your business. 

Due to the sheer amount of users (3.81 billion to be exact), sharing business-related content on your preferred platforms will likely expose you to new customers. A direct result of increased brand awareness is driving leads, and 37% of consumers name social media as the most significant source of inspiration for their purchases. 

Also, using social media helps you grow and nurture your relationships with customers. Instead of merely being a name on their receipts, being active on different platforms allows you to engage with them beyond their purchases to show them that you genuinely care about their business. 

Considering these factors, let’s go over eight ways that marketers can leverage social media to meet their business objectives. 

8 Ways Marketers Can Leverage Social Media

1. Learn About Your Personas
2. Promote Content Through Diverse Channels
3. Keep Engagement High
4. Provide Customer Support
5. Influencer Marketing
6. Nurture Leads
7. Sales Prospecting
8. Show a New Side of Your Business

1. Learn About Your Personas

If your overall business goal is to learn more about your target markets or buyer personas, using different social media sites can help you do this. Every site has a different demographic user base, so you’ll interact with diverse audiences and gain well-rounded insights into every audience group you have and how to best market to them. 

For example, 32.5% of TikTok’s user base is between 10 and 19, whereas 33.1% of global Instagram audiences are between 25 and 34 years old. If you’re a clothing business, you likely sell and create clothing for various age groups. Suppose you devise a marketing strategy for both platforms. In that case, you’ll gain valuable insight into how each of these demographic groups likes to be marketed to, engaged with, and what drives the most conversions. 

You can use social media analytics, which is quantifiable data that provides insight into your followers’ behavior and how they engage with your content. You’ll understand what type of content each audience group likes and what drives the most conversions. Learning more about your customers and what they want makes it easier to create targeted advertisements that appeal to your existing customers and attract new ones. 

2. Promote Content Through Diverse Channels

If your business’s sole online presence is your website, you may be missing out on valuable promotional opportunities that can come from social media sites. While websites are great for promotional blog posts, social media can accommodate those in addition to videos, images, and other forms of unique, high-quality content. The value of social media advertising is clear, as 58% of marketers say that social media has helped them boost sales. 

If you choose to go this route, there are multiple high-performing sites where you can promote content to delight existing customers and draw in new ones. For example, Facebook ads can be shown to users who haven’t yet liked your page or ever interacted with your content.

However, it’s important to note that the social media sites you choose to use to promote your content should be relevant to your business’ overall strategy. If you cater to an older audience, deciding to use TikTok wouldn’t make much sense since the audience is significantly younger than other platforms. In contrast, if your goal is to diversify your social media channels and target new audiences, a business with an older user base would benefit from using TikTok to drive new leads through promotional content. 

In a nutshell, venturing into social media advertising allows you to promote your content through as many social channels as you like. You’re not limited to targeting a specific audience as you are through, say, email marketing because social media advertisements can reach people you’ve yet to have contact with or even identify as leads. 

3. Keep Engagement High

While there are various ways to keep your business’ engagement high, social media is a great channel to do so, as these sites have incredibly active user bases. Here are some stats to consider: 

• During the third quarter of 2020, Facebook reported almost 1.82 billion daily active users.
• The number of global monetizable daily active users (mDAU) on Twitter is 187 million users.
• LinkedIn has 675 million monthly active users worldwide.
• TikTok’s average engagement rate is significantly high at all follower levels, with smaller accounts holding 1,000 followers having an average engagement rate of 9.38%.
• On average, users spend 144 minutes a day on social media.  

These statistics show us that there is potential for high engagement across all social media sites. Considering that these stats account for global users, time zone distribution means that there will always be someone online, and there will always be someone ready to interact with your tweets, Instagram Stories, and Facebook posts. 

When you’re active across your social media sites and carefully follow a marketing strategy that considers your followers interests, your engagement rates will remain high no matter what platforms you choose to use. 

4. Provide Customer Support

50% of customers purchase more from companies that they believe provide outstanding customer service. 59% of global social media users also have a more favorable view of brands that respond to customer service questions on social media. Given this, the benefits of leveraging social media as a means of providing excellent customer service are significant in terms of meeting customer expectations.

You can offer customer support on social media channels in various ways, like responding to customer complaints on Twitter or chatting with them on Facebook Messenger.  Here’s an example from HelloFresh, a meal delivery subscription service, using Twitter as a means of customer support.