Why Is Social Media Advertising Effective For Businesses?

In today's digital age, social media has become a game-changer for businesses to drive e-commerce sales growth. Leveraging social media platforms for marketing purposes can offer numerous benefits to help expand your business. According to Sprout Social, following a brand on social media can lead to deeper engagement. In fact, 91% of consumers are likely to visit the brand's website or app, 89% are likely to make a purchase, and 85% are likely to recommend the brand to others. Therefore, it's high time for businesses to leverage social media and unlock its full potential.

• In 2024, the total number of social media users is expected to reach a sum of 5.17 billion worldwide.

• TikTok is the fastest-growing social media platform, with a growth rate of 100% between 2020 and 2022. In the third quarter of 2023, the number of users grew by 13%.

• The number of social media users globally rose by 320 million from January 2023 to January 2024.

• Social media advertising is expected to reach a gigantic sum of $219.8 billion in the year 2024.

• It is also predicted that $255.8 billion of total social media spending will be generated via mobile devices by 2028.

• The total ad spend growth rate is expected to be 6.1% by 2024.

Social media ecommerce marketing refers to the utilization of social media platforms to promote online stores by generating brand awareness, increasing interest in products or services, and driving sales. This marketing approach involves various tactics to engage with customers and prospects, such as promoting and driving traffic to branded apps or ecommerce websites, selling products directly on social media, and providing pre-and post-sale support to customers.

It also involves collecting insights about the industry and market to improve strategies and build a strong online social media community around the brand. Successful brands use a combination of these tactics to create an effective social media ecommerce marketing strategy.

1. Increase Brand awareness

Social media is a powerful marketing channel for generating buzz and promoting brand awareness. It provides an excellent opportunity to engage with your target audience and initiate conversations. To create a successful brand awareness strategy, it is important to maintain a consistent voice and messaging across all social media platforms. Additionally, it is advisable to post content in various formats and across multiple channels while engaging with trending topics and hashtags. Building brand awareness is a gradual process that requires time and patience.

Businesses should ensure that their messaging is consistent, showcases their personality and values, speaks to the right audience, demonstrates their value, and responds to feedback. An example of a brand that has successfully built its reputation using social media is Tentree, a clothing company that champions sustainability. Tentree has effectively leveraged its social media channels to promote its mission and values. For instance, the company's tweet showcasing self-sustaining cabins in Finland is not overtly promotional; however, it is aesthetically pleasing and inspiring and reinforces Tentree's brand message.   

2. Ecommerce Chatbots

Modern businesses that operate on social media platforms require a scalable and effective customer support system to keep up with their increasing sales volume. The best solution to this is the implementation of ecommerce chatbots.

By utilizing an AI-powered chatbot, brands can easily connect and interact with consumers on multiple channels, provide pre-and post-sale support, offer discounts and product suggestions, and answer frequently asked questions. These chatbots can also guide users through the buying process, all while providing significant cost savings compared to a human support team.

The chatbot's primary function is to provide product suggestions to help answer user queries and drive sales, which has been instrumental in maintaining its success. If you're interested in learning how to use chatbots for Instagram and Facebook, Tru provides resources to help you get started.

3. Customer Support

Effective customer support is a key element of any social media ecommerce strategy. Social platforms provide an ideal space to engage and support existing customers, making them a de facto customer support channel for most major brands.

In addition to providing a good customer experience, interactive social media profiles also contribute to social proof, which is essential for attracting prospects. Public interactions with customers can impact purchase decisions, and how brands handle complaints in public can reveal how they handle them privately. Therefore, it's crucial to ensure that social media profiles are interactive and responsive to customer inquiries.

Starbucks prioritizes the well-being of communities, partners, and customers, aiming to be "people positive." Founder Howard Schultz captured this ethos, saying, “We are not in the coffee business serving people but in the people business serving coffee.” Their commitment to quality customer experiences and genuine interactions makes Starbucks a daily essential for many. Empowered employees enhance this approach without sacrificing quality.

4. Focus on Advertising

Social media is an extremely powerful advertising channel with a massive global reach that is rapidly expanding. According to Hootsuite's reporting, the ad reach of different social media channels is as follows: 2.17 billion on Facebook Ads, 1.44 billion on Instagram Ads, 1.02 billion on TikTok Ads, and 849.6 million on LinkedIn Ads.

However, the large audiences on these platforms can make it challenging to target specific groups effectively. Fortunately, these social media channels offer powerful targeting and segmentation tools to help advertisers reach their intended audience.

For effective social media advertising, it is essential to identify your target market and audience, layer targeting parameters to focus on that audience, create a compelling content strategy to resonate with them and define your goals and KPIs for each channel. Choosing the right ad types that align with your goals and specifying the appropriate conversion metrics is also crucial.

Your advertising goals will determine the ad types, KPIs, and conversion metrics you choose and the platforms you invest in. For instance, image, video, and carousel ads are best for driving brand awareness as they generate store visits, ad impressions, and engagement. On the other hand, product, collection, or shopping ads that drive direct purchases and product page visits are ideal for driving sales.

For expert advertisers, it's worth noting that The Bay, a major Canadian department store, uses Instagram advertising for brand building and product sales. They combine their unique visual style with shoppable catalogue ads to achieve their advertising objectives.

5. Use Social Media to Sell Products

Social commerce has always been a complex challenge for businesses. However, there are currently four social media applications that provide built-in social selling capabilities, namely Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok. Moreover, Twitter and Snapchat have partnered with Shopify to offer their own social commerce tools. This is where social media ecommerce marketing intersects with social commerce. The outreach and brand-building potential of social media can now directly translate into business growth.

Canada Cycle & Motor‘s (CCM) Instagram account seamlessly integrates lifestyle marketing with shoppable product placements to promote their line of professional hockey gear. The platform offers a glimpse into the lives of NHL players and showcases the high-quality equipment they use. By incorporating a direct-to-consumer approach, CCM streamlines the purchasing process, making it possible for customers to buy their products quickly and easily with just a few clicks.

Tru is a leading provider of social media marketing services that can help your brand achieve unprecedented success. We've helped Oshawa Power, a sustainable utility company that provides hydroelectric power to over 58,000 Oshawa residents in Canada. Through our social media marketing services, we helped Oshawa Power reach new heights of success.

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Social media advertising has numerous long-term benefits for your business. From brand recognition and audience management to active customer service, social media can provide everything your business needs to survive in today's competitive markets.

When it comes to investments, countless questions are in the back of a business owner's mind. If you are a business owner looking for a way to expand your business through newer channels, the above benefits will be helpful to you.