The ROI of Social Media: How Investing Today Drives Business Growth Tomorrow
Social media marketing. You know it’s important, but do the other decision makers in your business? You want to secure the budget, but how do you convince the cynics?
When resources are tight and sales need to be made, the temptation is to stick with what you know; events, directory submissions, event sponsorship and sales-driven activities. But are these strategies and channels working? Are you getting results? And are those results aligned with your business goals?
If you answered ‘no’ to any of those questions, or are just plain curious, then read on. I’ll give you the information you need to convince the decision-makers in your business that social media marketing is a sound investment.
No one wants to be squeezed down a funnel
At any given moment, only around 5% of a company's target market is actively looking to purchase a product or service. The remaining 95% are not in the market to buy right now (but might be in the future).
Contrary to popular belief, marketing doesn’t work by persuading potential buyers to buy. Or pushing them down a funnel with short-term, sales-driven activities that aim to convince by explaining the product benefits to death.
You can’t make someone ready to buy. They might already have what you’re selling, or their problem isn’t nuisance enough to need it. And imagine being on the receiving end. How would it feel to be metaphorically forced down a funnel?!
‘Catch buyers as they fall’
New research* tells us that the more effective B2B marketing strategy in terms of making future sales, is to focus on reaching and building long-term relationships with the 95%; the people who are currently out-of-market and not yet ready to buy.
By building familiarity, trust and memory links to your brand or business, when the buyer finally moves into market and becomes ready to buy, you are familiar, front of mind and easy to buy from – not your competitors.
There’s a well-known saying in marketing; the brand that gets remembered gets bought.
This is particularly true for Professional Services, where products are services are often complex and hard to buy. To make it easier for themselves, buyers tend to go with what they’re familiar with (which comes down to mental availability – something that the brilliant Andy Lambert talks about in his book Social 3.0).
But how do you build a familiar, memorable and trusted brand?
Enter, social media
With a strategic approach, social media is the perfect platform for sharing content and messages that help to build a strong and memorable brand. Here’s why:
Scale: social media platforms provide access to vast audiences. LinkedIn currently has over 37 million users in the UK (and 1 billion worldwide), with 40% of those using it daily.
Identity: social media is a brilliant platform for demonstrating a business’s sense of brand identity. Whether through words, tone, colours, fonts, graphics or sounds, businesses that are consistent in how they present themselves and talk to their audience will build a strong brand identity, becoming instantly recognisable and memorable.
Engagement: social media allows businesses to have direct, two-way conversations with prospective clients, and turn those conversations into relationships.
Humanisation: by sharing sincere content that shows personality, the company’s values, some behind-the-scenes and a bit of human emotion, social media helps put a human face on a business, creating a deeper level of connection with its audience.
Loyalty: regular and meaningful interaction with followers, sharing valuable content, responding to queries or feedback, and facilitating user-generated content all help to nurture trust, retention, loyalty and even advocacy; not to mention increasing visibility and reach.
Partnerships: co-creating content and aligning with industry influencers and other businesses that target the same audience provide opportunities to increase reach and influence. Pick the right partner, and there’s halo-effect potential, too.
So, you’ve built a strong sense of brand identity for your business (did I mention that social media as a marketing channel is also comparatively low cost?) and you’re successfully forging memory links amongst prospective buyers in your niche.
But that’s not where the business case for social media ends.
You’ll enjoy an uplift in website visits, and, combined with the brand-building activity you’ve invested in, you’ll start seeing an uptick in enquiries and new leads.
The benefits of fully engaging with social media marketing aren’t constrained to the Marketing department. You can expect these returns on your investment in other areas of your business, too:
DATA-DRIVEN INSIGHTS FOR STRATEGIC DECISIONS
Social listening tools and brand sentiment analysis from providers such as Sprout Social and Hootsuite are a powerful resource for gathering intel. Data and insights gathered from social media tell you about industry trends, consumer behaviour, competitor activity, your own marketing performance and attitudes towards your business. These invaluable learnings can feed into the business, marketing and comms strategy, the customer experience/service strategy, product or service development plans and the PR strategy/crisis management.
ATTRACTING TOP TALENT THROUGH EMPLOYER BRANDING AND EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY
Iin an industry where top talent is fiercely fought for, employer branding on social media enables businesses to attract the best people; people that align with their mission and culture. Social media is the perfect channel for showing prospective employees what it’s really like to work at your firm. You (and your employees) can share your mission, give them a taste of your pro bono work, tell them what to expect from your on-boarding process, interview newly hired and existing employees to provide answers to FAQs, show what it’s like behind the scenes, demonstrate your values in action, and give them a taste of your culture. Your employees are your secret weapon here. Companies with socially engaged employees are 58% more likely to attract top talent**. If you can get them sharing company content and their own experiences, not only does it help them build their own professional reputation, but it helps the company get wider reach and awareness and to “build affinity with the talent pools you’re looking to hire and ultimately accelerates the candidate journey” (LinkedIn).
BOOSTING DE&I EFFORTS
Social media offers businesses a platform to share and have conversations around their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, something that’s increasingly important to candidates who are looking for employers that reflect their values. Coupled with the increased reach achieved by employee advocacy, social media presents businesses with access to a much wider and more diverse pool of candidates, ultimately making the workplace a more inclusive and representative one.
FUTURE PROOFING THE BUSINESS
Generation Z (currently aged 12-27) is projected to make up nearly 30% of the labour force by 2025+. They are your future buyers – if they’re not already – and they expect to find, research and engage with you via social media. They are also your future talent. So it’s important that you meet them where they’re at and provide the information they’re looking for in the format they prefer.
As with anything in business, the key to realising these benefits is strategy – right from the start. Having a social media marketing strategy in place ensures that any activity, time or resource spent is aligned with your business and marketing goals, and the returns therefore make a meaningful and measurable difference.
Are you ready to build a social media marketing strategy that drives growth? From defining your brand to holding you accountable, Social Strategy Builder can support you through every step in building a unique social media marketing strategy for your business. Book a free discovery call to find out more.
* Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science
** The Official Guide to Employee Advocacy, LinkedIn
*** The Social Media Consumer Report, Hootsuite
+ World Economic Forum