The Benefits of Social Media for Business can’t be denied!

In today’s digital age, many Canadian businesses know the importance of using social media for business. The right strategy can generate more leads and drive sales through the roof.

But with the wrong strategy, you can spend valuable time without seeing any results. Chances are you’ve tried some social media posts for your business in the past – maybe even had a few Facebook ads running. But you’ve let it fall to the back burner, if you pay attention to it at all.

Businesses across Canada and also the US have been using social media in recent years. It’s time to start paying attention to social media for your business. Don’t let past inexperience, disinterest, or even failure stop you from taking advantage now.

Social media is the reason many businesses have seen rapid growth. You may notice some of your competitors have gained on you. In some cases, they’re even running circles around you. They generate leads that are cheaper and flow more freely, they are closing deals faster, and the people in charge of purchasing decisions remember them more readily. Social media trends reflect this growth.

And where are you right now?

You’re still struggling with cold-calling, emails, and conventional advertising. A few years back, that worked – the leads were pouring in. But today? Not so much.

The proverbial well hasn’t dried up, but the gush has been reduced to a trickle, at best.

The Pitfalls of Outdated Marketing Methods

It’s time to face the music – conventional marketing methods are too expensive and most of your potential customers can’t be reached using those antiquated tactics. They’re not picking up their phones, your emails are going unanswered, and paid ads are a waste of time and effort.

On the other hand, businesses using digital marketing with a strong social media presence are raking it in. They might have an inferior product compared to yours, but that doesn’t matter. Brands on social media are seen and heard, mostly for free, while you’re paying to get your foot in the door.

Follow these social media tips to make sure your game plan is on message.

Like it or not, you have to adapt, and your business’s social media presence needs to grow – fast. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already played with it and failed. Persistence is key – with a firm understanding of what to expect, a detailed plan, and a few new tricks up your sleeve, you will soon harness the power of social media marketing for small businesses.

After all, business owners aren’t quitters and you’re not ready to throw in the towel just yet, right?

Let’s look at some social media marketing statistics as they pertain to your business, and what they might mean for you.

(Un)Surprising Social Media Statistics for Business

• Overall, about 54% of the world’s population has a social media account. That’s 4.2 BILLION users across the globe. (Source: Hootsuite)
• Broken down, that number is approximately 90.4% of Millennials, 77.5% of Generation X, and 48.2% of Baby Boomers use social media in some form. (Source: eMarketer)
• 98.8% of these users access their accounts through mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. (Source: Oberlo)
• 61% of those people check their smartphones within 10 minutes of opening their eyes in the morning. (Source: Rootmetrics)
• What’s more, a Deloitte survey estimates these people go on to check their smartphones at least 52 times during the day.
• 44.8% of social browsers used social media to research products in 2020. (Source: Hootsuite)
• 63% of customers actually expect companies to offer customer service through their social media – and 90% of social media users have already connected with a brand or business through their chosen platform (Source: Smartinsights)
• Adults aged 18 to 34 are most likely to follow a brand on social media, with 95% of them doing so. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
• The likelihood that a consumer will recommend a brand on social media to others after having a positive experience is about 71%. (Source: Ambassador)
• 71% of small-to-mid-sized businesses use social media to market themselves, and of those who do so, 52% post at least daily.

Social media is where users spend time, and where your audience is. What’s more, it’s where they want to learn more about you. And your competition already knows it – that’s why marketers spent over $99 billion on social media advertising and marketing in 2020. (Source: Statista)

Let take this a step further and break down some of the important statistics by platform.

Facebook Is An Essential Social Media Platform for Business

As one of the largest and longest running social media platforms, Facebook should not be neglected. Your ideal customers are likely there, you’ve just got to reach them.

• According to Wearesocial, there are 2.5 billion active monthly Facebook users.
• Of those active users, 74% of them log into Facebook daily (Source: Pew Research Center) and spend an average of 38 minutes per day on the platform.
• Facebook Stories attract 500 million daily viewers. (Source: TechCrunch)
• 1.4 billion people are involved in Groups every month. (Source: Facebook Insights)
• 60% of Americans watch videos on Facebook. (Source: Statusbrew)
• 15% of Facebook users shop on the platform – a number that will only grow. (Source: eMarketer)
• Facebook users click on an average of 11 ads each month, with women clicking on more ads (14 per month) than men (10 per month). (Source: Hootsuite)
• 90 million small businesses use Facebook Pages, Groups, and Messenger. (Source: Statusbrew)

Twitter is An Important Social Media Platform for Many Industries

Another of the most popular and prolific social media platforms is Twitter. Although fewer people use Twitter than Facebook, the platform is very different, and therefore used differently, by both consumers and business.

• Twitter boasts 330 million active monthly users. This represents a 9% growth over previous reporting. (Source: Statista)
• Link clicks make up 92% of all user interaction with tweets. (Source: Hubspot)
• 78% of people who complain to a brand on Twitter expect a response within the hour. (Source: Lithium)
• A whopping 83% of Twitter users who sent a tweet to a company – and received a response – felt better about the company and were more likely to do business with them. (Source: Twitter)
• That said, only 3% of tweets about customer service issues call out the company’s username with the @ symbol – so you’ve got to watch out for them! (Source: Marketing Land)
• People are 31% more likely to remember what they read on Twitter as compared to general online browsing. (Source: Twitter)
• 53% of users say they made a purchase they first saw on Twitter. (Source: WebFX)
• Twitter ads are 11% more effective than TV ads during live events. (Source: Twitter) Think about that next time you watch a Superbowl ad!

Instagram is the Social Media Platform To Find Millennials

Another important platform to use is Instagram, the image sharing platform. Instagram is as different from Twitter and Facebook as they are from each other. Which means you need to learn to use it (and its particular type of content) effectively with a well thought out social media marketing strategy to reach the best audience.

• As one of the fastest growing platforms, Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users, and about 500 million daily users. (Source: Statista)
• Instagram boasts one of the youngest audiences, with 72% of teens saying they use it. (Source: Sprout Social)
• What’s more, 64% of users are under 34.(Source: Statista)
• Despite being known as an image sharing platform, videos actually get 21.2% more interactions compared to images, and 18.6% more than carousels. (Source: Sprout Social)
• Surpassing Twitter in 2017, 71% of US based businesses now use Instagram. (Source: eMarketer)
• Ad spending on Instagram is 23% higher than on Facebook according to an internal analysis by Merkle.
• Engagement with brands is over 10 times higher than on Facebook. (Source: Statusbrew)
• In fact, 200 million people visit at least one business profile every day, and 130 million people engage with shopping posts every month. (Source: Sprout Social)
• 11% of Instagram users shop through the app. (Source: eMarketer)

LinkedIn Is the Best Lead Generation Platform for B2B Businesses

As the premier B2B social network, LinkedIn is important to your business in different ways from Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

• LinkedIn has 690 million monthly active users. (Source: LinkedIn)
• Designed with networking in mind, LinkedIn is 277% more effective than Facebook when it comes to lead generation and customer acquisition, with 45% of marketers gaining customers through the platform (Source: Sprout Social)
• In fact, 80% of social media B2B leads, and 46% of all social media traffic to company websites come from LinkedIn. (Source: LinkedIn)
• 65% of B2B companies have used LinkedIn paid ads. (Source: Sprout Social)
• 95% of B2B content marketers have used LinkedIn for organic marketing. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
• 76% of B2B content marketers have used LinkedIn as a paid social media platform. (Source: Sprout Social)

Even B2B operations are growing wary of ignoring social media!

The writing on the wall is clear – decision-makers consult others before making a purchase. They ask friends, colleagues, and peers for their two-cents worth. And they usually take to social media to check the buzz around a product or a service.

• 65% of B2B Buyers rely on recommendations and review sites. (Source: Weidert)

How does it look when the only online reference to your company is your website and an obvious PR article? A couple of results in the search engine don’t exactly inspire too much confidence.

• 55% look for information about your business on social media. (Source: Biznology)

This isn’t really surprising – if people are going to complain or praise a company, they will do it where it has the greatest impact. Having a presence there means that you can drown out (and respond to) the negatives while making sure that you brag about the positives as much as you can. Social media management has become the new customer service.

• Articles beat advertisements and 80% of B2B decision-makers prefer them. (Source: Marx Communications )

Content marketing is more important than ever. A handful of great articles, strategically shared over social media platforms, inform and add value. They help build trust and move actions along, but they do not drive them – which is something that today’s ad-weary customer appreciates.

• Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

How easy is it for people to find your business online? If you’re depending exclusively on your website, then it’s very difficult. 90% of B2B decision-makers don’t want to hear from you (Source: DemandGen Report), which is why your telesales crew is not very successful. When they’re good and ready, they will find you – provided you’ve made an effort to stand out of the crowd.

These small business social media statistics paint a very definite picture – you’re ignoring new marketing approaches at your own risk.

Social Media: Saying No Is Dangerous

You’ve likely tried a social media campaign for your small business in the past. If you dig hard enough, you might even find your business’s old Facebook page, sitting there all neglected and abandoned. It’s important to not get discouraged by past failures- the fact that you didn’t see any ROI back then could be due to a lot of things: you not understand the benefits fully, the fact that your execution was lacking, or difficulties with measuring success and replicating it.

Poet William F. O’Brien put it nicely: ‘It’s better to try and fail than never to try at all’. If that past failure is holding you back now, just consider what you’re risking:

New customers flocking to your competitors through social media.

Showing up is 80% of success. Your competitors showed up on social media – you didn’t – so they get to take home the bacon. A lot of your target audience never hears about your company because they don’t participate in the traditional marketing activities you’re still focusing on. Perhaps it is time to consider hiring a social media marketing agency, and we have some helpful tips to help you answer that question.

They don’t attend as many trade shows as in the past. They don’t read (what they think of as) spam mail, or don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize.

Those who do hear about you often forget by the time they’re ready to purchase because your competitors are the ones they see in their social feeds. Social media offers an opportunity to regain that audience engagement among your customer base.

Spending more money on traditional and digital and having nothing to show for it.

Add up everything you spend monthly on traditional marketing and digital ads. Now look at that number and realize that you could have reached at least a 100X more potential customers through strategic social media marketing.

Let that sink in.

It’s true that most of those views and interactions wouldn’t actually translate into leads, but it’s the same with the conventional methods – not every phone call turns into a warm lead, nor does an ad read signify a sale. Spend your marketing dollars where they count. Right now, they count on social media platforms.

Breaking the ‘purchasing path’ chain and losing a potential customer forever

Google has been talking about the ‘Zero Moment of Truth’ (ZMOT) for years now. Essentially, it describes how people shop today – from Google searches to reviews and testimonials. Social media figures prominently into ZMOT. It’s where people turn to for social proof.

If you’re not there, you’re breaking the chain, and your potential customer will move on to something else.

Looking obsolete, irrelevant, and untrustworthy to your target audience

Without a strong social media presence, you will have a tough time making a genuine, ‘human’ connection with your potential customers. Research has shown that customers put a strong emphasis on that connection, and that shapes their purchasing decisions.

Not being able to respond to negative comments about your brand

Customers often use social media to vent about brands. If you’re there, you get a chance to respond in real time, and turn a bad experience into a customer support victory. If you’re not, you end up not seeing those negative comments – causing them to pile up, overwhelming your marketing message.

Now that you understand how critical social media is for your business, in our next piece we will delve further into its ROI by introducing the advantages of social media for business.

Get more great content from Asset Digital Communications, a top social media agency in Toronto!

As one of the top digital marketing agencies, social media is one of our passions! Curious to learn more about how social media marketing can benefit your business? Check out our Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing Services services!

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