The Bubble of social media

In the last few years, social media has shifted from being a digital channel for "socializing" with other media platforms to one of the most remarkable and efficient digital marketing tools for branding your businesses. It has set a mark of being a cost-effective tool for promotion and advertising in a fresh, subtle, and very personal way. As a result, brands are doubling their Social Media Marketing budgets over the passing years.

The entry of social media has changed the world to new parameters and pace. It enhanced the crowd to transfer their thoughts and feelings with friends and relatives in the original time. It opened the parameters for everyone to express themselves in various ways through pictures and instant images. And it has now opened up a huge number of options and opportunities for associations and businesses to target and reach out to potential people in a way that was almost impossible before.

Most brands and businesses are climbing up into the Social Media Marketing (SMM) bandwagon, many of which are not considering it fully by completely planning or assessing the efficiency and the impact of SMM on their business and brands. There are two shades of the SMM culture. One assures profitable success and long-term progress, particularly if SMM is done properly and effectively. The other color of SMM assures detrimental to your business, bringing in outcomes that may be completely different or maybe opposite from what you expected.

So, in this blog, we will try to understand the Pros and benefits of Social Media Marketing to make an intelligent and wise decision that will be the key to setting the fate of your complete digital marketing efforts to boost up your brands and businesses.

We will initially understand the pros of social media marketing and then move to grab our knowledge on the cons or disadvantages of advertising on social media channels. Let's begin.

The Pros of Social Media Marketing for Brands and businesses

Businesses tackling the changes in social media? No one can blame Social Media Marketing for serving its perks and benefits, and the following will answer you why.

1. Social Media Marketing is Cost-efficient

One of the major benefits of SMM over traditional media marketing and other digital marketing platforms is the comparatively lower price that makes it very appealing and attractive for businesses and associations. The most famous social media channels are practically free to subscribe and join them and use all techniques and tools for interacting with other people, all for free or minimum cost.

However, to receive more marketing mileage and boost your Social Media Marketing trials, brands are investing in an overall SMM campaign strategy. These investments and purchases vary from $75-$200 hourly rates for SMM consulting to a $3000 to $20,000 a month overall strategy that involves content creation, page/group put-ups, digital developments, and SMM monitoring management and maintenance. 

2. Social Media Marketing Targets to a Wider Audience

One of the major benefits which SMM has over other means of media marketing is that old and traditional ways of marketing only targets a fixed audience (e.g., General and religious magazine readers; TV viewers) while Social Media Marketing has the caliber of reaching out to a very wider potential audience that is broader in scope and reaches – from around the world. This wider audience is the major reason why 92% of digital marketers focus on creating and developing more exposure for their brands or business using SMM.

Social media marketing also targets broader demographics with no consideration of sex, age, and social status. Currently, 89% of Internet users aged from 18 to 29 years old are vigorously participating and involving in social media activities at various channels. That's a wide and broad market if you focus on targeting your products or services at this age range and this platform. If you're focusing on the 65 and older audience in the market, you can get up to 43% of them through social media marketing.

Moreover, your SMM reach can boost itself beyond all your targeted and focussed demographic market. Your customers and target audiences' friends, relatives, and networks go beyond their own demographic pace, paving for your fresh platforms and channels for creating leads or sales – if the audience shares your data and information to these platforms.

3. Social Media Marketing is Dynamic

If you have a brand or product or services to promote or have fresh news or new and important data and information that you would like to discuss, share or inform your target audience or potential markets, you can trust Social Media Marketing for quick action and fast outcomes. You can even synchronize and optimize your website with your social network platforms, so automatic, fresh, and new updates and information are immediately disseminated once you have anything live and fresh available. It can be very beneficial for your brand and business as two-thirds of adults online that go for and try social media platforms like blogs can have their purchasing factors majorly influenced and impacted by what they read and understand in these blogs.

4. Social Media Marketing Creates and encourages Interaction

One of the major issues is that most of the business considering traditional sales and marketing methods is keeping a very well, long-term relationship with their pre-existing customers. But the beauty and attraction of Social Media Marketing are that it is originated and is powered by social interaction, and communication which in the long term creates and develops trust among the businesses and your target audience. The more you encourage and ensure regular communication and interaction with your target audiences, the more you'll develop a better and longer tenure of relationship – that would speak for profitable results for your brand.

The Effective Types of Social Media Marketing in 2021

In 2021, the most effective social media ad platforms that offer unique targeting options and ad types to reach your target audience include:

·       Facebook

·       Instagram

·       Twitter

·       LinkedIn

1. Facebook advertising

A social media marketing platform to attract your target audience is the top-most concern of every business. But, don't worry. With Facebook covering up to 1.5 billion active users, your concern is cured. You can reach billions of audiences with just one post of your brand. 

Types of Facebook ads

The following are the types of Facebook ads to promote your business or brand in the way you want:

·       Single image ads: A single image mentioning your website link, headline, copy and call-to-action.

·       Photo ads: It is an ad including photo and text.

·       Video ads: It is an ad including video ad content.

·        Carousel ads: Add some photos in the form of a scrolling carousel.

·       Canvas ads: Fusion of videos, photos, text, and buttons to make a small landing page for your ad.

2. Instagram advertising

The second and most popular type of social media marketing on the Internet is Instagram marketing. A famous platform allows you to make creative photo and video ads to engage your target audience. More than 1 billion active users make it one of the best platforms to showcase your services and products to a wider audience and gives you effective results. 

Types of Instagram ads

Once your brand marketing campaign is sure about its goals and is aware of whom you want to target on the social media platform, you can select the ad format for this type of social media advertising, which include:

·       Photos: a descriptive and attractive picture of your products, services or brand.

·       Videos: a short video clip to boost your business, products, or services growth by targeting the audience.

·       Carousel: Adds some photos in one ad for scrolling to view.

·       Stories: An Instagram story is a video or picture appearing for 24 hours and is impactful to engage many viewers and followers.

3. Twitter advertising

This type of social media marketing platform is again tremendously popular to engage your audience worldwide. It has approximately 336 million active operators as per the recent analysis. 

Types of Twitter ads

Twitter has the following ad options for boosting your business on social media platform:

·       Promotional tweets: Target fresh audience and customers or enhance involvement and engagement among existing potential customers with promoted tweets that appear in followers’ feeds

·       Twitter GIF: An innovative and creative GIFs in your Twitter ads

·       Promoted video: Auto-playing videos to boost the engagement of your followers.

·       Website card: Image and video website cards help your brand to share innovative and creative image and video content that takes your target customers to a designated landing page.

·       App card: Takes your target customers to your brand or business's innovative and creative app. 

4. LinkedIn advertising

LinkedIn has turned into an efficient way to boost your business with over half a billion operators and target your potential customers. 

Types of LinkedIn ads

Following are some of the LinkedIn ad format:

·       Sponsored content: Displayed on news feed along with posts and content from other brands and businesses

·       Text ads: Is seen on the side, bottom, or top of users' feed.

·       Sponsored InMail: Delivers customized messages and images directly to the client or potential user via LinkedIn messenger

Conclusion

We have analyzed all the possible pros and cons of social marketing in this blog. We think that despite its potential setbacks and the struggles it can pose, social media is a remarkable tool in the hands of business owners. If you are ready to take that benefit, you should make full use of them and start.

You can't be a brand or business in the 21st century if you're not accepting and using social media marketing because the fact is that your competitor will be actively using SMM strategies. Your disadvantage and harm to not keep it up can mean that your competitors will always stay up from your brand.

So, we recommend that you set the roadmap for a social media marketing strategy to help you reach your potential audience, know your brand to your optimum demographic, and target them effectively.

To read more about social media marketing and its traffic, read SSM – it all about traffic.