There are many benefits of social media marketing for Philippine MSMEs in today’s day and age. Without a doubt, it is a cost-effective way to connect with your target audience, engage with customers, gain valuable insights, and grow your business.
Using social media for your business is a MUST if you want to succeed in today’s eCommerce landscape. Filipinos remain the most active social media users in the world, with 78.5 million social media users and averaging a daily time spent of 4 hours and 15 mins.
It makes sense to be where your target market is. So if social media marketing is not yet part of your overall business strategy for 2022, then now is the time to seriously think about it.
Not yet convinced? Read on to find out why…
Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses
1. Build Brand Awareness and Authority
The best way to build brand awareness and authority in any industry is to become the go-to expert.
How? By creating content that provides valuable information and educates your audience.
Brand awareness is important because it lets your audience know who you are and what you offer. Thanks to social media, it’s easier for businesses to share content that people can relate to, while at the same time establishing credibility and authority in their niches.
The key to building brand awareness and authority is to be CONSISTENT, CREDIBLE, and TRUST-WORTHY.
It’s important for brands to stay true to themselves across all their social media platforms. If they don’t, this will cause confusion in their consumers, which could cause a drop in sales or low interest in the brand altogether. So, while it’s tempting to ride a hype, don’t do this if it’s not aligned with your brand!
2. Understand Customers’ Interests
Social media gives you a unique opportunity to get a glimpse into what your customers want. You can ask for feedback on products, get a sense of their response to your latest blog post, or learn how they feel about a new feature in your app.
Receiving feedback from customers lets you know what’s working, and what needs improvement. You will also be able to see when there are changes in their interests which you could adapt to your marketing strategies accordingly.
Aside from asking for feedback, you can also proactively do SOCIAL LISTENING to better understand what’s important to your customers and target audience.
When you care about what they care about, you can generate content and provide solutions that actually address their pain points. That’s how you’ll win your customers’ hearts and be on top of their minds!
3. Personalized and Responsive Customer Service
Social media paved the way for businesses and brands to communicate with customers in real-time, which is vital for customer service.
While some Filipinos still prefer calling customer service, most go to social media to ask questions, raise concerns, and air out grievances. This is an opportunity for businesses to respond quickly and efficiently to ensure customer satisfaction.
A great rule of thumb: Reply to public comments publicly to let your customers and audience know you are “listening”.
If they raise a concern or air out grievances, make sure that you still thank them for their feedback and then let them know that you will address their concerns in a private message. Doing so ensures that you’re maintaining a positive relationship with your customers while managing your brand’s reputation
4. Improved Communication and Engagement
No matter what type of business you operate, the number one goal is to connect with your customers.
How can you do this with social media? HUMANIZE YOUR BRAND.
One benefit of social media marketing for businesses is the opportunity to engage customers with their unique brand voice and personality. Through the content that you are sharing, you can also communicate what you believe in and what you stand for.
Consumers want to do business with real people and they want to do business with brands that they align with. So don’t just sell your products or services. Tell a story to engage your audience on a human-to-human level.
5. Build Community and Get Social Proof
One of the most obvious benefits of using social media is that you can build a community of people who care about what you do. A strong, vocal customer base is one thing, but a large group of loyal fans who will advocate on your behalf? That’s something else altogether.
Social proof is another major benefit of using social media marketing for business. Social proof can help you stand out from the competition by showing potential customers how many other people like your company’s products or services.
What can you do to build a community around your brand and get social proof at the same time? By encouraging USER-GENERATED CONTENT.
User-generated content is any type of content coming from individuals who are sharing those content on their personal social media pages. This often comes in the form of testimonials or reviews, such as the “unboxing” and “mukbang” content. Word-of-mouth is still the best form of marketing and user-generated content does just that!
6. Connect with Potential Partners and Collaborators
Social media has changed the way we interact with one another. Today, it constantly glued people to their phones and computers, which means that social media is the perfect platform for networking.
The ability to connect with potential partners and collaborators is invaluable in growing your business. Nowadays, you can easily reach out to people who have similar interests or could be potential partners in your industry by joining social media groups, attending online events, or leveraging your existing network’s circle.
Just make sure that when you make that first connection, do it in a way that the recipient would be inclined to respond to your message. Introduce yourself properly, let them know how you got to know them, and why you’re messaging them. Most importantly, find a way to always give value.
7. Study Competitors and Identify Trends
The best way to see what’s working for your competitors is to study them. Take a look at their social media posts, website, and marketing efforts. Analyze what they’re doing well and how it could be improved.
Researching what other brands are doing will also help you identify trends in content, design, and customer acquisition tactics. Chances are that your competitors are targeting the same audience as you’re targeting. By looking at how their audience is engaging with their social media marketing campaigns, you can use it to help you craft your own marketing strategy.
8. Targeted Advertising and Engagement
Social media platforms are an effective way to engage with your target audience.
When you post content on social media, you can segment your posts so they appear in the newsfeeds of users who have shown interest in your brand or products. You can even use this to re-engage those who have visited your websites or abandoned their carts.
Traditional advertising methods often result in wasted money and missed opportunities for businesses.
Think about it – when you buy a TV ad, it might show up on TV screens during shows that don’t align with your company’s target audience. But with social media ads, you can easily tailor messages to specific people who are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer.
9. Boost Sales with Social Commerce
One of the rising trends during the pandemic is selling inside social media, which is why integrating social media with your eCommerce website is one of the most effective strategies that you can do to grow your business.
Facebook has made it easy for online sellers to create a Facebook Shop to share their product catalog. When they click on the product, they will be directed to the eCommerce website where they can continue shopping and checkout their orders.
That said, there are social commerce apps available in the market, like Prosperna’s myChat, which allow social sellers to sell directly inside social media including processing digital payments and automatically book shipping.
10. Track and Measure ROI
From a business standpoint, measuring the ROI of your marketing efforts is essential. You don’t just create content for the sake of creating content. You need to measure the impact of your social media marketing efforts.
Social media platforms have native tracking and analytical tools that you can use to measure follows, likes, engagements, comments, and purchases. There’s also Google Analytics and analytics software like Hootsuite that will give more comprehensive data across different channels.
An important tip for you here is to make sure that you identify the key metrics that you want to measure and define what a conversion means for your business.
Further reading:
- 5 Marketing Tips for Your Small Business
- Attract Customers to Your Online Store in 9 Easy Ways
- 11 FREE Content Marketing Tools & Resources for Small Business Owners
Bottomline
Social media marketing is a powerful tool that MUST be a part of your overall omnichannel marketing strategy.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach so constantly test things out and evaluate what works and what does not to ensure that your business gets to enjoy the benefits of social media marketing.
Prosperna is on a mission to empower 100,000 Philippine MSMEs with simple and affordable eCommerce software. Get the newest social commerce solution to help you make the most of your social media marketing.
Create your free-forever Prosperna Online Store today!
