Social media is the fastest growing trend in the history of the world! - Neil Patel
The explosive growth of this 21st century phenomenon has seen a huge demand from businesses for social media marketing services. Here are a few social media facts that will blow your mind:
- There are now more Facebook users worldwide than there are people in China
- 92% of marketers say that social media is important to their business
- And 88% of them agree that social media has generated more exposure for them
Think it’s just about having a Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile? Think again.
The Conversation Prism below illustrates the vast number of social media networks out there. So where do you start? (click to enlarge).
Professional social media marketing companies can help you navigate your way around the wheel.
What Services Do Social Media Agencies Offer?
From sharing dazzling content on a Twitter feed to devising a brilliant paid advertising campaign on Facebook, a specialist agency can drive audience engagement and significantly raise your digital profile.
They provide social media services to businesses who may not have the expertise or resources in-house to effectively manage their professional presence online. They will connect, engage and interact. Plan, prepare and promote.
First, they’ll develop targeted social customer profiles based on audience insights from across the major channels.
These, combined with a clear overview of your business, marketing and financial goals, will guide a comprehensive strategy. This will incorporate all the latest innovative social and inbound marketing technology: a good agency will be fully up-to-speed with influential new features and techniques.
Their detailed research will allow campaigns to be strategic, creative and focused on effective distribution to reach the right people in the right place at the right time – with the right content.
A social media management company will also advise on content creation, often writing and designing it for you. Selecting inspiring images, curating informative videos, crafting clever copy, you can outsource it all.
And once their creativity starts to bear fruit, they can carefully analyse the results and report back to you, so they can do it bigger and better next time. The expertise you receive will help to propel your ideal customers through the business buying journey.
Once socially engaged with your brand, they’re one step closer to visiting your website, converting to buyer and, ultimately, becoming a loyal advocate.
further reading
Need help setting up your social profiles? Read this guide!
But what business benefits can you enjoy by embracing social media? Read on to discover more about our top ten:
- Increase Website Traffic
- Boost Conversion Rates
- Personalise the Customer Experience
- Build Your Brand
- Cost-effective
- Time-effective
- Better Customer Insights
- Better Search Engine Rankings
- Share Your Creative Content
- Highly-targeted Advertising Opportunities
Ten Brilliant Benefits of Social Media Marketing Services
1. Increase Website Traffic
Social media brings more people to your website. New people, different people, eager-to-be-engaged people.
Without these fresh recruits, your inbound traffic can be limited to the strength of your SEO and to those who already know your brand.
Further Reading
Find out more about creating a social media strategy by reading our social media ultimate resource.
Each of your social media profiles creates another path back to your website. Every piece of compelling content you post creates another opportunity to be found online.
2. Boost Conversion Rates
As your social media profiles start to bloom, the number of potential customers you reach shoots up and your business begins to flourish.
More traffic = more leads. More leads = more conversions.
Everything you share from videos, blogs and images to comments, offers and special events, is another route to customers old and new. And it’s a two-way process …
3. Personalise The Customer Experience
Social media has given brands a personality. It allows them to create a dialogue with existing and potential customers using a distinct tone of voice that conveys your values.
Your business is instantly humanised. It can act like a person, not a faceless entity. The well-worn adage that people love to do business with people still rings true.
Offering a form of fast, real-time communication, social media offers a personal experience: you can show off your customer service levels, engage in conversations, respond to feedback quickly and helpfully.
It tells your customers that you care about them and not just their buying intentions.
4. Build Your Brand
Brand Identity
Your brand has a story to tell. Social media is the perfect arena to add more chapters.
Going back to personality, you have the opportunity for every piece of content on every different platform to have a consistent tone of voice. Is it friendly, funny and personal? Maybe it’s empowering, energising and authoritative?
Establishing and maintaining this is essential to building trust between your audience and your brand: something that is becoming more and more of a challenge.
Research by Censuswide for the Chartered Institute of Marketing shows that in 2016 30% of users had little or no trust in the brand information they saw on Facebook, a rise of 10% in just two years. The figure has also risen by 10% for Twitter, from 15% to 25%.
Earning trust takes time and expertise. One sensible way to start the process when improving your brand’s social media influence is to consistently offer some of your value for free.
Free eBooks, entertaining blogs with clear reader benefits and product discounts can all build your brand equity with prospects.
Eventually the social proof achieved by an active social media marketing plan will create that trust and credibility.
further reading
See how Red-Fern can help you build a corporate identity!
Brand Awareness
Now that you have a social media presence, you need to raise awareness of your brand and stay at the forefront of people’s minds.
You can do this 24/7. Keeping up a constant – but not excessive – level of communication with your audience is easily achieved on social media.
It helps to fill the marketing gaps by reaching those who’ve never heard of you. They may not be in the mood for buying but seeing a regular flow of useful and engaging content from you will help to move them down the sales funnel.
This make you more appealing and accessible to new customers. And it reinforces the relationship with your existing customers by being familiar and reassuring.
Agencies offering social media services are highly skilled at maintaining your brand awareness, promoting the benefits of your product or service without compromising essential brand values.
Brand Authority
Social media networks give you the chance to position your brand as an authority and thought leader in a specialist field.
Platforms such as LinkedIn can connect your business to relevant professionals and influencers. It’s a forum to share mutually beneficial content, respond to industry-related questions and position your company as a go-to source of information and advice.
Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is the holy grail of marketing. We all want our customers to be shouting from the rooftops about how wonderful we are.
Social media makes this quest easier.
Social Media Examiner’s survey found that of those who have been using social media for between 1-2 years, 67% of marketers found it useful for building a loyal fan base. This figure increases to 80% for those pioneers who have used it for at least five years.
Interacting with your customers regularly is a display of good faith for other customers.
Starbucks for example is renowned for communicating directly and personally with its Twitter followers, reflecting its brand values of honesty, sincerity and connecting with its customers.
Building that type of brand loyalty doesn’t happen overnight but using social media can help you get there a lot faster. You can create dialogues, respond to questions in real time and build your digital fan base.
Download Our Free Essential Guide to Social Media Marketing
Start your social media marketing strategy with our free ebook guide
Download Our Free Essential Guide to Social Media Marketing
5. Cost-effective Marketing
An impressive 91% of marketers who spend between 6-10 hours a week on social media report that their time investment has increased exposure for their business.
Outsourcing this task to a social media marketing services expert needn’t involve a significant outlay as the benefits of spending just one hour a day focused on strategy and content can clearly be seen.
Budgets for paid-for advertising can also be tightly controlled with a small outlay and can often lead to valuable conversions.
6. Time-effective Marketing
Social media marketing companies want to promote your brand across the relevant channels efficiently, in terms of both time and money.
If you don’t have a marketing team or want them to focus on other aspects of their role, employing an expert can free up precious time for your business.
7. Better Customer Insights
Facebook and its friends allow you to indulge in the digital equivalent of holding a glass up against a wall to eavesdrop.
This social listening doesn’t just tell you what your customers think of your brand, your products and your services. It also opens the door to a vast quantity of data about their interests, behaviours and lifestyle.
This insight can feed into your marketing strategy and also your HR, research and development, and sales teams. It all helps to keep you one step ahead of the competition – or at least, keep up with them.
8. Better Search Engine Rankings
The parameters for successful SEO are always changing as the big players adjust their algorithms. Active social media accounts – and professional advice - can help you keep up with the pace.
Google and its fellow search engines will see your legitimate, credible and trustworthy social media content and give you a helping hand towards a coveted spot on Page 1.
9. Share Your Creative Content
A brilliantly insightful thought-leadership article hiding behind the scenes on your website might genuinely be a work of art.
But if nobody’s looking at it, what’s the point? Enter stage left, your social media saviours.
If you’re very lucky, your content will be picked up by a brand advocate and will spread organically without you having to lift a finger.
But leaving the chances of “going viral” to fate is dangerous. Instead, a professional agency can create a distribution plan to boost the likelihood of people seeing it, liking it and sharing it.
They’ll know what to post, when to post it, where to post it and who to post it to – targeted, engaging and brimming with conversion potential.
And don’t forget that the very customers you’re trying to reach can create content for you: unique images of your product, glowing testimonials, relevant stories etc.
Take advantage of your advocates and encourage your early adopters by asking them for their input.
10. Targeted Advertising Opportunities
Social media advertising spend is expected to exceed £26bn in 2017. Want to know how you can get a piece of the action? Read on …
The Power of Paid-for Advertising
Social media advertising spending worldwide is increasing by billions each year.
As the number of social media users continues to grow and the technology they use continues to advance, paying these networks to reach an untapped audience is proving irresistible.
The Social Media Examiner survey shows that 93% of marketers use paid ads on Facebook – and 64% are planning to increase their spending.
A further 16% advertise on LinkedIn, with 30% planning an increase, and 15% on Twitter, with 29% planning to increase their budget.
These “pay-to-play” spaces within social media are hugely popular because of their potential reach and unrivalled targeting.
An agency offering social media management services can help you harness their power.
further reading
Find out how you can power up your social media plan with paid advertising!
Why Are Social Media Networks So Good At Advertising?
The personal data held by networks such as Facebook and Twitter is vast. If you want to see for yourself, go to Settings and click on “Download a copy of your Facebook data”.
This makes them the ideal forums for advertising and the targeting they offer is incredibly in-depth.
In social media marketing, this means that campaigns can be designed to reach audiences based on the most specific of criteria.
Looking for 18-24-year-olds who love travelling, wildlife conservation and heavy metal? You got it.
Armed with this information, you can present your message to exactly the type of people you want to attract.
What Can A Social Media Agency Do For My Business On Facebook?
“If Facebook were a country, it would be the biggest country in the world.”
72% of adult internet users use Facebook. It has 2.006 billion monthly users. Its ad revenue for Q2 2017 was $9.16 billion, 87% of which came from mobile ads.
Put simply, Facebook is a global social media beast. When it comes to marketing, you’d be a fool to ignore it.
You may be very familiar with using Facebook personally to share family photos, watch hilarious videos and keep up-to-date with news from your favourite sports team or charity.
Harnessing its power for your business requires specialist skills to keep you one step ahead of the competition.
Here’s where a social media management services agency can step in.
They can do everything for you to boost your business’s Facebook profile and move it from faltering to fabulous:
- Create a comprehensive strategy to give you a full overview of activity
- Set up and design a dedicated Facebook business page with a high-impact banner image and persuasive text
- Add a Facebook pixel to your website to link the two together, allowing you to track conversions
- Produce a timeline showing when content and advertising will appear
- Adjust this timeline regularly as learnings from metrics are made
- Research your target market and create specific audience profiles for each ad set
- Adapt these ad sets as necessary as the business grows and/or diversifies
- Devise highly-targeted advertising campaigns
- Keep the page updated with fresh, interesting and relevant content
- Source inspiring images to add visual impact to your posts
- Produce and post videos to bring your brand to life
- Handle all reputation management by responding swiftly to comments and questions from your followers
- Interact with your followers to spark conversations and humanise your brand
- Like and interact with appropriate people and pages
- Monitor your competitors’ activity
- Monitor mentions of your business across the whole of Facebook
- Analyse all metrics and collate regular activity reports to inform future strategy
Many businesses choose to add advertising campaign management to their social media agency monthly package. It’s an affordable, creative and effective element of any marketing mix.
With Facebook, social media marketing companies will work with you to set your campaign objectives.
Facebook gives you plenty of options including:
- Sending people to your website
- Increasing conversions on your website
- Boosting your posts
- Promoting your page
- Getting installations of your app
- Reaching people near your business
- Raising attendance at your event
- Getting people to claim your offer
- Getting video views
Based on the strategy that you’ve devised together, your agency will advise on which objectives are most appropriate for each campaign to get the desired results.
Objectives in place, social media experts will then switch their attention to who you want to reach and how much you want to spend.
Each campaign can be tailored to reach very specific groups and your agency will invest plenty of time in getting these groups right.
They can target by custom audience based on your business’ email and phone number lists, web visitor lists and app user lists.
Or by demographic which gives endless options such as age, location, gender, education, work industry, even relationship status.
And they can target based on behaviours and actions taken, which really lets them drill down into the nitty gritty. By typing in keywords related to your campaign and specifying certain purchase decisions made by users, the precision that can be achieved on Facebook is mind-boggling if you have the know-how.
Budgeting can be carefully controlled by setting either a total or maximum daily budget. Your social media services partner can also select a timeframe with the ability to adjust it and the budget as the campaign progresses and is monitored.Next, it’s time for the experts to set their creativity free and design your ad.
They’ll have plenty of artistic freedom here and will carefully craft an ad with an impressive image, compelling copy and an irresistible call to action.
Different ads can be designed to reach different audiences, allowing complete personalisation with variations in layout, copy and images.
Your agency can even design different ads for the same ad set and carry out some A/B testing to see which one dazzles and which one disappoints.
Once your ad is up and running, your social media agency won’t just put their feet up and leave your analytics until the end of the campaign. They’ll track its success as it’s running live, reporting back to you and making the necessary tweaks to boost its performance.
Facebook provides plenty of insightful metrics, including:
- Number of ad clicks
- Number of website clicks
- Cost per website click
- Number of people reached
- Average number of times ad is seen
- Money spent per day
- Money spent overall
These will all be taken on board to ensure you’re getting the very best value for money and the very best results.
What Can A Social Media Agency Do For My Business on Twitter?
23% of adult internet users use Twitter. It has 328m monthly active users and posted $489m of ad revenue in Q2 2017.
Although a smaller player on the social media stage than Facebook, it still offers powerful advertising options for your business.
As with Facebook, a social media management services agency can guide you through the twists and turns of Twitter and make it work hard for your business.
They offer all the services for Twitter as listed above for Facebook plus they have the skills to keep within the 140-character limit and to include relevant, carefully-researched hashtags.
Incorporating a Twitter advertising campaign into your marketing strategy can definitely pay dividends.
How Will Social Media Marketing Company Help?
A social media services company can set your campaign objectives, advising on whether to promote specific tweets or your whole account, or to create an original ad depending on the audience and message.
Accurately targeting these audiences is also crucial on Twitter. They can be based around basic demographics such as location, gender and language, along with what device the ad will be viewed on and relevant keywords.
Keywords in particular can be harnessed to seriously fine-tune your targeting: these can be set-up to match phrases, hashtags and handles.
Cleverly embracing Twitter’s 140-character limit is a skill perfected by the professionals. They’ll know how to capture your message succinctly and creatively while also selecting the appropriate hashtags and adding a strong call to action.
They can also advise on suitable imagery: tweets with images get 55% more leads than those without. They’re a great technique for adding more information than the 140-character limit allows.
Asking your agency to carry out some A/B testing is a wise strategy. Campaigns can include more than one tweet - Twitter promotes them equally before focusing on the star performer.
Budgeting is straightforward as you can set daily limits and a maximum budget. Your agency will monitor your campaign over the first 48 hours to get a good steer about its future success, tweaking as necessary.
Topping up your budget will allow Twitter to show it more often, boosting its exposure and the chances of the ad doing its job.
As part of their service, a social media agency will also provide you with analytics reports including:
- Number of tweet engagements (clicks, retweets and favourites)
- Number of ad views
- Money spent on the ad
- Engagement rate
- Cost per engagement
They’ll keep a close eye on these stats as the ad gains momentum, making sure it’s fully optimised and performing its best.
What Can A Social Media Agency Do For My Business on LinkedIn?
25% of adult internet users use LinkedIn. It has 106m active monthly users and posted $228m of ad revenue in Q1 2017.
As a social network for professionals, LinkedIn advertising offers a forum to drive brand awareness, establish thought-leadership and generate leads among your peers.
A social media management services agency can help you tap in to the business benefits of having a strong and influential LinkedIn presence.
They offer all the services listed above for Facebook on LinkedIn, developing a strong network of connections and a reputation for being a thought leader within your industry.
If you choose to advertise on LinkedIn, your agency can advise on the campaign choices available including banner ads placed to the side of the screen, direct sponsored content or sponsored posts.
They can also narrow down your audience by targeting options such as location, company, job title, school, field of study, skills, group, gender and age.
Content-wise, copy is king within LinkedIn ads as images are considerably smaller than those on Facebook and Twitter. A good agency will ensure that all text on images is clear and legible, as well as writing persuasive, informative words.
As with all social media, keeping track of your campaign right from the beginning to ensure its future success is vital.
LinkedIn will provide all these stats:
- Number of clicks
- Number of views
- Click-through rate
- Number of social actions
- Average cost-per-click
- Total value of impressions and clicks
A good social media marketing services agency won’t be afraid of advising you to pull an ad if, even with expert tweaking and adapting, it still isn’t pulling its weight.
Now it’s time to explore the world of video as a vehicle to get visitors.
further reading
If you'd like to explore LinkedIn, take a look at our article showing the top ten tips for your profile!
Social Media Video Is On The March
The future is not for the camera shy. Video, and specifically live video, is booming.
Screens are everywhere. Time is precious. Video delivers.
HubSpot’s latest stats update reveals that:
- Four times as many people would rather watch a video about a product than read about it
- 43% of people want to see more video content
- 55% of people consume video content thoroughly
- 100m hours of video are watched each day on Facebook alone
Marketers must respond to this demand. The Social Media Examiner 2017 report shows that 57% of them use video with 75% planning to increase usage. For live video, these figures are 28% with a significant 61% planning to do more.
And Hubspot’s State of Inbound 2017 report asked what marketers are planning to add to their strategies in the next 12 months: 48% said YouTube and 46% said Facebook video.
An expert social media services agency can incorporate video into your strategy to reach new customers in new ways.
Facebook Video is Easy!
On Facebook, you can post a video as easily as you can post an image or update. When incorporated into an ad, it will help it to stand out and grab people’s attention using motion.
It allows more creative options to showcase products and offers, connecting directly with customers and bringing your message to life.
You can take the visual experience to the next level of engagement by using Facebook Live. Launched in April 2016, its popularity has grown by 330% in just one year.
It's rapid success is because it offers an instant real-time connection – and conversation - with your followers: you can actually talk to them, respond to their questions and feedback, and monitor their live reactions.
It’s a no-brainer to include it in your marketing strategy. And the innovation is marching on. Facebook is currently testing a new video feature in the US called Watch.
It’s a home for original video content, drawing users back to their news feeds to access videos they can’t see anywhere else.
Rather than being presented as a random stream of content, Watch organises these videos into categories and allows users to connect and chat with others during the show.
And, of course, because they’ll be hanging out within the network for longer, Watch is an advertiser’s dream.
Twitter & LinkedIn Aren't Bad Either
Twitter says that “videos on Twitter drive the highest recall and emotional connection on any digital platform”.
Promoting your video on Twitter instantly engages with your audience as it automatically begins to play as they scroll through their feeds.
And it’s hugely popular with tweeters: 82% of Twitter users watch video content, with 90% of views taking place on mobiles.
Over on LinkedIn, video capability has only recently been introduced. Not yet part of their advertising options, the platform describes it as a way to “show your experience and perspective”.
Ideal for highlighting your professional work, LinkedIn video can be used for showcasing projects, sharing product demonstrations and updating your connections with company news.
Your social media management services partner will know exactly how to create an engaging video to reach users on all platforms: professional, engaging and mobile-friendly. The online exposure offered by social media is immense.
Getting a social media marketing company on board to guide you through the maze will help to build your brand identity, increase your website visitors and boost your bottom line.
The sooner you start, the sooner you can start seeing the dramatic results.
Start your social media marketing strategy with our free ebook guide
Download Our Free Essential Guide to Social Media Marketing