Whether it is B2B or B2C business, wooing customers is not at all easy today as the options available with them are numerous and so one must make their presence felt. This has begun the drill of making your presence felt to the consumer so that the recall is there for the concerned brand or product. In this regard digital marketing has been helping businesses grow many folds with using internet media to reach masses. If one sees carefully the changing trend of marketing activities being used today for customer acquisition and retention, a major part of it is done through social media. The social media budget forms about 23% of the total marketing budgets in many business houses.
Talking about the cost that one has to incur for this purpose, there are both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand where you can achieve scale, you also have to see for good content that will pass the test of SEO, keywords and finally is appealing. Tracking one’s competition and being reactive in approach is also important. One of the many advantages that social media marketing gives is the very dynamic nature allowing you to edit and even change anything whenever you want to. Staying updated about the industry trends, listening to what your customers have to say about you and what changes that they want in the product and service provided never goes in vain.
Bill Gates has rightly quoted, “The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.”
Being at the right place at the right time is also important. When someone is browsing through their Facebook feed it is much easier to capture their attention and influence them in purchasing a product or availing a service especially in case if the service or product is of aspirational nature. This is because since this is a rather relaxed time so consumers tend not to think much rationally. A survey conducted by Marketing Sherpa claims that 33% of millennial have said that there purchase decisions are highly influenced by the social media and thus what they see. Now this definitely gives a great idea of targeting the youth by social media.
So when so much is dependent upon one thing, all types of businesses whether big or small are moving towards social media marketing. Every business today has at least one YouTube channel and presence on Facebook. Social media has also been very helpful in new product development and knowing views on current products so as to tweak it as per customer. Thus while lowering your costs to substantial levels it does wonders for your bottom line as well. However, small businesses face more problems because of the fact that social media marketing requires expertise and since they cannot scale up the sales too much, investment is mostly equivalent to sunk cost.
